A Quote by Samuel Johnson

Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.

Samuel Johnson

Quote Topics

Credulity Cunning Deceive Effect Extraordinary Lie Others Rather Requires Talents Than Those

Quote Author

Samuel Johnson
English - Writer
September 18, 1709 - December 13, 1784

A cunning mind emphatically delights in its own cunning, and is the ready prey of cunning.

Anna Brownell Jameson

It is a pity that, commonly, more care is had--yea, and that among very wise men--to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cunning man for their children.

Roger Ascham

Do not be held a cheat, even though it is impossible to live today without being one. Let your greatest cunning lie in covering up what looks like cunning.

Baltasar Gracian

Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Don't think so much of your own Cunning, as to forget other Men's; a Cunning Man is overmatched by a cunning Man and a Half.

Benjamin Franklin

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

All my own experience of life teaches me the contempt of cunning, not the fear. The phrase "profound cunning," has always seemed to me a contradiction in terms. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either shallow, or on some point diseased.

Anna Brownell Jameson

One Man may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning than every body else.

Benjamin Franklin

Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.

Horace Walpole

Cold & cunning come from the north: But cunning sans wisdom is nothing worth.

Benjamin Franklin

Those who have the most cunning affect all their lives to condemn cunning; that they may make use of it on some great occasion, and to some great end.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it.