France has more need of me than I have need of France.

I hope before long to press you in my arms and shall shower on you a million burning kisses as under the Equator.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

Let the path be open to talent.

Among so many conflicting ideas and so many different perspectives, the honest man is confused and distressed and the skeptic becomes wicked ... Since one must take sides, one might as well choose the side that is victorious, the side which devastates, loots, and burns. Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than to be eaten.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

It is in times of difficulty that great nations like great men display the whole energy of their character and become an object of admiration to posterity.