Newspaper : A device unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.

Set me anything to do as a task, and it is inconceivable the desire I have to do something else.

You may well ask me why...I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.

NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe? Everything he says is wrong. GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.

There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder.

Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.

The pianoforte is the most important of all musical instruments; its invention was to music what the invention of printing was to poetry.