"Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Excellency," said the Captain, twisting his hard features into an inimitable expression of cunning and intelligence, "if they do not put my head in a poke, which I have known practised upon honourable soldados who have been suspected to come upon such errands as the present, your Excellency may rely ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... Yankee, and intrigue to the Italian, is finesse, which is a union of insight and address, to the French. This normal attribute is another proof how the economy of Gallic life is reduced to an art. It is the expression in manners of Rochefoucauld's maxims, of Richelieu's policy, of Talleyrand's cunning. It is favored by the tendency to minuteness of excellence and love of system before noted. To understand what superior range is afforded to such a principle in France, it is only requisite to consult the memoirs of a celebrated woman, or even an old Guide or Picture of Paris, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... [D] Thaleth; 'tis strange my Tongue should be longer than my Arms, without eking. 'Tis hard for Dunces to understand this as all willful Fools are. Humble humility is better than the miserable wisdom of the merciless knowledge of error. Cunning fooleries and vanities unlock'd for, to spell the same sound diverse ways, and when you have all done, you are but where you was, as prayes, praise, prasy. For why may not y stand for nothing after s, as well as after a, as may: But where no reason there is for custom, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... luggage in the arms of nurses and porters. Once arrived, however, they display considerable mobility in distributing themselves through the three or four hundred widely-separated cottages which await them for hire. As you wander through the lanes of these cunning little houses, you catch strange fragments of conversation. Gentlemen living vis-a-vis, and standing with one leg in the grave and the other on their own piazzas, are heard on sunny mornings exciting themselves with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... which eventually overcame my aversion to change. The basement story of the house was occupied by a bar and oyster saloon; the pungent testaceous odors, mounting from those lower regions, gave the offended nostrils no respite or rest; in a few minutes, a robust appetite, albeit watered by cunning bitters, would wither, like a flower in the fume of sulphur. Half-a-dozen before dinner, have always satiated my own desire for these mollusks; before many days were over, I utterly abominated the name of the species; familiarity only made ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
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