I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the speaker's awareness of their emotional susceptibility in intense relationships and their desire to protect themselves from it.
In this quote, Salman Rushdie expresses a deep understanding of the impact that passionate and unstable relationships can have on an individual. He acknowledges his vulnerability to such connections, indicating a struggle to balance emotional engagement with self-protection. The quote highlights the tension between longing for intimacy and the fear of being hurt, showcasing the complexity of human relationships where passion can sometimes lead to emotional turmoil.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a therapy session discussing emotional challenges in relationships.
More from Salman Rushdie
All quotes βKilling people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Good advice is rarer than rubies.
Similar quotes
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
You are not reconciled to God if you are unreconciled with your fellow human beings.
I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too ful of life and love. They can't help it. Poeple come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter.
One does not leave a convivial party before closing time.
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself
Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.