“I know he’s a good general, but is he lucky?”

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.

War is the business of barbarians.

It is only by prudence, wisdom, and dexterity, that great ends are attained and obstacles overcome. Without these qualities nothing succeeds.

As a rule it is circumstances that make men.

There shall be no Alps.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

Men are Moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds, I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

Never tell your enemy he is doing the wrong thing.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.

We frustrate many designs against us by pretending not to see them.

The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.

Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

Nothing, including human suffering, happens by chance.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad; his countenance unconquered.

Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!

Living Life Tomorrow’s fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.

Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate; And many a Knot unravel’d by the Road; But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.

Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure – such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?