Cunning

Sourced

• We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom. And certainly there is a great difference, between a cunning man, and a wise man; not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.
  • Francis Bacon. ‘Of Cunning’, Essays (1625)

• And because these cunning men, are like haberdashers of small wares, it is not amiss to set forth their shop.
  • Francis Bacon. ‘Of Cunning’, Essays (1625)

Unsourced

• A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself.
  • Beecher

• The most sure method of subjecting yourself to be deceived, is to consider yourself more cunning than others.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld

• Cunning leads to knavery; it is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery; lying only makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.
  • Jean de La Bruyère

• In a great business there is nothing so fatal as cunning management.
  • Junius

• The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning, he blunders and betrays.
  • Thomas Paine

• Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
  • William Hazlitt