Never were clear and definite thoughts expressed with greater precision in language of more masculine vigor.

We are irresistibly compelled, while characterizing this style, to think of the spare sinews of a trained gladiator.

Though Machiavelli was a poet, he indulges in no ornaments of rhetoric.[3] His images, rare and carefully chosen, seem necessary to the thoughts they illustrate.
Though a philosopher, he never wanders into speculation.

Facts and experience are so thoroughly compacted with reflection in his mind, that his widest generalizations have the substance of realities.

The element of unreality, if such there be, is due to a misconception of human nature.