"We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story."
"All ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just as nobody believed in Machiavelli's Prince, a Utopian image of the ideally self-interested despot."
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Source: Mary McCarthy (2016). “The Stones of Florence”, p.18, Pickle Partners Publishing
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