Discourses Machiavelli Quotes & Sayings

These republics [the German city states] in which a free and pure government is maintained will not suffer any of their citizens either to be, or to live as gentlemen; but on the contrary, while preserving strict equality among themselves, are bitterly hostile to all those gentlemen and lords who dwell in their neighbourhood; so that if by chance any of these fall into their hand, they put them to death, as the chief promoters of corruption and the origin of all disorders.
But to make plain what I mean when I speak of gentlemen, I say that those are so to be styled who live in opulence and idleness on the revenues of their estates, without concerning themselves with the cultivation of these estates, or incurring any other fatigue for their support.
- Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius — Niccolo Machiavelli

He wondered if she walked at night and came there ever - came with that look on her face, unrested and looking, going up the path and through the barn open all around and stopping in the shadow by the store boarded up, coming on unrested with that look on her face like he had seen through the crack going down. — Flannery O'Connor

I did not have an answer for the maestro that day. Instead my answer has been the labor of my life, principally my Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy but also my little Prince. Despite what so many say, I did not embark upon this voyage to show men how evil can triumph, but to demonstrate that evil surely will triumph if good men do not strive to learn well its lessons. And now that my usefulness, if not my life itself, has ended, I can say before God and man that I have met the challenge of the great maestro of revered memory issued on the road to Cesenatico. For in my life's work, I crossed the unknown sea and charted a route for all men to follow, should they wish to live in peace and security. — Michael Ennis

In a certain present there is more of the future than in the future itself. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Very young people are true but not resounding instruments. — Elizabeth Bowen

Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God. Faith means, whether I am visibly delivered or not, I will stick to my belief that God is love. — Oswald Chambers

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time. — Thomas Jefferson

Christ's humor is always redemptive, never mocking the individual. But He is sharp and sarcastic in His derision of those institutions such as Pharisaism, which posture in their self-made self-importance. Wisdom — John Crowder

The most superficial fact regarding the Discourses , the fact that the number of its chapters equals the number of books of Livy 's History , compelled us to start a chain of tentative reasoning which brings us suddenly face to face with the only New Testament quotation that ever appears in Machiavelli 's two books and with an enormous blasphemy. — Leo Strauss

If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is. — Kurt Vonnegut

The Metropolis strives to reach a mythical point where the world is completely fabricated by man, so that it absolutely coincides with his desires. — Rem Koolhaas

I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion. — George Eliot

Her rebirth stood in her mind with the clarity of a perfect diamond, the light scattering the rainbows through her body. — Thomm Quackenbush