-
Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.
-
He that makes war without many mistakes has not made war very long.
-
I love a brave soldier who has undergone the baptism of fire.
-
The true policy of government is to make use of aristocracy, but under the forms and in the spirit of democracy.
-
People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable, pitiful.
-
A society without religion is like a vessel without compass.
-
My dominion ends where that of conscience begins.
-
The poor man commands respect; the beggar must always excite anger.
-
If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.
-
In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments.
-
There is no power without justice.
-
There is no strength without justice.
-
The populace judges of the power of God by the power of the priests.
-
Of all the peoples of Europe, Spaniards disgust me the least.
-
Send me 300 francs; that sum will enable me to go to Paris. There, at least, one can cut a figure and surmount obstacles. Everything tells me I shall succeed. Will you prevent me from doing so for the want of 100 crowns?
-
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
-
Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus. The Ariyans and some other sects had disturbed the tranquility of the east by agitating the question of the nature of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Muhammad declared that there was none but one God who had no father, no son and that the trinity imported the idea of idolatry.
-
It is a mistake, too, to say that the face is the mirror of the soul. The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only.
-
Every French soldier carriers a marshal's baton in his knapsack.
-
From triumph to downfall is but a step. I have seen a trifle decide the most important issues in the gravest affairs.
-
A new-born Government must shine and astonish - the moment it loses its éclat it falls.
-
Victory is not always winning the battle...but rising every time you fall.
-
In order that a people may be free, it is necessary that the governed be sages, and those who govern, gods.
-
Has a man the right to kill himself? Yes, if his death harms no one and if life is an evil to him. When is life an evil? When it offers a man nothing but suffering and pain.