Clever Approaches Quotes

Often the Muse will not respond to direct and logical requests. She must be lured in with the playful and gentle. ~ Jill Badonsky

To clever plans,' said Kell, toasting his brother. 'And dashing princes.'
'To masked magicians,' said Rhy, swiping the wine.
'To mad ideas.'
'To the Essen Tasch.'
'Wouldn't it be amazing,' murmured Rhy later, when the bottle was empty, 'if we got away with it? ~ V.E Schwab

The more nearly the film cutter approaches the natural law of interest, the more invisible will be his cutting. If the camera moves from one person to another at the exact moment that you in the legitimate theatre would have turned your head, you will not be conscious of a cut. ~ Preston Sturges

I am the furthest thing from a do-gooder. I am venal and flib and too clever by half, I know, but the thrill of the most brilliantly quicksilver aperҫu is no match for the self-interested high I get from having done someone a good turn. You'd think I'd do more good turns as a result, but there you go. ~ David Rakoff

I wish I were one of those terribly clever people who, when they write their autobiographies, always say, when I was fifteen months old I distinctly remember my Aunt Fanny saying to me, etc. ~ George Seaton

If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

…have you noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that in our Petersburg circles, if two clever men meet who are not intimate, but respect each other, like you and me, it takes them half an hour before they can find a subject for conversation – they are dumb, they sit opposite each other and feel awkward? Everyone has subjects of conversation, ladies for instance…people in high society always have their subjects of conversation, c'est de rigueur; but people of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don't want to deceive one another, I don't know. What do you think? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My friendship with Jack remains strained. I want to believe that he was duped, but he has always been far too clever to fall for another man's ruse. So we have added yet one more thing to our relationship about which we never speak. Sometimes I think we will break beneath the weight of it, but on those occasions I have but to look at my wife in order to find the strength to carry on. I am determined to be worthy of her and that requires that I be a far stronger and better man than I had ever planned to be.
We see Frannie from time to time, not as often as we'd like unfortunately. She did eventually marry, but that is her story to tell.
Dear Frannie, darling Frannie.
She shall always remain the love of my youth, the one for whom I sold my soul to the devil. But Catherine, my beloved Catherine, shall always be the center of my heart, the one who, in the final hour, would not let the devil have me. ~ Lorraine Heath

I think that we're beginning to globalize medicine now. You have to take Eastern approaches and bring them to the West, and share West with the East. ~ Mehmet Oz

Both the American and the European approaches to foreign policy were the products of their own unique circumstances. Americans inhabited a nearly empty continent shielded from predatory powers by two vast oceans and with weak countries as neighbors. Since America confronted no power in need of being balanced, it could hardly have occupied itself with the challenges of equilibrium even if its leaders had been seized by the bizarre notion of replicating European conditions amidst a people who had turned their backs on Europe. ~ Henry Kissinger

The intelligence displayed by many dumb animals approaches so closely to human intelligence that it is a mystery. The animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer. They use their organs far more faithfully than many human beings use theirs. They manifest sympathy and tenderness toward their companions in suffering. Many animals show an affection for those who have charge of them, far superior to the affection shown by some of the human race. They form attachments for man which are not broken without great suffering to them. ~ Ellen G. White

Part of me wanted to give him a piece of my mind. He didn't get it as a whole, so I will keep my peace. ~ Amanda Mosher

Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right. There's Owl. Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There's Rabbit. He hasn't Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan. There's Kanga. She isn't Clever, Kanga isn't, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about it. And then there's Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn't mind about this. ~ A.A. Milne

Before I met your father I thought that love and peace would change the whole world, but looking into your eyes, I knew all I had to do was let you be whoever it was that you wanted to be, and to love you, and that would be the best and closest thing I could ever do to change the world for the better.
"You are going to be brilliant," I told you. "You are going to be clever, and funny. Brave and strong. You're going to be a feminist, and a peace campaigner and a dancer. And one day you are going to be a mother yourself. You are going to fall in love and have adventures and do things I can't even imagine. You, little Claire Armstrong, you are going to be the most wonderful woman, and you are going to have the most amazing life: a life that no one will ever forget. ~ Jojo Moyes

