"When evening comes, I return home and..." - Quote by Niccolo Machiavelli
When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty clothes of everyday, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world.
More by Niccolo Machiavelli
“Benefits should be granted little by little, so that they may be better enjoyed.”
“Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.”
“Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant. From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved.”
More on Reading
“A small number of choice books are sufficient.”
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.”
“Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven.”
More on Study
“Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.”
“It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others' religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.”
“It does not make much difference what a person studies-all knowledge is related, and the man who studies anything, if he keeps at it, will be learned.”