“For all of us Frenchmen, the guiding rule of our epoch is to be faithful to France.”

Betting against gold is the same as betting on governments. He who bets on governments and government money bets against 6,000 years of recorded human history.

In war, the policy of least exertion always risks being paid for dearly.

Character is the virtue of hard times.

Adversity attracts the man of character. He seeks out the bitter joy of responsibility.

You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.

Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.

One can unite the French only under the threat of danger. One cannot simply bring together a nation that produces 265 kinds of cheese.

In the tumult of great events, solitude was what I hoped for. Now it is what I love. How is it possible to be contented with anything else when one has come face to face with history?

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

It’s better to have a bad plan then no plan at all.

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

It’s impossible in normal times to rally a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese.

Victory often goes to the army that makes the least mistakes, not the most brilliant plans.

He who laughs last didn’t get the joke.

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.

The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.

Do not glory in your own faith, your own feelings, your own knowledge, or your own diligence. Glory in nothing but Christ.

We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.

Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.

If you have to make laws to hurt a group of people just to prove your morals and faith, then you have no true morals or faith to prove.

The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.

People will not understand your journey. Walk it anyway. Sometimes crazy looks a awful lot like faith.

Surrender is a gift that you can give yourself. It’s an act of faith. It’s saying that even though I can’t see where this river is flowing, I trust it will take me in the right direction.

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.