“If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.”
“This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog.'Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.”
“Es gibt keine andere Unsterblichkeit als die Erinnerung, die man im Geiste der Menschen zurücklässt.”
“Women Knit”
“What is a throne? — a bit of wood gilded and covered in velvet. I am the state— I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public—people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France.”
“My maxim was, la carrière est ouverte aux talents, without distinction of birth or fortune.”