C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Knavery
Knaves starve not in the land of fools.
Knavery’s plain face is never seen till used.
Knavery is ever suspicious of knavery.
Knaves will thrive when honest plainness knows not how to live.
By fools, knaves fatten; by bigots, priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull.
While I live, no rich or noble knave shall walk the world in credit to his grave.
Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.
Even knaves may be made good for something.
Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.
The craftiest wiles are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart.
Men, who are knaves individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.
The worst of all knaves are those who can mimic their former honesty.
A man is not born a knave; there must be time to make him so, nor is he presently discovered after he becomes one.
After a long experience in the world, I affirm, before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy.
Cunning leads to knavery; it is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery; lying only makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.
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.
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.