Knavery Quotes

• Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.

  Ovid

  Lying, Differences, Add

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• We never deceive for a good purpose: knavery adds malice to falsehood.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Deceit, Add, Purpose

  "Characters", XI, 1688.

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• Knavery is the best defense against a knave.

  Plutarch

  Defense, Knaves

  "Moralia". Book by Plutarch. Chapter "Of Bashfulness",

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• A thorough-paced knave will rarely quarrel with one whom he can cheat: his revenge is plunder; therefore he is usually the most forgiving of beings, upon the principle that if he come to an open rupture, he must defend himself; and this does not suit a man whose vocation it is to keep his hands in the pocket of another.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Revenge, Men, Hands

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• There's never a villain dwelling in all Denmark But he's an arrant knave.

  William Shakespeare

  Dwelling, Knaves, Denmark

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 5, l. 123

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• Knavery's plain face is never seen till used.

  William Shakespeare

  Faces, Used

  William Shakespeare, E.A.J. Honigmann (1996). “Othello: Third Series”, p.182, A&C Black

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• Knavery is ever suspicious of knavery.

  Joseph Addison

  Suspicious

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• A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.

  William Hazlitt

  Thinking, Knaves, Fool

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1498, Delphi Classics

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• While I live, no rich or noble knave shall walk the world in credit to his grave.

  Alexander Pope

  Noble, Credit, World

  Alexander Pope (1796). “The Beauties of Pope, Or, Useful and Entertaining Passages: Selected from the Works of that Admired Author : as Well as from His Translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, &c”, p.230

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• Zeno first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defence against a knave.

  Plutarch

  Doctrine, Knaves, Firsts

  Plutarch (1871). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.72

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• Fashion--a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse.

  Charles Churchill

  Fashion, Use, May

  1761 The Rosciad, l.455-6.

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• Knaves starve not in the land of fools.

  Charles Churchill

  Land, Knaves, Fool

  Charles Churchill (1855). “The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill: With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes”, p.223

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• Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.

  George Berkeley

  Knaves, Thorough

  George Berkeley (1837). “Works: Account of His Life and Letters”, p.362

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• The worst of all knaves are those who can mimic their former honesty.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Honesty, Knaves, Worst

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Knavery seems to be so much a the striking feature of its inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they will become aliens to this kingdom.

  George III

  America, Evil, Kingdoms

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• Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Humor, Blood, Flattery

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• Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Honesty, Yield, Firm

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.

  Aphra Behn

  Brave, World, Better Days

  1682 The Roundheads, act1, sc.1.

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• Even knaves may be made good for something.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  May, Knaves, Made

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• A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.

  Edgar Degas

  Vices, Add, Crime

  Robert Hale Ives Gammell, Edgar Degas (1961). “The shop-talk of Edgar Degas”

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• Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

  Voltaire

  Knaves, Fool

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• Now I will show myselfTo have more of the serpent than the dove;That is--more knave than fool.

  Christopher Marlowe

  Knaves, Fool, Dove

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• But I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature

  David Hume

  Believe, Men, Law

  David Hume (2012). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.139, tredition

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• There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Would Be, Cases

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.3673, Delphi Classics

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• Knaves will thrive when honest plainness knows not how to live.

  James Shirley

  Knaves, Honest, Thrive

  James Shirley (1793). “The Maid's Revenge. A Tragedy [in Five Acts, in Prose and Verse].”, p.38

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