Famous quotes containing the word cunning:
“Sincerity is a certain openness of heart. It is to be found in very few, and what we commonly look upon to be so is only a cunning sort of dissimulation, to insinuate ourselves into the confidence of others.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (16131680)
“In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result, but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)