...She wasn't anyone special. She wasn't that brave, that clever or that strong. She was just somebody that felt cramped by the confines of her life. She was just somebody who had to get out. And she did it! She went out past Vega, out past Moulquet and Lambard! She saw places that aren't even there anymore! And do you know what she said? Her most famous quotation? "Anybody could have done it ~ Alan Moore

Christ, he was a cipher.
For the first time, he worried if he could be worthy enough for Mariketa. Did he even deserve her? Yes, she was a witch, but she was also stunningly beautiful and brave and clever.
"I like football, too," he finally said.
"You've already told me, so that doesn't count."
"I love the color of your eyes."
She tucked a curl behind her pointed ear, sliding him the bewitching smile that made his heart punch the insides of his chest. "What's your favorite place to visit?"
He absently answered, "Wherever you are."
"Bowen, five things about you can't all be about me."
But you're the only good thing that I've got. "Why no'? ~ Kresley Cole

I am not Cugel the Clever for nothing! ~ Jack Vance

As the BBC approaches the final phase of decisions about its future, it will be important for those involved to be established in post and ready to take responsibility for implementation of the outcome. ~ Pauline Neville-Jones

People want one book to read about the topic and to learn everything, unfortunately I was the same guy, the same person. Who wanted the same, but most stuff and for the most clever and intelligent people is mystery. ~ Deyth Banger

No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius
a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do. ~ Katharine Fullerton Gerould

A dog doesn't care if you're rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his. ~ John Grogan

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. ~ Robert Frost

Me: I can have the weather delivered every morning to my phone by weather.com. What could be better?

101: Getting caught in the rain?

"I can't beleive it. The nerve of him. The Pina Colada song?" I shriek.
"My God, that's clever," says Bunny. "I guess he was tired of his lady; they'd been together too long." She winks at me and I scowl back at her. ~ Melanie Gideon

You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn't it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having so little experience crafting a story, would be the most in danger of falling into trite approaches. If she wrote a novel, it probably would be about her father. And the male Luna moth would haunt its pages. Everyone would recognize the work as that of a first novelist. "She wrote about herself through the lens of her father."
The really good novelists, Laura thought, put their fathers, and maybe their mothers too, deeper into the stories. Which, she suddenly thought, might redeem Melville just the littlest bit. ~ L.L. Barkat

He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself has discernment. ~ Laozi

I don't want my words to be clever or eloquent. I just want them to speak God's heart. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner

And now for your blunders. On your own showing you first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. ~ C.S. Lewis

So that over time, clever became cunning. Dynamic became obsessed. Ambitious became ruthless. ~ Louise Penny

God speaks to us individually, each and every one of us, that we need neither pope nor priest, nor bleeding statue, to find our way to faith. God is calling and we only have to listen. There are no clever tricks to forgiveness. There is only one way and there is only one Bible, and a woman can study it as well as a man. ~ Philippa Gregory

I happened to be in Shelby's shop when a basket of strawberries was delivered," she added casually. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, dear?"
"Strawberries?" Alan gave her another noncommittal smile. "I'm quite fond of them myself."
"I'm much too clever to be conned," Myra told him, shaking her finger. "And I know you entirely too well.A man like you doesn't send baskets of strawberries or spend afternoons at the zoo unless he's infatuated."
"I'm not infatuated with Shelby," Alan corrected mildly as he sipped his tea. "I'm in love with her."
Myra's planned retort came out as a huff of breath. "Well then," she managed. "That was quicker than even I expected."
"It was instant," Alan murmured, not quite as easy now that he'd made the statement.
"Lovely." Myra leaned forward to pat his knee. "I can't think of anyone who deserves the shock of love at first sight more. ~ Nora Roberts

