Clever Skeleton Quotes

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

And still I look for the men who will dare to be
roses of England
wild roses of England
men who are wild roses of England
with metal thorns, beware!
but still more brave and still more rare
the courage of rosiness in a cabbage world
fragrance of roses in a stale stink of lies
rose-leaves to bewilder the clever fools
and rose-briars to strangle the machine. ~ D.H. Lawrence

The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat; on the other hand, neither should the flesh be too thin, so that the bones show through. If the flesh is thick enough, and if the flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectable and the motion of the parts will reveal the articulation. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

They say that in India there is a particularly clever way of catching monkeys. As the story goes, hunters will cut a hole in a coconut that is just big enough for a monkey to put its hand through. Then they will drill two smaller holes in the other end, pass a wire through, and secure the coconut to the base of a tree. Then they slip a banana inside the coconut through the hole and hide. The monkey comes down, puts his hand in, and takes hold of the banana. The hole is cleverly crafted so that the open hand can go in but the fist cannot get out. All the monkey has to do to be free is to let go of the banana. But it seems most monkeys don't let go. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

(...) She just gave Rowan a sultry sweep from foot to face. Rowan's expression remained unreadable, eyes intense - near-glowing. And then Aelin said to Rowan with a secret smile, "You, I don't know. But I'd like to."
Rowan's lip tugged upward. "I'm not on the market, unfortunately."
"Pity," Aelin said (...) "She must be a rare, staggering beauty to make you so faithful. (...) She must be clever and fascinating and very, very talented. She must be the most wonderful person who ever existed." (...)
Aelin only had eyes for Rowan as the warrior said to her, "She is indeed that. And more. ~ Sarah J. Maas

This all seemed quaint and amusing, but as the book moved through to the modern day, nothing changed. People still fell to the influence of persuasion techniques, especially when they broadcast information about themselves that allowed identification of their personality type
their true name, basically
and the attack vectors for these techniques were primarily aural and visual. But no one thought of this as magic. It was just falling for a good line or being distracted or clever marketing. Even the words were the same. People still got fascinated and charmed, spellbound and amazed, they forgot themselves, and were carried away. They just didn't think there was anything magical about that anymore. ~ Max Barry

I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted. ~ Jean Cocteau

You do not strike me as a Lothario. You're far too serious for the part.'
'Oh? I did give it a small try, if you recall. And your mouth tasted quite sweet. But perhaps I was too subtle?'
From an airy exchange of quips, he had suddenly moved onto solid ground ... 'You're a skillful flirt,' she managed. 'I will give you that.'
'And you're no flirt at all. Come, give it a try. Tell me how a rogue charms a woman, if not through sober, industrious application.'
Her lips twitched. 'That sounds like the factory brand of roguery. But all you need do is attend to a woman's vanity, I suppose.'
'Ah, yes. Of course. It comes back to me now; I've been going about it all wrong. THe first thing I should have said is that you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.'
She laughed despite herself. 'That's a clever sort of compliment, seeing as it reserves you the right to change your mind with the next woman you meet. ~ Meredith Duran

All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

How quaint the old twenty-four-hour clock began to look to our eyes, how impossibly clean-cut, with its twin sets of twelve, as neat as walnut shells. How had we believed, we wondered, in such simplistic things? ~ Karen Thompson Walker

If they are just, they are better than clever. ~ Sophocles

I love it when he cocks an eyebrow whenever I say something he finds clever or amusing.
I love listening to his boots clomp across my bedroom ceiling.
I love that the accent over his first name is called an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent. ~ Stephanie Perkins

Only by the candle, held in the skeleton hand of Poverty, can man read his own dark heart. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Without order or authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty, during which men ... forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice ... They forgot that their rights were founded on their duties ... They thought it clever to be cynical, enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft. ~ Walter Lippmann

Our clever friend Feynman demonstrated how to write down the Equation of the Universe in a single line. Here it is:

U = 0

U is a definite mathematical function, the total unworldliness. It's the sum of contributions from all the piddling partial laws of physics. To be precise, U = Unewton + Ueinstein +.... Here, for instance, the Newtonian mechanical unworldiness Unewton is defined by Unewton = (F - ma)^2; the Einstein mass-energy Unworldliness is definedby Ueinstein = (E - mc^2) ^2; and so forth. Because every contribution is positive or zero, the only way that the total U can vanish is for every contribution to vanish, so U = 0 implies F=ma, E=mc^2, and any other past or future law you care to include!

