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.
He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.
Of all knaves the religious knave is the worst.
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.
Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.
When a knave is in a plumtree he hath neither friend nor kin.
Who friendship with a knave hath made, Is judged a partner in the trade.
The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All on a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, And took them quite away!
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
Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.
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.
It is. . . a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
My first lead role was a stage play called A Kestrel for a Knave. I was 11.
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.
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.
There's never a villain dwelling in all Denmark But he's an arrant knave.
The great chastisement of a knave is not to be known, but to know himself.
Now I will show myselfTo have more of the serpent than the dove;That is--more knave than fool.
You are not worth another word, else I'd call you knave.
Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straigthforward and simple integrity in another. A knave would rather quarrel with a brother knave than with a fool, but he would rather avoid a quarrel with one honest man than with both. He can combat a fool by management and address, and he can conquer a knave by temptations. But the honest man is neither to be bamboozled nor bribed.
