Knavery Quotations

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

It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work

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.

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

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

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

Even knaves may be made good for something.

Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people.

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

We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.

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

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

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

Knavery's plain face is never seen till used.

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

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.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

Knavery is ever suspicious of knavery.

Knavery is the best defense against a knave.

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