Thus we can capture all the laws of physics we know, and accommodate all the laws yet to be discovered, in one unified equation. The Theory of Everything!!! But it's a complete cheat, of course, because there is no way to use (or even define) U, other than to deconstruct it into its separate pieces and then use those. ~ Frank Wilczek

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children. ~ Pablo Casals

EB: 'Ll showed me a long verse-letter, very obscene, he'd received from Dylan T[Thomas] before D's last trip here [New York] - very clever, but it really can't be published for a long, long time, he's decided. About people D. met in the U.S. etc. - one small sample: A Streetcar Named Desire is referred to as 'A truck called F - - - .'

RL: 'Psycho-therapy is rather amazing - something like stirring up the bottom of an aquarium - chunks of the past coming up at unfamiliar angles, distinct and then indistinct.'

RL: 'I have just finished the Yeats Letters - 900 & something pages - although some I'd read before. He is so Olympian always, so calm, so really unrevealing, and yet I was fascinated.'

RL: 'Probably you forget, and anyway all that is mercifully changed and all has come right since you found Lota. But at the time everything, I guess (I don't want to overdramatize) our relations seemed to have reached a new place. I assumed that would be just a matter of time before I proposed and I half believed that you would accept. Yet I wanted it all to have the right build-up. Well, I didn't say anything then.'

EB: 'so I suppose I am just a born worrier, and that when the personal worries of adolescence and the years after it have more or less disappeared I promptly have to start worrying about the decline of nations . . . But I really can't bear much of American life these days - surely no country has ever been so filthy rich and so ~ Robert Lowell

I'd say," the Ranger answered after a few seconds' deliberation, "that he'll be heading south now that he has the chance. Back into Araluen."
"How do you know that?" Horace asked. He was always impressed at the two Rangers' ability to read a situation and come up with the correct answer to a problem. Sometimes, he thought, they almost seemed to have divine guidance.
"I'm guessing," Halt told him. ~ John Flanagan

Stupidy is everwhere, what so far suprises me is that it's from humankind, not from the animals but from mankind??
THAT's a fact, what suprises me why the powerful creatures on this planet will do the stupidity, if we are cabable of doing stupidity let's call itself, people which aren't able... (SOunds clevera isn't it?) ~ Deyth Banger

Some stuff which I do aren't some kind a cheats or this kind a of stuff it's about thinking and it's about how clever am I! ~ Deyth Banger

You're impossible," she told him.
"Of course I am," he answered. "It's part of my charm. ~ David Eddings

The possession of a strong will and a clever head makes some things very difficult to see ~ Alan W. Watts

Never try to have the last word. You might get it. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

We have truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, and the Spirit to guard us. We have the Word of God to battle for us. Through it all we pray to the Spirit to protect and guide us against the schemes of the devil. In this way we can fight against and overcome the spiritual forces that are set against us and committed to our downfall. We can wage war against and defeat the spiritual forces that seek to lead us away from discernment by offering a clever and subtle counterfeit of the truth. ~ Tim Challies

I found the skeleton of a caveman a few years back. Miraculously, it had skin and hair still attached, and amazingly my archaeological discovery actually talked to me saying, "Jarod, when are you going to stop mooching off your mother and me? ~ Jarod Kintz

I must learn the dregs of my thought, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration? You think that the dream is foolish and ungainly. What is beautiful? What is ungainly? What is clever? What is foolish? The spirit of this time is your measure, but the spirit of the depths surpasses it at both ends. ~ C. G. Jung

Only the clever men can be flexible; others are condemned to remain as rigid! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Though I'm anything but clever, I could talk like that forever. ~ W.S. Gilbert

Right," I scoffed, "Alpha Yam Ergo." Adrian nodded solemnly. "A very old and prestigious society." "I've never heard of them," said the girl who'd claimed the first shirt. "They don't let many people in," he said. In white paint, he wrote his fake fraternity's initials: AYE. "Isn't that what pirates say?" asked one of the girls. "Well, the Alpha Yams have nautical origins," he explained. To my horror he began painting a pirate skeleton riding a motorcycle. "Oh, no," I groaned. "Not the tattoo." "It's our logo," he said. ~ Richelle Mead

