Everyone always dies for his country. If you have lived in it, well and wisely and actively, you die for it too.

Death is the next step after the pension-it's perpetual retirement without pay.

A man's name, title, and rank are artificial and impermanent; they do nothing to reveal what he really is, even to himself.

In times of death and famine, reason is on the side of the priests-who have their own kind of logic which cries for miracles and, on occasion, invents them.

One of the privileges of the great is to witness catastrophes from a terrace.

Only the mediocre die always at their best. Real leaders are always improving - and raising their bar on how superbly they can perform and how quickly they can move.

When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome.