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

The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds

Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.

The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.

What it values most of all is the sum total of events and the advance of civilization, which carries individuals along with it; but, indifferent to details, it cares less to have them real than noble or, rather, grand and complete.

Only silence is great; all else is weakness.

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.