Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

Good order and discipline in any army are to be depended upon more than courage alone.

So in all human affairs one notices, if one examines them closely, that it is impossible to remove one inconvenience without another emerging.

It is necessary that the prince should know how to color his nature well, and how to be a hypocrite and dissembler. For men are so simple, and yield so much to immediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes.

There are three kinds of brains: One understands of itself, another can be taught to understand, and the third can neither understand to itself or be taught to understand.

A blast in the human breast is nothing to boast of.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.