"Machiavellian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moral influence is missing. He is, says Mr. Morley, simple, unaffected, direct, vivid, rational. He is as literal as a woman. His literal statement is his finest effect of irony. Mr. Morley's analysis of the Machiavellian style is itself a masterpiece of serene expression, rising with a solemn sense of the fearful absence of all principle, as we understand it, in the work, to a richly eloquent, and even tender, tribute to the moral beauty of life. I wish I might transcribe it and I ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... correspondent to whom Hippolyte Fauville had bequeathed the task of avenging his murder, and who, instead of simply handing over the letters to the police, was exercising his ingenuity to deliver them by means of the most Machiavellian contrivances? Was it to his interest also to ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... fire of 1603. The earthquake causing the evacuation of Manila could not shake them. Another prisoner of state, Corcuera, who had fought the Moros in the Jolo Archipelago, was locked up in the Cuartel de Santiago at the instance of his Machiavellian successor. In 1642 the fort was strengthened by additional artillery because of an expected visit from the Dutch. Today a soldier in a khaki uniform mounts guard at the street entrance. The courtyard is adorned by pyramids of cannon-balls and tidy rows of bonga-trees. The soldiers' quarters ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... I have followed with intensest interest your discussion of "Frenzied Finance." The expose of the "System," and its Machiavellian performances, was highly interesting to me. I was associated with Attorney-General Monnett in his effort to get testimony and the inside facts concerning the trust and its operations in his prosecution against that corporation ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Tour. Forty-eight years after he himself set forth beyond seas, he passed on to young John Milton "in procinct of his travels," his favourite bit of wisdom, learned from a Roman courtier well versed in the ways of Italy: "I pensieri stretti e il viso sciolto."[199] Milton did not follow this Machiavellian precept to keep his "thoughts close and his countenance loose," as Wotton translates it,[200] and was soon marked by the Inquisition; but he was proud of being advised by Sir Henry Wotton, and boasted of the "elegant letter" and "exceedingly useful ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... consciousness and a new responsibility. We see better ways of spreading the fruits of civilization. In the past ambition and brute force, hatred and suspicion, fear and deceit, have had full play. In spite of barbaric warfare and Machiavellian politics the human desire for unity and co-operation has not ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... vouchers for this fact. We know not whether (with the exception of some few Germans such as Arndt, for whose book Palm was shot) there was at that time in Europe another man of any eminence who shared in that Machiavellian sagacity which revealed to them, as with the power and clear insight of the prophetic spirit, the craziness of the French military despotism when to vulgar politicians it seemed strongest. For this sagacity, and for the strength of patriotism to which in part they owed ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the reader, who may desire a closer insight into Cappy's Machiavellian nature, be it known that a sinker is a heavy, close-grained clear redwood butt-log, which, if cut in the spring, when the tree is alive with sap, is so heavy it will not float in the millpond; hence the term sinker. A vessel laden with lumber sawed from sinkers, therefore, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... burn and pierce one like the thrust of a hot stiletto, His face was clean-shaven, save for a mere thumb-mark of black hair directly under the centre of his lower lip. This Iago-like tab and the almost fierce brilliancy of his concentrated gaze gave to his countenance at times a sinister, Machiavellian expression that was irresistible and which, to my thinking, seriously marred an otherwise fine face. Of course due allowance must be made for the strong prejudice I have against any form of beard. However, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... who may be shocked at this revelation of Eleanor Keene's character will remember that she has not been recorded as an angel in these pages—but as a very human, honest, inexperienced girl, for the first time struggling with the most diplomatic, Machiavellian, and hypocritical ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... ei lice' quoted by English writers as summing up the cynical philosophy of those whom they not unaptly styled 'politicians.' In Marston's tragedy on the story of Sophonisba, for instance, the villain Syphax concludes a 'Machiavellian' speech ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... intensified lawlessness by robbing the Italian character of levity. Sin, in his conception of that character, was complicated with the sense of sin, as it never had been in a Florentine or a Neapolitan. He had not grasped the meaning of the Machiavellian conscience, in its cold serenity and disengagement from the dread of moral consequence. Not only