Great Throughts Treasury

"Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment."

"Don’t talk to me of goodness, of abstract justice, of natural law. Necessity is the highest law."

"Great empires die of indigestion."

"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."

"I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion… The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other."

"I had few really definite ideas, and the reason for this was that, instead of obstinately seeking to control circumstances, I obeyed them, and they forced me to change my mind all the time."

"Imagination rules the world."

"It requires more courage to suffer than to die."

"If you want a thing done well, do it yourself."

"International incidents must not be allowed to shape foreign policy; foreign policy must shape the incidents."

"It is only a step from victory to disaster. My experience is that, in a crisis, some detail always decides the issue."

"Men of genius are meters destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age."

"Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues."

"My dominion ends where that of conscience begins."

"No one but myself can be blamed for my fall. I have been my own greatest enemy - the cause of my own disastrous fate."

"The men who have changed the universe have never accomplished it changing officials but always by inspiring the people."

"The art of the police consists in punishing rarely and severely."

"One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent."

"Nothing is more salutary than a terrible example given at the right time."

"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."

"The only conquests which are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves."

"The police invent more than they discover."

"The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know."

"The true wealth of a state consists in the number of its inhabitants, in their toil and industry."

"The truest wisdom, in general, is a resolute determinism."

"There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time."

"There are different ways of assassinating a man - by pistol, sword, poison, or moral assassination. They are the same in their results except that the last is more cruel."

"To absorb, to emit, to form new combinations – that is life."

"When it comes to conspiracy, everything is permissible."

"Victory belongs to the most persevering."

"Vengeance has no foresight."

"Women belong to the highest bidder. Power is what they like – it is the greatest of all aphrodisiacs."

"Work with your ministers twice a week – once with each of them separately and once with them all together in Council."

"A man cannot become an atheist merely by wishing it."

"A picture is worth a thousand words. "

"A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories."

"A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets."

"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon."

"A true man hates no one. "

"Ambition never is in a greater hurry that I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking."

"A throne is only a bench covered with velvet."

"Ability is nothing without opportunity. "

"Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily."

"An army marches on its stomach. "

"England is a nation of shopkeepers."

"Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight."

"Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals."

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

"France has more need of me than I have need of France."

"From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us."