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#knave

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #knave




As happens in dreams, when a perfectly harmless object inspires us with fear and thereafter is frightening every time we dream of it (and even in real life retains disquieting overtones), so Dreyer's presence became for Franz a refined torture, an implacable menace. [ ... H]e could not help cringing when, with a banging of doors in a dramatic draft, Martha and Dreyer entered simultaneously from two different rooms as if on a too harshly lit stage. Then he snapped to attention and in this attitude felt himself ascending through the ceiling, through the roof, into the black-brown sky, while, in reality, drained and empty, he was shaking hands with Martha, with Dreyer. He dropped back on his feet out of that dark nonexistence, from those unknown and rather silly heights, to land firmly in the middle of the room (safe, safe!) when hearty Dreyer described a circle with his index finger and jabbed him in the navel; Franz mimicked a gasp and giggled; and as usual Martha was coldly radiant. His fear did not pass but only subsided temporarily: one incautious glance, one eloquent smile, and all would be revealed, and a disaster beyond imagination would shatter his career. Thereafter whenever he entered this house, he imagined that the disaster had happened—that Martha had been found out, or had confessed everything in a fit of insanity or religious self-immolation to her husband; and the drawing room chandelier invariably met him with a sinister refulgence.


Vladimir Nabokov


#knave #queen #attitude

In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.


Philip Stanhope


#certain degree #degree #fear #fools #great

Knavery seems to be so much a the striking feature of its inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they will become aliens to this kingdom.


George III


#end #evil #feature #in the end #inhabitants

Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, But good men starve for want of impudence.


John Dryden


#impudence #knaves #men

He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.


George Berkeley


#honest #honest man #knave #man #may

Necessity makes an honest man a knave.


Daniel Defoe


#honest man #knave #makes #man #necessity

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


Voltaire


#knave #often #only #say #very

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.


John Greenleaf Whittier


#fall #field #flower #fools #fortune

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


David Hume


#every man #just #knave #man #maxim

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.


Samuel Butler


#enough #fools #knaves #live #more






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