Quotes By Napoleon Bonaparte

The art of choosing men is not nearly so difficult as the art of enabling those chosen to attain their full worth.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other. They are worse than ever when, at the termination of their punishment, they return to society.

Cossacks are the best light troops among all that exist. If I had them in my army, I would go through all the world with them.

Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space.

There is no Nation however small which had the right to set itself free, that has not rescued itself from the dishonour of obeying the Prince imposed by an enemy in the hour of victory.

If I were an Englishman, I should esteem the man who advised a war with China to be the greatest living enemy of my country. You would be beaten in the end, and perhaps a revolution in India would follow.

Reconnaissance memoranda should always be written in the simplest style and be purely descriptive. They should never stray from their objective by introducing extraneous ideas.

People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable, pitiful.

When you have resolved to fight a battle, collect your whole force. Dispense with nothing. A single battalion sometimes decides the day.

Whatever misanthropists may say, ingrates and the perverse are exceptions in the human species.

Great events ever depend but upon a single hair. The adroit man profits by everything, neglects nothing which can increase his chances; the less adroit, by sometimes disregarding a single chance, fails in everything.

Every private in the French army carries a Field Marshall wand in his knapsack.

The Allied Powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, he, faithful to his oath, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, to quit France, and even to relinquish life, for the good of his country.

The people excited by ambitious demagogues, sooner or later return into the hands of the Aristocracy.

A leader has the right to be beaten, but never the right to be surprised.

Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory - but so are those of the ballet, or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living.

Independence, like honor, is a rocky island, without a beach.

Conscription is the vitality of a nation, the purification of its morality, and the real foundations of all its habits.

Two armies are two bodies which meet and try to frighten each other.

All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as a ruined edifice, before a single word: faith.