“As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life.”

“If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.”

“If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.”

“The love of glory is like the bridge that Satan built across Chaos to pass from Hell to Paradise: glory links the past with the future across a bottomless abyss. Nothing to my son, except my name!”

“When you have an enemy in your power, deprive him of the means of ever injuring you.”

“A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.”

“A cowardly act! What do I care about that? You may be sure that I should never fear to commit one if it were to my advantage.”