Quotes By Napoleon Bonaparte

My downfall raises me to infinite heights.

Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration.

My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Domingue (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world.

Sometimes a single battle decides everything and sometimes, too, the slightest circumstance decides the issue of a battle. There is a moment in every battle at which the least manoeuvre is decisive and gives superiority, as one drop of water causes overflow.

Order marches with weighty and measured strides. Disorder is always in a hurry.

Every beggar shall be arrested. But to arrest a beggar merely in order to put him in jail would be barbarous and absurd. He should be arrested for the sole purpose of teaching him how to earn a living by his work.

A man becomes the creature of his uniform.

The secret of war lies in the communications.

The heart may be broken, and the soul remain unshaken.

I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.

I like honest men of all colours.

Fashion condemns us to many follies, the greatest is to make oneself its slave.

That man [Sir Sydney Smith] made me miss my destiny.

A people that is able to say everything, becomes able to do everything. The crowd which follows me with admiration, would run with the same eagerness were I marching to the Guillotine.

I may lose a battle but I will never lose a minute.

My true glory is not to have won 40 battles; Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories. But what nothing will erase, what will live forever, is my Civil Code.

Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.

True heroism consists in rising superior to misfortune.

The greatest ornament of an illustrious life is modesty and humility, which go a great way in the character even of the most exalted princes.

Remember that a man, a true man, never hates. His rages and his bad moods never last beyond the present moment-like electric shocks.