Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

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

To know in war how to recognize an opportunity and seize it is better than anything else.

Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one, because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed, or exempt from danger.

For as good habits of the people require good laws to support them, so laws, to be observed, need good habits on the part of the people.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him.