I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words

Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?

The true God, the mighty God, is the God of ideas.

Of late years (perhaps as a result of our political changes) art has borrowed from history more than ever.

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.

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