In the tumult of great events, solitude was what I hoped for. Now it is what I love. How is it possible to be contented with anything else when one has come face to face with history?

Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.

As an adolescent I was convinced that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service and that I would have the occasion to do so.

Old France, weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal!

Old age is a shipwreck.

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.

I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.