Who understands much forgives much. To understand everything makes us very forgiving.

One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.

If one hour's work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.

The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.

The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.

Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.

[The Germans] so easily confuse obstinacy with energy, and rudeness with firmness.