Guile Quotes - Page 2

• Elephants are highly emotional. Whatever they are feeling, they let it out immediately, and the histrionics are over and forgotten in a moment, lasting no longer than the cloud formations that are constantly coming apart and re-forming overhead. There is no guile in pachyderms.

  Alex Shoumatoff

  Emotional, Clouds, Elephants

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• When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue; not by wire pulling and demagoguery; not by the arts of popularity; not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency; but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country; by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country.

  Elihu Root

  Country, Teacher, Courage

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• But some most worthless persons are in the habit of carrying about the name of Jesus Christ in wicked guile, while yet they practice things unworthy of God, and hold opinions contrary to the doctrine of Christ, to their own destruction, and that of those who give credit to them, whom you must avoid as ye would wild beasts.

  Ignatius of Loyola

  Jesus, Practice, Names

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• What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.

  Robert E. Howard

  Dog, Kings, Lying

  Robert E. Howard (2015). “The Start Conan the Barbarian Super Pack”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

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• That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remained Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge .

  John Milton

  Time, Revenge, Hate

  1665 Satan gazes upon Eve. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.9, l.463-6.

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• Oh what lies there are in kisses! And their guile so well prepared! Sweet the snaring is; but this is Sweeter still, to be ensnared.

  Heinrich Heine

  Sweet, Lying, Kissing

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• The same tantalizing guile and sublime skill....[The series is] reinforced in its claim to be one of the major literary works of this century....Only two other writers that this reviewer can think of have each created an entire, discrete and compelling world, a totally believable entity which one might wish to inhabit, and they are Joyce and Proust. It is not pretentious to place Patrick O'Brian in the first canon of literature.

  Kevin Myers

  Thinking, Skills, Two

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• Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.

  Jack Vance

  Challenges, Deception, Fleeting

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• He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.

  Benjamin Harvey Hill

  Christian, Hate, Ambition

  Benjamin Harvey Hill (1891). “Senator Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia: His Life, Speeches and Writings”

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• Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.

  Jack Vance

  Beauty, Eye, Love Is

  Jack Vance (1998). “The complete dying earth”

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• I’m giving you that chance now. (Stryker) It’s too late. Too many centuries have passed. There was a time when I lived only to hear a kind word from your lips. But that ship sank under an assault of bitterness that no amount of charm or guile will recover. (Zephyra)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Giving, Lips, Too Late

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2008). “One Silent Night”, p.107, Macmillan

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• Gaze no more in the bitter glass
  The demons, with their subtle guile,
  Lift up before us when they pass,
  Or only gaze a little while.

  William Butler Yeats

  Reality, Glasses, Mirrors

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.139, Penguin

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• Our duty is to rise in the bright daylight, openly, beating the drums. The cause for which we are ready to give our necks does not fear the light, and to attack the enemy by guile would not suit it. A Pole has always despised ambushes, and God forbid that he should change. We shall not fail to have enough strength to defeat our enemies if we do not fail to have the spirit of sacrifice and love.

  Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont

  Sacrifice, Light, Giving

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• Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile,
  They will, they will not; fools that on them trust;
  For in their speech is death, hell in their smile.
  [It., Femmina e cosa garrula e fallace:
  Vuole e disvuole, e folle uom chi sen fida,
  Si tra se volge.]

  Torquato Tasso

  Women, Heart, Crafts

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• What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware,
  As to descry the crafty cunning train,
  By which deceit doth mask in visor fair,
  And cast her colours dyed deep in grain,
  To seem like truth, whose shape she well can feign,
  And fitting gestures to her purpose frame,
  The guiltless man with guile to entertain?

  Edmund Spenser

  Wise, Men, Deceit

  Edmund Spenser, Roy Maynard (1999). “Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves: Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene”, p.125, Canon Press & Book Service

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• Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home.

  A. Bartlett Giamatti

  Baseball, Home, Journey

  A. Bartlett Giamatti (1998). “A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti”, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

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• We wear the mask that grins and lies.

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Lying, Wearing A Mask, Tortured Souls

  "We Wear the Mask" l. 1, 14 (1895)

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• We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- - This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be otherwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see thus, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Dream, Lying, Heart

  Paul Laurence Dunbar (2004). “Selected Poems”, p.85, Penguin

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• Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Long, Forgiving, Desire

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• From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhist, Lying, Teaching

  "Dzogchen: Heart Essence of the Great Perfection" by Dalai Lama, Snow Lion Publications, 2004.

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