Cunning man

“ At the same time that I think discretion the most useful talent a man can be master of, I look upon cunning to be the accomplishment of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Discretion points out the noblest ends to us, and pursues the most proper and laudable methods of attaining them; cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. ”

“ 4.—Self love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world. ”

“ If I had been free to follow my own instincts, I should probably have begun by speaking to the man, and have ended by knocking him down. But I was bound to consider consequences. If I once placed myself publicly in the wrong, I put the weapons at once into Sir Percival's hands. There was no choice but to oppose cunning by cunning. ”

“ It appeared that he was a man who, by his shrewdness in general, as well as particular instances of cunning, combined with his dauntless daring, had become so much an object of admiration to those who had nothing to lose, as of terror to the men of money, who had become the victims of his audacity. ”

“ If he be cunning, there is no need that we be cunning. If need arise, we go to him for his cunning. We eat the meat of his kill, and it tastes unsweet. We merit by his strength, and in it there is no delight. We do not live when he does our living for us. We grow fat and like women, and we are afraid to work, and we forget how to do things for ourselves. Let the man go, O Tantlatch, that we may be men! I am Keen, a man, and I make my own kill! ”

“ On the other hand, the cunning, crafty man thinks to gain all his ends by the ‘suaviter in modo’ only; HE BECOMES ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN; he seems to have no opinion of his own, and servilely adopts the present opinion of the present person; he insinuates himself only into the esteem of fools, but is soon detected, and surely despised by everybody else. The wise man (who differs as much from the cunning, as from the choleric man) alone joins the ‘suaviter in modo’ with the ‘fortiter in re’. ”

“ For cunning tries to assume the character of prudence, and moroseness, in despising pleasures, wishes to be taken for temperance; and pride, which puffs a man up, and which affects to despise legitimate honours, seeks to vaunt itself as magnanimity; prodigality calls itself liberality, audacity imitates courage, hardhearted sternness imitates patience, bitterness justice, superstition religion, weakness of mind lenity, timidity modesty, captiousness and carping at words wishes to pass for acuteness in arguing, and an empty fluency of language for this oratorical vigour at which we are aiming. ”

“ The best plan was to astonish my man with the miracle of the augmentation of the mercury, treat it as a jest, and see what his intentions would be. Cheating is a crime, but honest cunning may be considered as a species of prudence. True, it is a quality which is near akin to roguery; but that cannot be helped, and the man who, in time of need, does not know how to exercise his cunning nobly is a fool. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I see any man serious in that crowd, I look upon him for a very dull or designing fellow. By the by, I am of opinion, that folly and cunning are nearer allied than people are aware of. If a fool runs out his fortune, and is undone, we say, the poor man has been outwitted. Is it not as reasonable to say of a cunning rascal, who has lived miserably, and died hated and despised, to leave a great fortune behind him, that he has outwitted himself? ”

“ There is a cunning, which we in England call, the turning of the cat in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him. And to say truth, it is not easy, when such a matter passed between two, to make it appear from which of them it first moved and began.
It is a way that some men have, to glance and dart at others, by justifying themselves by negatives ”

“ A sudden, bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man, and lay him open. Like to him that, having changed his name and walking in Paul's, another suddenly came behind him and called him by his true name, whereat straightways he looked back.
But these small wares and petty points of cunning are infinite; and it were a good deed to make a list of them; for that nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise. ”

“ It seems to result from some instinctive tendency existing in the mind, to conceal from the public eye, its own emotions and ideas. It is essential to a prudent character, for as Solomon says, “A fool uttereth all his mind; but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards.”—In the lower order of animals the same faculty is termed cunning, and it not only aids them in their pursuit of food, but also enables them to combat force by prudence. ”

“ She will lose the sweet youth John, even as she wishes, but long and full of evil shall be the life of the child she loves." And upon this these two foolish women reproached each other with works of sin and with deeds of darkness; and, waxing wroth with their words, they tore each other's raiment and hair, and smote and bruised one another, and the clamour of their tongues increased exceedingly.
"'Now, in the midst of all this folly there came to my fireside a man cunning in the culture of corn, and versed in the cure of those evils which afflict dumb creatures. ”

“ Cunning, when it is once detected, loses its Force, and makes a Man incapable of bringing about even those Events which he might have done, had he passed only for a plain Man. Discretion is the Perfection of Reason, and a Guide to us in all the Duties of Life; Cunning is a kind of Instinct, that only looks out after our immediate Interest and Welfare. Discretion is only found in Men of strong Sense and good Understandings: Cunning is often to be met with in Brutes themselves, and in Persons who are but the fewest Removes from them. ”

“ The time was when he was boldest among the bold; when defying all opposition, he boldly marched unceremoniously to his object. But age has come upon him, teaching him that cunning must supply the place of strength. But we warn him and his companions in crime, that neither strength nor cunning will much longer avail them; their strength shall be broken, their cunning confounded, and their whip-scared victims released from their chain. God speed the day! ”

“ By and by he discovered that cunning was more effective than violence, and less troublesome. Still later he became convinced that the greatest cunning was virtue, and made him a moral code, and subdued the world. ”

“ The horses of the others are swifter, but the men know not how to devise more cunning counsel than thine own self. Wherefore come, dear son, lay thou up in thy mind cunning of every sort, to the end that the prizes escape thee not. By cunning, thou knowest, is a woodman far better than by might ”