I have a clever and devious plan. ~ Steven Brust

I can't wait to die so I can be a skeleton and play my chest like a xylophone. ~ Thom Yorke

He was now suddenly hot, as hot as if he'd been in a kitchen baking cinnamon rolls in August. I already knew vampires could sweat, under certain conditions, like being chained to a wall of a house with sunlight coming in through the windows. He was sweating again now. Some of his sweat fell on me.
I've always rather liked sweat. On other occasions when I've had a naked, sweating male body up against mine, I've tended to feel that it meant he was getting into what was going on. This usually produces a similar enthusiasm in me. Not that there was anything going on…exactly.
Yet. Remember how fast and suddenly this was all happening. And if he
was in shock so was I. Maybe my brain hadn't fully come with me in that
zap through the void, like my clothes manifestly hadn't. With a truly masterful erection now pressed against me I turned my head again and licked his sweating shoulder.
What happened next probably lasted about ten seconds. Maybe less.
I don't think I heard the sound he made; I think I only felt it. He moved
his hands again, to tip my face toward him, and kissed me. I can't say I
noticed any fangs. I had the lingering vestige of sense not to try anything
clever with my teeth, which with a human lover I would have. But I was
nonetheless busy with tongue and hands. I wriggled a little under him. I kissed him back as he tangled his fingers in my hair. I arched up off the floor a trifle to press myself more thoroughly against ~ Robin McKinley

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them (Frank Moore Colby) ~ Colin Dexter

Based upon the tournament results and the formal propositions, four simple suggestions are offered for individual choice: do not be envious of the other player's success; do not be the first to defect; reciprocate both cooperation and defection; and do not be too clever. ~ Robert Axelrod

Half of being clever is making certain you're not being stupid ~ A Shin'a'in Proverb

Sebastian nodded his way. "This is Hadrian … er, Hadrian…" He snapped his fingers and looked for help.

"Blackwater." He extended his hand and shook with each.

"And where do you hail from, Hadrian?" Eugene asked.

"Nowhere really."

"A man with no home?" Samuel's voice was nasal and a bit suspicious. Hadrian imagined him the type of man to count money handed him by a priest.

"What do you mean?" Eugene asked. "He came off the boat from Calis. We talked about it just last night."

"Don't be a fool, Eugene," Sebastian said. "Do you think Calians have sandy hair and blue eyes? Calians are swarthy brutes and clever beyond measure. Never trust one, any of you."

"What were you doing in Calis, then?" Eugene's tone was inquisitorial and spiteful, as if Hadrian had been the one to declare him foolish.

"Working."

"Making his fortune, I suspect," Sebastian said, motioning toward Hadrian. "The man wears a heavy purse. You should be half as successful, Eugene."

"All Calian copper dins, I'll wager." Eugene sustained his bitter tone. "If not, he'd have a fine wool robe like us."

"He wears a fine steel sword, two of them in fact. So you might consider your words more carefully," Sebastian said.

"Three," Samuel added. "He keeps another in his cabin. A big one."

"There you have it, Eugene. The man spends all his coin on steel, but by all means g ~ Michael J. Sullivan

I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all that pain: who make religions and politics, excuses to spread misery with fire and sword and how could I stop all this? I did not know what to do. ~ Alasdair Gray

There was so much of beauty here: the neat, small tracks of a foraging creature, stoat or marten; the inticate tracery of a skeleton leaf, still clinging vainly to its parent tree as, little by little, time stripped it of its substance, leaving only the delicate remembrance of what it had been. ~ Juliet Marillier

And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the real trouble
the heart pain
the world pain.
I tell you, my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough ... Ja! ...
And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie? Was? Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!
'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed boisterously. ~ Joseph Conrad

To get fruits from the tree branches, shake them with hands; to get fruits from men, shake them with clever ideas! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Human beings are 70% water and with some the rest is colagen ~ Martin Mull

In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion. ~ George Mikes

One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual. ~ Thomas Mann