Quotes on Cleverness

Revolutionary men with principles were not really different from the rest. They used their cleverness to get, in return for principles, what other men buy with their money.

Cleverness is a quality a man likes to have in his wife as long as she is some distance away from him. Up close, he'll take kindness any day of the week, if there's nothing more alluring to be had.

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

When the great Tao is forgotten, goodness and piety appear. When the body's intelligence declines, cleverness and knowledge step forth. When there is no peace in the family, filial piety begins. When the country falls into chaos, patriotism is born.

More than machinery, we need humanity.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.

The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.

The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.

Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all.

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

Fight to escape from your own cleverness. If you do, then you will find salvation and uprightness through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.

Thus, though I have heard of successful military operations that were clumsy but swift, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy - they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

I have not much patience with a certain class of Christians nowadays who will hear anybody preach so long as they can say, 'He is very clever, a fine preacher, a man of genius, a born orator.' Is cleverness to make false doctrine palatable? Why, sirs, to me the ability of a man who preaches error is my sorrow rather than my admiration.

The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.