If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.

When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.

Moses has revealed the existence of God to his nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent.

I saw the crown of France laying on the ground, so I picked it up with my sword.

It is rare that a legislature reasons. It is too quickly impassioned.

Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same.

This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog. Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.