“Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.”

“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.”

“Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success.”

“Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours (A good sketch is better than a long speech)”

“Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.”

“Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have strength.”

“I have seen only yoU, I have admired only yoU, I desire only You”