Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

Conversationis like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayedin it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.

The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.

Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?

The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.

War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon's proclamations.