Knaves Quotations

You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.

Honest men are the soft easy cushions on which knaves repose and fatten.

It is... a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.

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

Knaves starve not in the land of fools.

That man is thought a dangerous knave, Or zealot plotting crime, Who for advancement of his kind Is wiser than his time.

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

For my part, if a man must needs be a knave I would have him a debonair knave... It makes your sin no worse as I conceive, to do it à la mode and stylishly.

Necessity makes an honest man a knave.

There is something more horrible than hoodlums, churls and vipers, and that is knaves with moral justification for their cause.

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

Better be a foole then a knave. [Better be a fool than a knave.]

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

Even knaves may be made good for something.

A crafty knave needs no broker.

Even virtue followed beyond reason's rule May stamp the just man knave, the sage a fool.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

When a knave is in a plumtree he hath neither friend nor kin.

If yee would know a knave, give him a staffe.

In all conditions of life a poor man is a near neighbor to an honest one, and a rich man is as little removed from a knave.

A king may spille, a king may save; A king may make of lorde a knave; And of a knave a lorde also.

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

Knaves will come and knaves will go.

A minute later the bailiff and four of his men rode past him on their journey back to Southampton, the other two having been chosen as grave-diggers. As they passed Alleyne saw that one of the men was wiping his sword-blade upon the mane of his horse. A deadly sickness came over him at the sight, and sitting down by the wayside he burst out weeping, with his nerves all in a jangle. It was a terrible world thought he, and it was hard to know which were the most to be dreaded, the knaves or the men of the law.

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

The heart never grows better with age; I fear rather worse, always harder.

How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! Tosparethegrossness ofthenames, and to dothe thing yet moreseverely, isto drawa full face, and tomake the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing.

None are so busy as the fool and the knave.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Who friendship with a knave hath made, Is judged a partner in the trade.

My first lead role was a stage play called A Kestrel for a Knave. I was 11.

He that cheats another is a knave; but he that cheats himself is a fool.

Avoid the politic, the factious fool, The busy, buzzing, talking harden'd knave; The quaint smooth rogue that sins against his reason, Calls saucy loud sedition public zeal, And mutiny the dictates of his spirit.

It should seem that indolence itself would incline a person to be honest, as it requires infinitely greater pains and contrivance to be a knave.

I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.

An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not.

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

It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.

A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.

He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.

Alas! how has the social spirit of Christianity been perverted by fools at one time, and by knaves and bigots at another; by the self-tormentors of the cell, and the all-tormentors of the conclave!

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.

When Knaves betray each other, one can scarce be blamed or the other pitied.

The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.

You are not worth another word, else I'd call you knave.

A man who first tried to guess 'what the public wants,' and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and knave

Who are next to knaves? Those that converse with them.

When knaves fall out, honest men get their goods; when priests dispute, we come at the truth

They have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves

Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

Knavery is the best defense against a knave.

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

Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; they are truly himself. The man who says that we have no innate ideas must be a fool and knave, having no conscience or innate science.

The Man who pretends to be a modest enquirer into the truth of a self-evident thing is a Knave.

God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.

O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause, Being for a woman's sake.