Top 867 Quotes & Sayings by Napoleon Bonaparte - Page 12
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French statesman Napoleon Bonaparte.
Last updated on November 29, 2024.
Fashion condemns us to many follies, the greatest is to make oneself its slave.
Rigorous authority and justice are the kindness of kings.
After me, the Revolution - or, rather the ideas which formed it - will resume their course. It will be like a book from which the marker is removed, and one starts to read again at the page where one left off.
Kiss the feet of Popes provided their hands are tied.
When you have resolved to fight a battle, collect your whole force. Dispense with nothing. A single battalion sometimes decides the day.
The best generals are those who have served in the artillery.
Men are lead by trifles.
If you want to get on in this world make many promises, but don't keep them.
The people excited by ambitious demagogues, sooner or later return into the hands of the Aristocracy.
I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.
I shall be an Attila to Venice.
Equality should be the chief basis of the education of youth.
Wherever wood can swim, there I am sure to find this flag of England.
If you (to General Bertrand) do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, very well; then I did wrong to make you a general.
In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality.
Rashness succeeds often, still more often fails.
A fool is only troublesome, a pedant insupportable.
A king is sometimes obliged to commit crimes; but they are the crimes of his position.
Conquests will come and go but Delambre's work will endure.
Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin.
Posterity alone rightly judges kings. Posterity alone has the right to accord or withhold honors.
I generally had to give in.
Send me 300 francs; that sum will enable me to go to Paris. There, at least, one can cut a figure and surmount obstacles. Everything tells me I shall succeed. Will you prevent me from doing so for the want of 100 crowns?
Men, in general, are but great children.
Ability is of little account without opportunity. I have very rarely met with two o'clock in the morning courage: I mean instantaneous courage.
It is easier to brave and threaten, than to conquer an enemy.
Unavailable wars are always just.
Every means should be taken to attach the soldier to his colours.
Leaders deal in hope.
True wisdom for a general is vigorous determination.
War is cruel to the people, and terrible to the conquered.
Soldiers! Forty centuries behold you!
All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as a ruined edifice, before a single word: faith.
To imagine that it is possible to perform great military deeds without fighting is just empty dreams.
The allies we gain by victory will turn against us upon the bare whisper of our defeat.
In politics nothing is immutable. Events carry within them an invincible power.
France needs nothing so much to promote her regeneration as good mothers.
The affairs of war, like the destiny of battles, as well as empires, hang upon a spiders thread.
The great difficulty with politics is, that there are no established principles.
The most constant, the most powerful, and the most generous of all my enemies.
France is invaded; I am leaving to take command of my troops, and, with God's help and their valor, I hope soon to drive the enemy beyond the frontier.
It is not by whining that one carries out the job of king.
Being in the Tuileries is not everything: what matters is to stay here.
There are certain things in war of which the commander alone comprehends the importance. Nothing but his superior firmness and ability can subdue and surmount all difficulties.
Liberty and equality are magical words.
Variety made the Revolution. Liberty was just a pretext.
Take a dose of medicine once, and in all probability you will be obliged to take an additional hundred afterwards
In matters of government, justice means force as well as virtue.
We should wash our dirty linen at home.
An army must have but one line of operations. This must be maintained with care and abandoned only for major reasons.
The fate of war is to be exalted in the morning, and low enough at night! There is but one step from triumph to ruin.
Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same.
The law, that is what makes men stay honest.
The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances.
Every French soldier carriers a marshal's baton in his knapsack.
Parties weaken themselves by their fear of capable men.
I have doubtless erred more or less in politics, but a crime I never committed.
Flatterers and men of learning do not accord well with each other.
Soldiers! Here is the battle you have so long desired! Henceforth victory depends on you; we have need of it.
In war, groping tactics, half-way measures, lose everything.
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