“Great empires are not maintained by timidity.”

Christianity is a pestilent superstition.

An honorable death is better than a dishonorable life.

A woman once fallen will shrink from no impropriety.

Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.

It is the nature of the human disposition to hate him whom you have injured.

Reason and calm judgment, the qualities specially belonging to a leader.

We extol ancient things, regardless of our own times. [Lat., Vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi.]

The powerful hold in deep remembrance an ill-timed pleasantry. [Lat., Facetiarum apud praepotentes in longum memoria est.]

War will of itself discover and lay open the hidden and rankling wounds of the victorious party.

[That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty. [Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]

Necessity reforms the poor, and satiety reforms the rich.

Perdomita Britannia et statim omissa. Britain was conquered and immediately lost.

In seasons of tumult and discord bad men have most power; mental and moral excellence require peace and quietness.

It is more reverent to believe in the works of the Deity than to comprehend them.

In valor there is hope.

It is a principle of human nature to hate those whom we have injured.

The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.

The Roman Empire was very, very much like us. They lost their moral core, their sense of values in terms of who they were. And after all of those things converged together, they just went right down the tubes very quickly.

It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

By now it is evident that the Soviet Union must gain control of Europe to maintain its empire.

First of all I love Empire Records and That Thing You Do and all the movies he did from that era. He hates when I bring that up.

The story of the fifth century was one of the exploitation of imperial weakness.

I have done many impious things–no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.