‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

The only reward to be expected from literature is contempt if one fails and hatred if one succeeds.

Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness.

I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little important and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.

Where some states possess an army, the Prussian Army possesses a state.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.