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?

Difficulty attracts the man of character because it is in embracing it that he realizes himself

These people really aim very badly.

How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?

France cannot be France without greatness.

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.