Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy.

Must we, under the happy hope of a false tranquility, sacrifice to the people in power the public welfare, and under vain pretence of preserving the peace, abandon the empire to robbers who would plunder it

He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.

Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion.

When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in other respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.