"It may be observed, that provinces amid..." - Quote by Niccolo Machiavelli

“To keep your actions and your plans secret always has been a very good thing . .. Marcus Crassus said to one who asked him when he was going to move the army: 'Do you believe that you will be the only one not to hear the trumpet?”

“The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always do so when they can.but when they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame.”

“A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain.”

“There is a stability in the Universe because of the orderly and balanced process of change, the same measure coming out as going in, as if reality were a huge fire that inhaled and exhaled equal amounts.”

“In A Glass of Cider It seemed I was a mite of sediment That waited for the bottom to ferment So I could catch a bubble in ascent. I rode up on one till the bubble burst, And when that left me to sink back reversed I was no worse off than I was at first. I'd catch another bubble if I waited. The thing was to get now and then elated.”

“All manifest life seems to require a period of sleep, of calm, in which to gain added strength, renewed vigour, for the next manifestation, or awakening to activity. Thus is the march of all progress, of all manifest life - in waves, successive waves, [of] activity and repose. Waves succeed each other in an endless chain of progression.”

“Every man deserves to be judged in the context of his times.”

“The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world.”

“As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.”