There are so many laws that no one is safe from hanging.

Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.

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.

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

To make yourself understood to people, one must first speak to their eyes

I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.

An empty throne always tempts me.