War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.

The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.