Stratagem Quotes - Page 3

• Some frauds succeed from the apparent candor, the open confidence, and the full blaze of ingenuousness that is thrown around them. The slightest mystery would excite suspicion and ruin all. Such stratagems may be compared to the stars; they are discoverable by darkness and hidden only by light.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Stars, Light, Darkness

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• Continuous present is all we have, and stream of consciousness - which in a novel is arguably just as artificial as the stilted dialogue that you get in most conventional novels. They're all stratagems to try to get closer to the texture of lived life.

  Will Self

  Trying, Texture, Consciousness

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• Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.

  John W. Gardner

  Running, Being Yourself, Clever

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• The circumstance that any man could suppose that Matthew when he said, 'Jacob begat Joseph,' or Luke, when he said, 'Joseph was the son of Heli' could refer to the wife of the one, or the daughter-in-law of the other, shows to what desperate stratagems polemical orthodoxy will resort in order to defend an untenable position.

  William Rathbone Greg

  Daughter, Son, Men

  William Rathbone Greg (1851). “The creed of Christendom: its foundations and superstructure”, p.98

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• In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere — "Bibles laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

  C. S. Lewis

  Atheist, Reading, Men

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• Scratching people where they itch and addressing their 'felt needs' is a stratagem of the poor steward of the oracles of God. This was the recipe for success for the false prophets of the Old Testament.

  R. C. Sproul

  People, Needs, Oracles

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• The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

  Harold Pinter

  Fall, Echoes, Silence

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

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• Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Home, Self

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.258, Macmillan

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• She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Running, Flower, Radiance

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• So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.

  Philip Sidney

  War, Teaching, Heaven

  Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Babington Macaulay (2010). “English Essays: From Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay”, p.23, Cosimo, Inc.

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• It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no person can sincerely try to help another without helping him or herself. Serve and you shall be served. If you love and serve people, you cannot, by any hiding or stratagem, escape the remuneration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Helping Others, People

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• On dispersive ground, therefore, fight not. On facile ground, halt not. On contentious ground, attack not. On open ground, do not try to block the enemy's way. On the ground of intersecting highways, join hands with your allies. On serious ground, gather in plunder. In difficult ground, keep steadily on the march. On hemmed-in ground, resort to stratagem. On desperate ground, fight.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, Block, Military

  Sun Tzu (2012). “The Art of War (The Classic Lionel Giles Translation)”, p.29, e-artnow

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• The main propoganda trick of supporters of the allegedly "progressive" policy of government control is to blame capitalism for all that is unsatisfactory in present-day conditions and to extol the blessings of socialism. They have never attempted to prove their fallacious dogmas, all they did was to call their adversaries names and cast suspicion upon their motives. And, unfortunately, the average citizen cannot see through these stratagems. The liars must be afraid of the truth and are therefore driven to suppress its pronouncement.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Philosophy, Liars, Blessing

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• Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round! Parents first season us; then schoolmasters deliver us to laws; they send us bound to rules of reason, holy messengers, pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, bibles laid open, millions of surprises, blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, the sound of glory ringing in our ears: without, our shame; within, our consciences; angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. Yet all these fences and their whole array one cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

  George Herbert

  Angel, Sunday, Blessing

  George Herbert (1853). “The works of the Rev. George Herbert: with remarks on his writings, and a sketch of his life”, p.47

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• There is no opposing brutal force to the stratagems of human reason.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Reason, Force, Brutal

  Sir Roger L'Estrange (1738). “Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflections”, p.252

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• There are, by the most conservative counting, two grave and deeply regrettable collateral victims of the peer-review gruesome stratagem: one is the daring of thought (wished-washed to the lowest common denominator), and the other is the individuality, as well as the responsibility, of editors (those seeking shelter behind the anonymity of "peers", but in fact dissolved in it, in many cases without a trace).

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Responsibility, Editors, Two

  Source: www.theoryculturesociety.org

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• [Yahya Khan ] had given me an appointment for the following day. And, days later, General Mohd Umar revealed to me that he'd resorted to this stratagem so that I'd stay in Dacca and "see the efficiency of the army." I give you my word of honor that all this is true.

  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

  Army, Giving, Honor

  Source: dhakadigest.net

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• 

  Never fight with Russian. On your every stratagem they answer unpredictable stupidity.

  Otto von Bismarck

  Fighting, Stupidity, Answers

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• It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to agree to any and every sacrifice, and even - if need be - to resort to all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres and illegal methods, to evasion and subterfuges in order to penetrate the trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry on Communist work in them at all costs.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Sacrifice, Order, Able

  "V.I. Lenin Selected Works" by Vladimir Lenin, vol. 10, (p. 95), 1938.

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• Several devices he has to draw souls to sin, and several plots he has to keep souls from all holy and heavenly services, and several stratagems he has to keep souls in a mourning, staggering, doubting and questioning condition. He has several devices to destroy the great and honorable, the wise and learned, the blind and ignorant, the rich and the poor, the real and the nominal Christians.

  Thomas Brooks

  Christian, Wise, Real

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• The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works but rather the way God is. Cheek-turning is not advocated as what works (it usually does not), but advocated because this is the way God is - God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. This is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we feel so much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world through Christ.

  Stanley Hauerwas

  Jesus, Selfish, Ungrateful

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• There were various aspects of Sun Tzu's approach that appealed to Ho Chi Minh: a) to learn to understand both the enemy and yourself, to seek out his weaknesses and your own strengths, and act accordingly, b) to make ample use of subterfuge and stratagem in order to defeat or disarm your adversary, and c) to use outright violence only when absolutely necessary in the belief that political struggle was more effective than military struggle.

  William J. Duiker

  Military, Struggle, Order

  Source: www.sonshi.com

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