Machiavelli's advice to a leader confronted with doing the virtuous thing is that, although virtuous acts are necessary for a ruler to be seen as generous, compassionate and honorable, those characteristics are only useful for a ruler to get to leadership. However, those attributes for a man who has achieved leadership are in fact dangerous, because generosity creates expectations on people that are not always possible to fulfill. Another problem is that a kind and emphatic leader won't be able to mantain people in control, therefore, authoritarism is a useful tool to achieve good lidership. A leader is required to be "seen as generous" rather than be generous, and make difficult choices, which most of the times, means that a ruler has to be bad to stay in power. Following this line of thought, one of his most famous maxims is "it's much safer to be feared than loved" which means that at the end, the only way to assures a leader continuity in power is to be a cruel leader without people noticing it.
Answer:
solitary is correct I think so
I despise the word enemy, so let's say old acquaintance to refer to them. So my ex-best friend, who I knew since kindergarten, would always try to put me down by insulting me or making me feel less important. Back then I never really noticed any red flags, but looking at it now, I realize how much jealousy can affect an insecure person. One day at my crush's bday party, she would purposely try to make me feel jealous or touch him a lot (in front of me obviously), when she knew that I liked him and there were probably chances of him feeling the same, but that's another story I don't want to get into right now. She just couldn't stop being with him after that, and she would upload stories with him on social media, text him, compliment him, etc, and it wasn't even the fact that they were already pretty close before I told her I had feelings for him, she wouldn't bother talking to him. Long story short, she kis sed him 2 times, it was honestly my last straw. Funny thing is, I don't get jealous easily, and If I happen to, I just have control and make sure I don't hurt anyone because of it, so it wasn't at all about the fact that she stole my potential bo yfriend. It was the action of it, like “I don't respect you and I don't care about your feelings” kind of action, which made me purely disgusted and disrespected.
