Oh, I have a habit of letting myself be lectured on the things I know best. I like to see if they are understood in the same way I understand; for there are many ways of knowing the same thing
Observe this fact: in the history of mankind, every ruler who has lacked personal greatness has been forced to compensate for the deficiency by setting up the executioner at his right hand like a guardian angel
To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances; and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame
One is always a good master when one isn’t the master
I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words
The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds
On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.
Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France – that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?
Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.
Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?