are his villains stealthy, frigid, quick to evil, merciless, and void of honour; but they brood upon their crimes and analyse their motives. In ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... undertake. "So much was the haughty Amazon's riding-whip dreaded that a letter of dismissal was prudently delivered. As a result, bloodshed was avoided; and Mlle Lola has solaced herself with the reflection that she has been the victim of the Machiavellian cabal of Russia, still angry at her routing of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... simple dwelling-house that stands alone, ugly, if anything, timid-seeming but full of romance, hiding from every eye some imperishable secret of happiness and disenchantment. That land which knows not truth," he continued with Machiavellian subtlety, "that land of infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is certainly not what I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is already so much inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed to receive its impressions. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... effectiveness of such tactics, we tried to imitate them. But these tactics will not fit the German. We are rough but moral, we are credulous but honest." Before this touching picture of the German Innocents very much abroad, the Machiavellian Briton can only take ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... pantalettes, look like thirty cents." Surely in the circle of their friends and relatives there must be a little girl who could be borrowed and introduced—oh, casually and with infinite tact!—into their menage for a few months. Mr. Prescott, well pleased with himself, winked a Machiavellian wink and sought his wife, ostensibly to consult her, but in reality to inform her that he had made up his mind, and that it would be her happy privilege to attend to the trivial details of carrying ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... was playing a Machiavellian policy against the United States soon became evident. After each submarine outrage would come an apology, frequently a promise of reparation and an agreement not to repeat the offense, with no intention, however, of keeping faith in any respect. As a mask for their duplicity, the Germans even sent ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... for an hour, getting her costume ready. She decided on an old black suit and a shawl which had belonged to her mother. She carried these garments to her bedroom and hid them there. Then, with Machiavellian finesse, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... conclusion that it was designed to cut out a portion of Australia for occupation by the French; that, under the thin disguise of being charged with a scientific mission, Baudin was in reality an emissary of Machiavellian statecraft, making a cunning move in the great game of world-politics. The author has, in an earlier book* endeavoured to show that such was not the case. (* Terre Napoleon (London, 1910). Since that book was published, I have had the advantage of reading a large quantity of manuscript ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Is there in human history a document more blasting to the reputation for political wisdom or foresight of him who penned it? It were an insult to the great Florentine to style such piteous ineptitudes Machiavellian. Yet they succeeded. The new evangel had lost its power; the freedom of Humanity was the dream of a few ideologues; the positive ideals of later times had not yet arisen. Well might men ask themselves: Has then Voltaire lived in vain, and the Girondins died in vain? Has all the ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... used to tell the "fellers" that he spent one half his time carrying orders back and forth from the Old Ladies' Home. But now, in spite of his meekness of manner, he did not intend to take this cut back. So with Machiavellian skill he hastened ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... a German from a new Germany—that Prussianized Germany which unmasked itself in August, 1914, and which included in its dream of power the unswerving and undivided loyalty of all Germans who had migrated. The traditional American indifference and good nature became a shield for the Machiavellian editors who now began to write not for the benefit of America but for the benefit of Germany. Political scandals, odious comparisons of American and German methods, and adroit criticisms of American ways were the daily pabulum fed to the German reader, who was left with the impression that ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... ordered to disgorge at once or face prosecution. They were a part of Mollenhauer's political machine. Then, having cautioned Stener not to set over the remainder of his property to any one, and not to listen to any one, most of all to the Machiavellian counsel of Cowperwood, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... thinking of the same person. Madame de Nailles was occupied with recollections, Jacqueline with hope. She was absorbed in Machiavellian strategy, how to realize a hope that had been formed ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... Machiavellian idea. Why shouldn't she work? At what? Why, hadn't she a troupe of trained birds? Madame Patou was not the first comer in the variety