If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense.

Life is strewn with so many dangers, and can be the source of so many misfortunes, that death is not the greatest of them.

Destiny urges me to a goal of which I am ignorant. Until that goal is attained I am invulnerable, unassailable. When Destiny has accomplished her purpose in me, a fly may suffice to destroy me.

As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life.

You don't reason with intellectuals. You shoot them.

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.