Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Machiavellian   Listen
noun
Machiavellian, Machiavelian  n.  One who adopts the principles of Machiavelli; a cunning and unprincipled politician.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Machiavellian" Quotes from Famous Books



... parading her happiness; she disliked any demonstrations thereof, even before Johanna. And when Miss Balquidder, who had, of course, been told of the engagement, came down one day expressly to see her "fortunate fellow countryman," this Machiavellian little woman actually persuaded her lover to have an important engagement in London! She could not bear him ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... preaching were indulged in by the elders on their missions, home and foreign. At home they declared the beauty of the Smithian gospel, including the doctrine of polygamy, a sweet morsel for the blood-thirsty Utes. They were trying by every means, Machiavellian or otherwise, to gain the Lamanites, as Indians were called by the Mormons, at least to an extent which would allow them to remain undisturbed throughout the territory of Utah. Old Kanosh and other leaders were immersed for the remission of their sins, but they were permitted ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... "Voila l'allie que le ciel a mis entre nos mains, et dont nous avons a retablir les interets!" Ferdinand was guilty of such monstrous perjuries and cruelties that the reader ought to be warned not to think of him as a saturnine and Machiavellian Italian. He was a son of the Bourbon Charles III. of Spain. His character was that of a jovial, rather stupid farmer, whom a freak of fortune had made a king from infancy. A sort of grotesque comic element runs through his life, and through every picture drawn by persons ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... has undertaken to redeem our long inferiority in Machiavellian studies, and it will, I think, be found that he has given a more completely satisfactory explanation of The Prince than any country possessed before. His annotated edition supplies all the solvents of a famous problem in the history of Italy ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... school mentioned 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 by which they attempt to ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... my impatience, that morning I was invited into several huts for the purpose of drinking sour milk. A malicious joy filled my soul, as about noon, the Machiavellian Captain of the "Reed" managed to cast anchor, after driving his crazy craft through a sea which the violent Shimal was flinging in hollow curves foam-fringed upon the strand. I stood on the shore making signs for a canoe. My desires were disregarded, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... unforeseen 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

... 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.' ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray

