Oh, I have a habit of letting myself be lectured on the things I know best. I like to see if they are understood in the same way I understand; for there are many ways of knowing the same thing

The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.

What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?

To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances; and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame

Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.

One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original fact.

What is a great life but a youthful intention carried out in maturity?