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1 " The stratagems by which briefly youameliorated, even seeminglyuntwisted what still twists within you —you loved their taste and lay thereon your sidenursing like a puppy. "
― Frank Bidart , Watching the Spring Festival
2 " A heart pulsating in harmony with the circulation of sap and the flow of rivers? A body with the rhythms of the earth in its movements? No. Instead: a mind, shut off from the oxygen of alert senses, that has wasted itself on 'treasons, stratagems and spoils'--of importance only within four walls. A tame animal--in whom the strength of the species has outspent itself, to no purpose. "
― Dag Hammarskjöld , Markings
3 " By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. "
― William Shakespeare , The Merchant of Venice
4 " It was entirely taken for granted that there wasn't any lying in our family, and I was advanced in adolescence before I realized that in plenty of homes where I played with schoolmates, and went to their parties, children lied to their parents and parents lied to their children and to each other. It took me a long time to realize that these very same everyday lies, and the stratagems and jokes and tricks and dares that went with them, were in fact the basis of the scenes I so well loved to hear about and hoped for and treasured in the conversation of adults. My instinct - the dramatic instinct - was to lead me, eventually, on the right track for a storyteller: the scene was full of hints, pointers, suggestions, and promises of things to find out and know about human beings.I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken - and to know a truth, I also had to recognize a lie. "
― Eudora Welty
5 " He is tolerated by the gods, perhaps because his stratagems and plans save them as often as they get them into trouble.Loki makes the world more interesting but less safe. He is the father of monsters, the author of woes, the sly god. "
― Neil Gaiman , Norse Mythology
6 " The man that hath no music in himself Nor is no moved with concord of sweet sounds Is fit for treasons stratagems and spoils. "
7 " The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils. "
8 " Because I spent many years during my previous life as an academic researching game theory, some commentators rushed to presume that as Greece's new finance minister, I was busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options, struggling to improve upon a weak hand. Nothing could be further from the truth. "