... Paris would leave their country to them as it left Cuba to the Cubans, [77] and adds that having helped us take the city of Manila, they "felt that they had been 'given the double cross,'" "believed that the Americans had been guilty of a duplicity rankly Machiavellian, and that was the ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... way; whereas, if you set to work wrongly, you might not only be foundered by a provoking reticence, which she could assume at times, but might, also, some day hear that your secret intentions and machiavellian conduct were the common ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... See that you fulfil this task!" 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 ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... By a Machiavellian stratagem the primary larva of the Oil-beetle or the Sitaris has penetrated the Anthophora's cell; it has settled on the egg, which is its first food and its life-raft in one. What becomes of it once ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... Consul of the French Republic, has led many writers to jump to the 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 ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... bundle; astonishment, anger, and self-ridicule made an emotion too strong to stand under. So this was all his Machiavellian scheming had achieved—to bring about the very marriage it was meant to avert! He had dug a pit and fallen into it himself. All this would indeed amuse Rozenoffski and Leopold Barstein. He ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... 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, I'd wager a box of my best liver-pills against any landscape Browne ever painted, —I don't ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... all its Machiavellian cunning, is the shrewd method of the Pompilus. She would be risking her life if she attacked the Segestria in her home; the Wasp is so convinced of it that she takes good care not to commit this imprudence; but she ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... slavery, I can cite the great Emancipation Act, wrested from Parliament by Christian public opinion in England. Have not means been found to prove, or at least to insinuate, that this act, the most glorious of our century, was at the bottom nothing but a Machiavellian combination of interests? Doubtless, those who have taken the trouble to look over the debates of the times know what we are to think of this fine explanation; they know what resistance was opposed by interests to the emancipation, both ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... loitered, affecting an abstraction, feigning to gaze upon the shrubs, feigning to talk, feigning to be weary and to rest upon the benches. M'Guire was no child in these affairs; he instantly divined one of the plots of the Machiavellian Gladstone. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... our party was then in the custody, and supposedly in the control, of Senator Goodrich of New Jersey. He had a reputation for Machiavellian dexterity, but I found that he was an ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... for religion; and therefore they that differ in the service of their God can never agree in the service of their country." With a maxim such as this, it was easy for him to maintain that Elizabeth's coercive measures were political and not religious. To say that he was Machiavellian is meaningless, for every statesman is so more or less; especially in the 16th century men preferred efficiency to principle. On the other hand, principles are valueless without law and order; and Burghley's craft and subtlety prepared a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... nature and object of his own diplomacy. And the permanent officials in whose hands he is will probably deserve all that and something to spare. Thus you will get that amazing contrast that confronts us now between the Machiavellian Sir Edward Grey of the Berlin newspapers and the amiable and popular Sir Edward Grey we know in England. In England we are all prepared to face any World Congress and say, "We know that Sir Edward Grey is an honest English gentleman, who meant ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... hoped that his wife would commit some indiscretion that would regain for him if not the sympathies of the public, at least her loss of the suit which if won, would ruin him. In order to carry out his Machiavellian schemes, he pretended that he wished to come to an understanding with the Combray family, and he despatched one of his friends to Mme. Acquet to open negotiations. This friend, named Le Chevalier, was a handsome young man of twenty-five, with dark hair, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... Abner Hautville, dark and warlike in his carriage as any fighting chief, appeared, the man asked ostentatiously for a "quart of m'lasses, and not so black and gritty as the last was nuther," transferring the rancor in his tone to an inoffensive object with Machiavellian policy. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... and 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... so frequently outwitted by the flexible, if not tortuous, policy of Louis Napoleon, it yet remains to be seen whether the firm and unyielding course of the English Ministry will not in the end prove quite as successful as the more Machiavellian management ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... Dear Sir: 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 for violating the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... his cabinet council, previous to the arrival of Mr. Genet. This publication was intended to demonstrate the existence of a disposition in the chief magistrate unfriendly to the French republic, of "a Machiavellian policy, which nothing but the universal sentiment of enthusiastic affection displayed by the people of the United States, on the arrival of Mr. Genet, could have subdued." Some idea of the intemperance of the day may ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... doctrine. His life had been pure and noble. He was a sincere lover of his country; a statesman of high purpose, and of the most commanding talents. No one ever accused him of any share in this financial corruption. Yet a more Machiavellian opinion could not have been uttered. On principle, Republican members of the Legislature opposed banks, and that principle was overcome by profits; in other words, members must be bought, or the charter would fail. That the stock did go above par is evident from Root's keen desire ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... An agony of terror seized her when she thought that she must cross Angouleme alone on the way to the prison. Petit-Claud gave little thought to his fair client's distress. When he came back to offer his arm, it was from a tolerably Machiavellian motive; but Eve gave him credit for delicate consideration, and he allowed her to thank him for it. The little attention, at such a moment, from so hard a man, modified Mme. Sechard's previous ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... thoughts and ambitions, with whom he must come into constant personal contact. With them the spiritual dominance alone will do. They shall be made to love him rather than themselves. (The only thing just here that jars is a sort of Machiavellian self-consciousness, resented in ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... flight; in secret, and saying nothing, in order not to give the alarm to his compromised colleagues, so as, in case of failure, to leave the people some men to devour. For this little school of Machiavellian apes the hopes of a successful escape lie in the abandonment of their friends. During their flight they throw their accomplices ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... of compensation for all that she had endured at the hands of the scornful Wrandalls, all of whom were hateful to her without exception, stirred him deeply. He began to understand the forces that compelled her to resort to this Machiavellian plan for revenge on them. She admitted everything: her readiness to blight Hetty's life for ever; her utter callousness in laying down these ugly plans; her surpassing vindictiveness; her reflections on the triumph she was to enjoy when her aims were fully attained. She confessed to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... swiftly waft us to our port. Where I must Caesar's message loud proclaim And my strong obligation to you voice. Our noble functions must be so performed, That happy impress graves the rabble mind But thus to meet these vultures with a smile Doth like a colic make mine honor gripe, Machiavelian methods were in sooth The better physic for the patients' needs And I like good physician must the probe Thrust in and sound the ugly, gaping wound. Quezox: Most noble sire, if I may caution speak It were to all this filthy, croaking brood Ne'er lend an open ear, for in it they Will honey-coated ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)



Words linked to "Machiavellian" :   Machiavelli



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com