I've spent a life-time attacking religious beliefs and have not wavered from a view of the universe that many would regard as bleak. Namely, that it is a meaningless place devoid of deity.
However I'm unwilling simply to repeat the old arguments of the past when, in fact, God is a moving target and is taking all sorts of new shapes and forms. The arguments used against the long bow are not particularly useful when debating nuclear weapons, and the simple arguments against the old model gods are not sufficient when dealing with the likes of Davies et al.
For example, the notion that God didn't exist, doesn't exist but may come into existence through the spread of consciousness throughout the universe is too clever to be pooh-poohed along Bertrand Russell lines. And if I had the time I could give you half a dozen other scientific theologies that will need snappier footwork from the atheist of the future. ~ Phillip Adams

You should read Wodehouse when you're well and when you're poorly;when you're travelling, and when you're not;when you're feeling clever, and when you're feeling utterly dim. Wodehouse always lifts your spirits,no matter how high they happen to be already. ~ Lynne Truss

-Lara is a weasel. I've always hated her. The only happy week I had as a child was when she fell from the roof and went into a coma. She came out of it, though. Everyone was so happy.
-Is that true? asked James.
-No, said Grieve. But they would have been happy. Everyone thinks she's so clever. And I would be happy if she went away and never came back. ~ Jesse Ball

What can you do when everyone around you is strong and clever? ~ Tarjei Vesaas

Everything but truth becomes loathed in a sick-room ... Let the nurse avow that the medicine is nauseous. Let the physician declare that the treatment will be painful. Let sister, or brother, or friend, tell me that I must never look to be well. When the time approaches that I am to die, let me be told that I am to die, and when. ~ Harriet Martineau

Stories are great, but at the end of the day, you remember that moment and that moment and that moment. 'The Avengers' had all of this great, giant action, but for all of the clever dialogue, it's the moments. ~ Jeffrey Bell

Los Angeles was the most glamorous, tackiest, most elegant, seediest, most clever, dumbest, most beautiful, ugliest, forward-looking, retro-thinking, altruistic, self-absorbed, deal-savvy, politically ignorant, artistic-minded, criminal-loving, meaning-obsessed, money-grubbing, laid-back, frantic city on the planet. And any two slices of it, as different as Bel Air and Watts, were nevertheless uncannily alike in essence: rich with the same crazy hungers, hopes, and despairs. ~ Dean Koontz

Envy is blind, and is only clever in depreciating the virtues of others. ~ Livy

It used to be that painters were crazy and sculptors clever. Today it's the other way around. ~ Giorgio De Chirico

It is a most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention of writing something clever and original; but for the life of me I can't think of anything clever and original
at least, not at this moment. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

He left behind several failed careers, two failed marriages, and a reputation as a clever but fairly annoying fellow. ~ Steve Sheinkin

The Bible is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. This Bible is built mainly out of fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about. ~ Mark Twain

Ignorance has no friend, intelligence has no enemy, and wisdom is everyone's friend. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Humans are not the fastest or the strongest animals on the planet, but when it comes to survival, we have had the unique advantage of being clever. ~ David Perlmutter

The students in your youth ministry don't need your clever ideas and great programming skills. They need a living model - a man or woman of God who is passionate about his or her faith. ~ Doug Fields

Clever talk is absolutely worthless. All you do in the process is lose yourself. And to lose yourself is a sin. One has to be able to crawl completely inside oneself, like a tortoise. ~ Hermann Hesse

I write because writing is power. Writing is creation. When you write, you are as a god, a deity wielding his pen like some Harry Potter staff, making whatever you want to happen, happen. By sheer force of will and some clever word placement, I can arrange all of these little symbols together to invoke emotions and ideas at a whim out of whosoever allows me to cast my spell. It does not take a man and a woman to create. It just takes a writer. ~ Jonathan Culver

These clever, amoral, inventive, destructive men, single-minded, selfish, emotionally cool, coolly attractive. I think I preferred them to the love of Jesus. ~ Ian McEwan