His knowledge of the world and men had turned to cynicism.

The frigid philosophy expressed in his political Essays, and the sarcastic speeches in which he gave a vent to his soured humors, made him unpopular.

It was supposed that he had died with blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all the sanctities of human nature into ridicule.

Through these myths, as through a mist, we may discern the bitterness of that great, disenchanted, disappointed soul.
The desert in which spirits of the stamp of Machiavelli wander is too arid and too aerial for the gross substantial bugbears of the vulgar conscience to inhabit.

Moreover, as Varchi says, 'In his conversation Machiavelli was pleasant, serviceable to his friends, a friend of virtuous men, and, in a word, worthy of having received from nature either less genius or a better mind.'.