A biography for Napoleon Bonapartehasn’t been written yet.
“The French complain of everything, and always.”
“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 made all my generals out of mud.”
“Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use made of them.”
“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.”
“The battle of Austerlitz is the grandest of all I have fought.”
“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”
“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
“You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.”
“When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.”
“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”
“I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.”
“Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.”
“It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.”
“A Constitution should be short and obscure.”
“Water, air, and cleanness are the chief articles in my pharmacy.”
“The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.”
“Let the path be open to talent.”
“A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.”
“From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.”