A legislator must know how to take advantage of even the defects of those he wants to govern. The art consists in making others work rather than in wearing oneself out.
A great reputation is a great noise, the more there is of it, and the further does it swell. Land, monuments, Nations, all fall, but the noise remains, and will reach to other generations.
My true glory is not to have won 40 battles ... Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories, ... But ... what will live forever, is my Civil Code.
Each state claims the right to control interests foreign to itself when those interests are such that it can control them without putting its own interests in danger. ... other powers only recognize this right of intervening in proportion as the country doing it has the power to do it.