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

If you (to General Bertrand) do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, very well; then I did wrong to make you a general.

I start out by believing the worst

Nothing renders a nation so despicable as religious despotism.

Rascality has limits; stupidity has not.

This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog. Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

When I was happy I thought I knew men, but it was fated that I should know them in misfortune only.