No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

Women are the most charitable creatures, and the most troublesome. He who shuns women passes up the trouble, but also the benefits. He who puts up with them gains the benefits, but also the trouble. As the saying goes, there's no honey without bees.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.

The unarmed man is not just defenseless - he is also contemptible.

When men receive favours from someone they expected to do them ill, they are under a greater obligation to their benefactor.