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.

One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one's life.

That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.

I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.

[To Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled in politics:] Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is but just they should know the reason.

The universe is in France; outside it, there is nothing.