Niccolò Machiavelli

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

– Niccolò Machiavelli –

The Prince

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Merrie Haskell

Did I never explain to you about love, Reva?’ Pa asked. I gave him a look, and he laughed uncomfortably. ‘I guess not. Let me put it in a way you’ll understand. Love is like stinging nettles. Only they prick from the inside out, starting at your heart and bursting on around. It’s worse when it gets here’–he rubbed the bridge of his nose–‘then your vision goes a little strange. But eventually the nettles stop stinging–once she agrees to kiss you. But they start right back up again when she agrees to marry you–”Pa,’ I interrupted, ‘that’s not love, that’s fear.’Pa shook his head, looking off admiringly in the direction where Lacrimora had disappeared. ‘Same thing, in my case.

Charles Dickens

Who is Mr. Jasper?”Rosa turned aside her head in answering: “Eddy’s uncle, and my music-master.””You do not love him?””Ugh!” She put her hands up to her face, and shook with fear or horror.”You know that he loves you?””O, don’t, don’t, don’t!” cried Rosa, dropping on her knees, and clinging to her new resource. “Don’t tell me of it! He terrifies me. He haunts my thoughts, like a dreadful ghost. I feel that I am never safe from him. I feel as if he could pass in through the wall when he is spoken of.” She actually did look round, as if she dreaded to see him standing in the shadow behind her.”Try to tell me more about it, darling.””Yes, I will, I will. Because you are so strong. But hold me the while, and stay with me afterwards.””My child! You speak as if he had threatened you in some dark way.””He has never spoken to me about – that. Never.””What has he done?””He has made a slave of me with his looks. He has forced me to understand him, without his saying a word; and he has forced me to keep silence, without his uttering a threat. When I play, he never moves his eyes from my hands. When I sing, he never moves his eyes from my lips. When he corrects me, and strikes a note, or a chord, or plays a passage, he himself is in the sounds, whispering that he pursues me as a lover, and commanding me to keep his secret. I avoid his eyes, but he forces me to see them without looking at them. Even when a glaze comes over them (which is sometimes the case), and he seems to wander away into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most, he obliges me to know it, and to know that he is sitting close at my side, more terrible to me than ever.””What is this imagined threatening, pretty one? What is threatened?””I don’t know. I have never even dared to think or wonder what it is.””And was this all, to-night?””This was all; except that to-night when he watched my lips so closely as I was singing, besides feeling terrified I felt ashamed and passionately hurt. It was as if he kissed me, and I couldn’t bear it, but cried out. You must never breathe this to any one. Eddy is devoted to him. But you said to-night that you would not be afraid of him, under any circumstances, and that gives me – who am so much afraid of him – courage to tell only you. Hold me! Stay with me! I am too frightened to be left by myself.

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