All 12 Uses of
cunning
in
Atlas Shrugged
- Man's only talent is an ignoble cunning for satisfying the needs of his body," said the old bum.†
Chpt 1.7
- She had never supposed that hope could look ugly in a man's face, but it did: it was mixed with cunning.†
Chpt 1.7
- I'm not able ever to despise you enough to believe that you mean it" The look on her face astonished him more than all the rest: it was a look of defeat and yet of an odd, sly, cynical cunning, as if, for a moment, she held some worldly wisdom that mocked his innocence.†
Chpt 1.7
- The man was lost in the crowd, they could not see him, they could not tell to whom he was selling his secret or whether he had enough of his cunning left to make it a trade with those who held favors-but they saw the wake of his passage spreading through the room, the sudden cuts splitting the crowd, like the first few cracks, then like the accelerating branching that runs through a wall about to crumble, the streaks of emptiness slashed, not by a human touch, but by the impersonal…†
Chpt 2.2
- Don't you suppose we knew it?" he said, his tone suggesting that he was letting his patent-leather hair down to impress a fellow criminal by a display of superior cunning.†
Chpt 2.3
- The look of thought was returning to her face, but in her face it had the quality of a look of cunning.†
Chpt 2.5
- He had the cunning of the unintelligent and the frantic energy of the lazy.†
Chpt 2.6 *
- Uncle Julius blamed it on Wesley's cunning and cried that Wesley was an unscrupulous schemer.†
Chpt 2.6
- By the situation of the moment, they had concluded that Wesley Mouch was a man of superlative skill and cunning, since millions aspired to power, but he was the one who had achieved it.†
Chpt 2.6
- He had paid them to do it-he whom the law permitted no other way to gain his freedom, no right to state the facts and plead the truth-the law which delivered his fate, not to objective rules objectively defined, but to the arbitrary mercy of a judge with a wizened face and a look of empty cunning.†
Chpt 3.5
- Their faces had a look of fear and cunning, the look of that blackmail-through-virtue which he had learned to understand, as if they hoped to get away with it by means of nothing but his pity, to hold him trapped, when a single step back could take him out of their reach.†
Chpt 3.6
- These chips had been the only compass directing his course through four days and nights-while he drove down deserted highways, across a country collapsing into chaos, while he developed a monomaniac's cunning for obtaining illegal purchases of gas, while he snatched random hours of restless sleep, in obscure motels, under assumed names…… I'm Robert Stadler-he had thought, his mind repeating it as a formula of omnipotence…… To seize control-he had thought, speeding against the futile…†
Chpt 3.9
Definition:
-
(cunning as in: a cunning thief) being good at achieving goals through cleverness -- and typically through deception as well (tricking others)