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

War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.

Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not to suffer.

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.

There are three kinds of brains: One understands of itself, another can be taught to understand, and the third can neither understand to itself or be taught to understand.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain.