It is only with prudence, sagacity, and much dexterity that great aims are accomplished, and all obstacles surmounted. Otherwise nothing is accomplished.

Conquest has made me what I am, only conquest can maintain me.

God is on the side of the heaviest cannon.

We are nothing but by the law.

Mankind are in the end always governed by superiority of intellectual faculties, and none are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute, and associated with men of science, I knew what I was doing: I was sure of not being misunderstood by the lowest drummer boy in the army.

Fashion condemns us to many follies, the greatest is to make oneself its slave.

Men take only their needs into consideration - never their abilities.