It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.

Men are less hesitant about harming someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared because love is held together by a chain of obligation which, since men are wretched creatures, is broken on every occasion in which their own interests are concerned; but fear is sustained by dread of punishment which will never abandon you.

When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty clothes of everyday, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world.

To know in war how to recognize an opportunity and seize it is better than anything else.

With difficulty he is beaten who can estimate his own forces and those of his enemy.

Nothing feeds upon itself as liberality does.

Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.