The fate of war is to be exalted in the morning, and low enough at night! There is but one step from triumph to ruin.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

God has decreed that there be sick and poor in this world, but in the next it will be the other way around.

Society cannot exist without inequality of fortunes and the inequality of fortunes could not subsist without religion. Whenever a half-starved person is near another who is glutted, it is impossible to reconcile the difference if there is not an authority who tells him to.

Timid and cowardly soldiers cause the loss of a nation's independence; but pusillanimous magistrates destroy the empire of the laws, the rights of the throne, and even social order itself.

A general must be a charlatan.

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.