Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Ambition of military fame, ambition over female virtue, was the duplicate ruling passion of his life.

This is the soldier brave enough to tellThe glory-dazzled world that "war is hell":Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife,And rides through hell to save his country's life.

Courage, the highest gift, that scorns to bend To mean devices for a sordid end. Courage--an independent spark from Heaven's bright throne, By which the soul stands raised, triumphant high, alone. Great in itself, not praises of the crowd, Above all vice, it stoops not to be proud. Courage, the mighty attribute of powers above, By which those great in war, are great in love. The spring of all brave acts is seated here, As falsehoods draw their sordid birth from fear.

One path alone leads to a life of peace. The path of virtue.

No proceeding is better than that which you have concealed from the enemy until the time you have executed it. To know how to recognize an opportunity in war, and take it, benefits you more than anything else. Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many. Discipline in war counts more than fury.

As the days of spring arouse all nature to a green and growing vitality, so when hope enters the soul it makes all things new. It insures the progress which it predicts. Rooted in faith, growing up into love; these make the three immortal graces of the Gospel, whose intertwined arms and concurrent voices shed joy and peace over our human life.

Non-violence and cowardice are contradictory terms. Non-violence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice. Non-violence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Non-violence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering. Perfect non-violence is the highest bravery. Non-violent conduct is never demoralising; cowardice always is.

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

Vitality springs from diversity -- which makes for real progress so long as there is mutual toleration, based on the recognition that worse may come from an attempt to suppress differences than from acceptance of them. For this reason, the kind of peace that makes progress possible is best assured by the mutual checks created by a balance of forces-alike in the sphere of internal politics and of international relations.

Peace is the soft and holy shadow that virtue casts.

If all men were just there would be no need of valor.

It is glorious to see such courage in one so young.

In the first place, most princes apply themselves to the arts of war, in which I have neither ability nor interest, instead of to the good arts of peace. They are generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms by hook or by crook than on governing well those that they already have.

When I was a kid, my mom once told me that God was an artist and how on occasion He’d throw a bucketful of paint across the sky for us all to see. I asked her why the paint disappeared by morning, and she told me that if the sky was always like that we might take it for granted. I suppose she was right. Maybe that’s what war is all about—so we can appreciate times of peace.

If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.

Art transcends war. Art is the language of God and war is the barking of men. Beethoven is bigger than war.

It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline.

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

I will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings advance you to glory: but by the gentle ways of peace and love.

Over all the mountain tops is peace. In all treetops you perceive scarcely a breath. The little birds in the forest are silent. Wait then; soon, you too, will have peace.

Now I want you to think that in life troubles will come, which seem as if they never would pass away. The night and storm look as if they would last forever; but the calm and the morning cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose, for God is Peace.

Vice foments war; it is virtue which actually fights. If there were no virtue, we would live in peace forever.

If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.

If I should come out of this war alive, I will have more luck than brains.