Quotes from Niccolò Machiavelli's books, and about them
The Prince on De Officiis: “Mr Burd points out that this passage is imitated directly from Cicero's "De Officiis": "Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi, unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est ad posterius, si uti non licet superiore."”
The Prince on Russia: “Institutions of a somewhat similar character, called "artel," exist in Russia to-day, cf.”
The Prince on Catherine Sforza: “(*) Catherine Sforza, a daughter of Galeazzo Sforza and Lucrezia Landriani, born 1463, died 1509.”
The Prince on The Eastern Question: “(*) Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: "The older one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe." Sorel's "Eastern Question."”
Lost Illusions on The Prince: “Machiavelli wrote _The Prince_ at night, and by day was a common working-man like any one else; and more than all, the great Cervantes, who lost an arm at the battle of Lepanto, and helped to win that famous day, was called a 'base-born, handless dotard' by the scribblers of his day; there was an…”
The Historian on The Prince: “It turned out to be an early edition of Machiavelli: The Prince, accompanied by a series of discourses on morality I’d never before seen or even heard of.”
The New Machiavelli on The Prince: “It is a matter of many weeks now--diversified indeed by some long drives into the mountains behind us and a memorable sail to Genoa across the blue and purple waters that drowned Shelley--since I began a laboured and futile imitation of "The Prince."”
The Satanic Verses on The Prince: “if Niccolò could survive such tribulation and live to write that perhaps embittered, perhaps sardonic parody of the sycophantic mirror-of-princes literature then so much in vogue, Il Principe, following it with the magisterial Discorsi, then he, Chamcha, need certainly not permit himself the luxury of defeat.”