Famous quotes containing the word cunning:
“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 (1717–1797)
“One night, under cover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into his family’s heart. It was the Bottle Conjurer! Upon the opening of that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)