All these connotations, even the positive and moral ones, are within the range of significations Machiavelli wants us to hear in “virtù.” For him the word suggests a kind of flexibility that can initiate effective, efficient, and energetic action based on a courageous assertion of the will and an ability to execute the products of one's own calculations. Such calculations are a significant adjunct to his ideas about virtù: they outline what might be called an internal or mental virtù.

I was thirteen, short, underweight, flat-chested, spindly-legged, disaster-permed and haircutted, and my face was growing around my nose.

“Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,” he read aloud. “What's ‘Alexander Technique?’” “Theory of standing.”

You need to do work? Bruh!