Browse 126 quotes about Knaves.
“Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”
“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.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“A crafty knave needs no broker.”
“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.”
“There's never a villain dwelling in all Denmark But he's an arrant knave.”
“A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“While I live, no rich or noble knave shall walk the world in credit to his grave.”
Source: 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
“The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.”
Source: The Works and Correspondance of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
“Zeno first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defence against a knave.”
Source: Plutarch's Morals
“Now I will show myselfTo have more of the serpent than the dove;That is--more knave than fool.”
“Fashion--a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse.”
“Knaves starve not in the land of fools.”
Source: The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill: With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes
“Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.”
Source: Works: Account of His Life and Letters
“The worst of all knaves are those who can mimic their former honesty.”
“Knaves will thrive when honest plainness knows not how to live.”
Source: The Maid's Revenge. A Tragedy [in Five Acts, in Prose and Verse].
“By fools, knaves fatten; by bigots, priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull.”
“Who sows a field, or trains a flower, Or plants at tree, is more than all.”
Source: Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier
“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.”
“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.”
“A rich man is an honest man--no thanks to him; for he would be a double knave, to cheat mankind when he had no need of it: he has no occasion to press upon his integrity, nor so much as to touch upon the borders of dishonesty.”
Source: DANIEL DEFOE Ultimate Collection: 50+ Adventure Classics, Pirate Tales & Historical Novels - Including Biographies, Historical Works, Travel Sketches, Poems & Essays (Illustrated): Robinson Crusoe, The History of the Pirates, Captain Singleton, Memoirs of a Cavalier, A Journal of the Plague Year, Moll Flanders, Roxana, The History of the Devil, The King of Pirates and many more
“True loyalty consists not in bowing the knee to earthly greatness, or in heroic deeds to "gild the kingly knave, or garnish out the fool," but in noble, generous acts of honest purpose, where truth, honor, and virtue, and a nation's welfare, are dearer than life.”
“If I get clear of my debts, I care not though men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a pettifogger, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an imposter, a rogue that deserves the cat-o-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a licker-up of hashes; they call all this when they meet me, if they please, I care not.”
“The best way to deceive a knave is to tell him the truth.”
“A king may spille, a king may save; A king may make of lorde a knave; And of a knave a lorde also.”
Source: Confessio amantis
“He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave.”
Source: A few days in Athens: being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum
“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.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.”
Source: The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt
“It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“You talk to me in parables.
You may have known that I'm no wordy man,
Fine speeches are the instruments of knaves
Or fools that use them, when they want good sense;
But honesty
Needs no disguise nor ornament: be plain.”
Source: The Mourning Bride. A Tragedy
“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.”
“Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn'd;
Or dealt by chance to shield a lucky knave,
Or throw a cruel sunshine on a fool.
But for one end, one much-neglected use,
Are riches worth your care; (for nature's wants
Are few, and without opulence supplied;)
This noble end is, to produce the soul;
To show the virtues in their fairest light;
To make humanity the minister
Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast
The generous luxury the gods enjoy.”
“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.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Better be a foole then a knave.
[Better be a fool than a knave.]”
“Seeming devotion does but gild a knave,
That's neither faithful, honest, just, nor brave;
But where religion does with virtue join,
It makes a hero like an angel shine.”
Source: The Poetical Works of Edmund Waller. From Mr. Fenton's Quarto Edition, 1729. With the Life of the Author ... Embellished with Superb Engravings [including a Portrait.]
“An entirely honest man, in the severe sense of the word, exists no more than an entirely dishonest knave: the best and the worst are only approximations of those qualities. Who are those that never contradict themselves? yet honesty never contradicts itself: Who are those that always contradict themselves? yet knavery is mere self-contradiction. Thus the knowledge of man determines not the things themselves, but their proportions, the quan∣tum of congruities and incongruities.”
“Earth bears no balsams for mistakes;
Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will: but thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool.”
“Anyone who pretends not to be interested in money is either a fool or a knave.”
“This is some fellow,
Who having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature: he can't flatter, he!
An honest mind and plain,--he must speak truth!
And they will take it so; if not he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbor more craft, and far corrupter ends,
Than twenty silly, ducking observants,
That stretch their duty nicely.”
Source: A Treasury of Thought from Shakespeare: The Choice Sayings of His Principal Characters, Analytically and Alphabetically Arranged
“If yee would know a knave, give him a staffe.”
Source: The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose
“Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous; for as most men are either fools or knaves, we run excessive risk in making such folk our companions.”
“Power, when invested in the hands of knaves or fools, generally is the source of tyranny.”
Source: A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, youngest daughter of Colley Cibber ... Written by herself. With a portrait
“When a knave is in a plumtree he hath neither friend nor kin.”
Source: The Works of George Herbert, in Prose and Verse: Edited by the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott, Incumbent of Bear Wood. With Illustrations
“The art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimespractised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one.”
“O heart, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Being for a woman's sake.”
Source: Selected Poems And Four Plays
“No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.”