world. She could get engagements in the provinces. How did she know that the war would not ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Venezelos' prestige failed to carry through his policy in its full moderation. King George had just been assassinated in his year of jubilee, in the streets of the long-desired Salonika; and King Constantine, his son, flushed by the victory of Kilkish and encouraged by the Machiavellian diplomacy of his Hohenzollern brother-in-law, insisted on carrying the new Greek frontier as far east as the river Mesta, and depriving Bulgaria of Kavala, the natural harbour for the whole Bulgarian hinterland in the upper basins ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... proud of it; her poverty became, in a sense, her riches. "Well, all I have is just one hundred a year," she was fond of saying, "and I don't complain. I don't envy anybody. I have all I want." Her little plans for thrift were fairly Machiavellian; they showed subtly. She told everybody what she had for her meals. She boasted that she lived better than her brother, who was earning good wages in a shoe-factory. She dressed very well, really much better than her sister-in-law. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Meanwhile Machiavellian doctrines not being forbidden to aristocracies, these people appeal to German Jingoism, to German patriotism, to all the passions which move one people who are jealous of another. All this is meant to hide under a patriotic exterior their concern for their ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... speak of, that I might have been a great success in that most interesting profession. One never knows, and by putting my foot in it very conscientiously all round, I might have earned for myself a reputation of Machiavellian cunning! ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... perfectly Machiavellian speech. Tita's feet are beyond argument, and there is not a woman in this world, any way, who has beautiful feet, who doesn't want everyone to tell ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... chastise a poltroon so un-philosophical. I took her by the hand instead, and led her into this room and made her sit down, and, whilst I sponged the picture with cold water, made her tell me how the accident had happened. For I thought, in my Machiavellian Italian way, 'If she should go away without having quite familiarised herself with this unhappy incident, she will always be afraid of me.' Therefore I ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... incident occurred the night before the Saluria landed which caused him suddenly to change his plans. He was just ready to go below for the night when an overmastering desire for one more word with Bobby seized him. By a bit of Machiavellian strategy he had outwitted Andy that afternoon, and had her entirely to himself for three ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... in my last letter of the 2nd of this month. I consider their doctrines to be prejudicial to the stability of our rule in India, and to the welfare of the people, which depends on it. The Court of Directors is our only safeguard against these Machiavellian doctrines; and it may be rendered too powerless to stem them by the new arrangements for the Government of India. The objects which they propose for attainment—religion, commerce, &c.—are plausible; and the false logic ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... is gone, and they stand in the unsexed position of brother and sister. Thus that "maximum of temptation" of which Shaw speaks has within itself the seeds of its own decay. A husband begins by kissing a pretty girl, his wife; it is pleasant to have her so handy and so willing. He ends by making machiavellian efforts to avoid kissing the every day sharer of his meals, books, bath towels, pocketbook, relatives, ambitions, secrets, malaises and business: a proceeding about as romantic as having his boots blacked. The thing ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... operator who is afraid of overproduction does not object to increased ore-reserves. On the point of maximum intensity of development work in a mine all views coincide. The mining engineer, if he takes a Machiavellian view, must agree with the investor and the metal dealer, for the engineer is a "fixed charge" the continuance of which is important ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... have another remarkable custom, which has been taught them by the infernal Machiavelian [201] Satan, which is good for their bodies, but bad for their souls. This is that they observe very strictly the concealment of one another's faults and wrong-doing. They endeavor to see that no transgression comes to the ear of the father minister, or alcalde, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... dishonest, faithless, truthless, trothless; unfair, uncandid; hollow-hearted; evasive; uningenuous, disingenuous; hollow, sincere, Parthis mendacior; forsworn. artificial, contrived; canting; hypocritical, jesuitical, pharisaical; tartuffish; Machiavelian; double, double tongued, double faced, double handed, double minded, double hearted, double dealing; Janus faced; smooth- faced, smooth spoken, smooth tongued; plausible; mealy-mouthed; affected &c 855. collusive, collusory; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
