Do you know what is more hard to bear than the reverses of fortune? It is the baseness, the hideous ingratitude, of man.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

Military despotism represses generous sentiments, priestly tyranny stifles them.

It is not necessary to bury the truth. It is sufficient merely to delay it until nobody cares.

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.

A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.