“Catastrophes have a somber way of arranging things.”

“Night sometimes lends such tragic assistance to catastrophe.”

“Nature at times adds her own commentary to our actions with a kind of somber and considered eloquence, as though she were bidding us reflect.”

“The four walls of the living redoubt had fallen, hardly could a quivering be detected here and there among the corpses; and thus the French legions, grander than the Roman legions, expired at Mont-Saint-Jean on ground soaked in rain and blood, in the somber wheatfields, at the spot where today at four in the morning, whistling, and gaily whipping up his horse, Joseph drives by with the mail from Nivelles.”

“To attempt, to brave, to persist, and persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to wrestle with destiny, to astound the catastrophe by the slight fear which is causes us, now to confront unjust power, again to insult intoxicated victory, to hold firm and withstand -- such is the example which nations need and the light which electrifies them.”

“As we see, he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.”

“Clearly, he had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels.”