The man who obeys is nearly always better than the man who commands.

To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to will to do the like again, — such are the essential conditions for the making of a people.

Every rebel is, with us, more or less a soldier who has missed his vocation, a being made for a heroic life ... The European race is a race of masters and soldiers. If you reduce this noble race to the work in a slave's prison like Negroes or Chinamen, it will rebel.

None of the miracles with which ancient histories are filled, occurred under scientific conditions. Observation never once contradicted, teaches us that miracles occur only in periods and countries in which they are believed in and before persons disposed to believe in them.

I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.

All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.