"Ordinarily men exercise their memory much more..." - Quote by Napoleon Bonaparte

“All the great captains have performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of art--by adjusting efforts to obstacles.”

“A man becomes the creature of his uniform.”

“To command, you must first of all speak to the eyes.”

“Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.”

“What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him.”

“The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.”

“There is an ancient script that says, 'He that wishes to be ignorant, let him be ignorant.' But I took off the last word and it now reads for me like this: He that wishes to be ignorant, let him be!”

“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.”

“One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.”