“ For whoso yields to one iniquity, speedily falls an easier victim to the next, the first being an incentive to the second. Also, the man veiled the monstrosity of his deed with such hardihood of cunning, that he made up a mock pretence of goodwill to excuse his crime, and glossed over fratricide with a show of righteousness. ”

“ Cunning combined with force of character generally enabled a man to die a natural death—even though rich; provided, of course, that he had been judiciously liberal in the right quarters, and had consistently supported the strong against the weak. ”

“ Cunning of the Victim.—What a sad cunning there is in the wish to deceive ourselves with respect to the person for whom we have sacrificed ourselves, when we give him an opportunity in which he must appear to us as we should wish him to be! ”

“ Cunning is so apt to grow into Knavery, that an honest Man will avoid the Temptation of it. But Men in this Age are half bribed by the Ambition of [Pg 122] circumventing, without any other encouragements. ”

“ It is not cunning, it is not wisdom, it is far from being prudence, and yet it is something as wary as prudence, as effectual as wisdom, and not less sinister than cunning. I would call it intuitive skill, a sort of instinct, by which he is enabled to attain his ends in defiance of a capacity naturally narrow, a judgment that topples with vanity, and an address at once mean and repulsive. ”

“ Some have in readiness so many tales and stories, as there is nothing they would insinuate, but they can wrap it into a tale; which serveth both to keep themselves more in guard, and to make others carry it with more pleasure. It is a good point of cunning, for a man to shape the answer he would have, in his own words and propositions ”

“ But indeed, when we arrive at that pitch of false taste, as not to think cunning a contemptible quality, it is, methinks, a very great injustice that pick-pockets are had in so little veneration, who must be admirably well turned, not only for the theoretic, but also the practical behaviour of cunning fellows. After all the endeavour of this family of men whom we call cunning, their whole work falls to pieces, if others will lay down all esteem for such artifices, and treat it as an unmanly quality, which they forbear to practise only because they abhor it. ”

“ The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires: so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better"—it would be more correct even to go so far as to assert the contrary ("Injury makes a man cunning," says a popular proverb: so far as it makes him cunning, it makes him also bad. ”

“ And when he turned away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them, she glanced again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of hatred, and there is another cunning, much deeper. ”

“ In things that a man would not be seen in himself, it is a point of cunning, to borrow the name of the world; ”

“ And when one noticed them they were wearied also, or sharp like ferrets; oppressed, overborne, or cunning, with the cunning of those who must be cunning to live; imbruted often with the brutishness of apathy, consciousless of the dignity of manhood, only dully patient or viciously keen as the ox is or the hawk. ”

“ There are some Cunning-men who yet can scarce be called Rational Creatures; yet they are often more successful than Men of Sense, because those they have to deal with are upon a looser Guard; and their Simplicity maketh their Knavery unsuspected.
[Pg 126] There is no such thing as a venial Sin against Morality, no such thing as a small Knavery: He that carries a small Crime easily, will carry it on when it grows to be an Ox. But the little Knaves are the greater of the two, because they have less the Excuse of Temptation. ”

“ However, since I have your vote, I pray you listen to me whilst I show that, although one woman used cunning for a good purpose, others have been crafty for evil’s sake. Since we have sworn to tell the truth I will not hide it, for just as the boatwoman’s virtue brings no honour to other women unless they follow her example, so the vice of another cannot disgrace her. ”

“ With devilish cunning he will even persuade you to aid in your son’s downfall; to teach him in the social game, to use the leprous papers of the pit, on which is inscribed the voiceless litany of woe. ”

“ Then the cunning will be over and gone with which his distracted mind has tried, as if in delirium, to snatch at all manner of trivial things and thoughts in order to avoid the one feeling which ever weighs him down. ”

“ She feels that there is a disproportion between her offense and her punishment, and that she is being wronged and defrauded of life. Cunning is one of the forms which intelligence takes in a fight. And in general people become cunning when they are oppressed or do not participate on an equal footing in their society. ”

“ The expression of the countenance denoted the very triumph of cunning. We pretend not to a knowledge of the arcana of nature, to be able to detect the manner in which the moving principles prompt to good or evil, but we must reject all sacred history, and no small portion of profane, not to believe that agencies exist that are not visible to our ordinary senses; and that our boasted reason, when abandoned to its own support, becomes the victim of those that are malign. ”

“ CI. Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people’s weaknesses. Or it is taking advantages of others which they do not suspect, because they are contrary to propriety and the settled practice. We feel no inferiority to a fellow who picks our pockets; though we feel mortified at being over-reached by trick and cunning. Yet there is no more reason for it in the one 372case than in the other. Any one may win at cards by cheating—till he is found out. ”

“ Cunning is the only resource of the feeble; and why may we [Pg 402] not feel for victorious cunning as strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, open bearing of the strong? That there may be no mistake in the essayist's meaning, that he may drive the nail home into the English understanding, he takes an illustration which shall be familiar to all of us in the characters of Iago and Othello. ”

“ In what follows, let the reader feel how by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed vanity and envy, the very vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon him as if they were so many excellences, and the more appropriately, because cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of inward weakness;—but they act only by half, like music on an inattentive auditor, swelling the thoughts which prevent him from listening to it. ”

“ It taught that cunning must be met with its own weapons, and that the qualities necessary for the conflict were wit and sharpness. The union between the moral and the comic element was exhibited in making intrigue successful wherever the victim was deserving of it, and in representing him as foiled by accidents and cross-purposes, because the prudence and caution of the knave are not always on a par with his cunning. It also had its sentimental side, and the sympathies of the audience were enlisted in favour of good temper, affection, and generosity. ”