Napoleon Bonaparte was never shy about sharing his opinions. A pro-revolutionary pamphlet he wrote at 23 helped him wangle his first important army job, command of the artillery at the siege of Toulon.
I’ve been collecting the conqueror’s quotes for a non-fiction project. Some of his sayings have found their way into my Ethan Gage fiction series, as well as many homilies from Benjamin Franklin. The American sage is the master of commonsense, while Napoleon gives us a peek into the mind of the driven Alpha male.
Here’s a Napoleonic sampling. I don’t endorse these, but they illustrate why I find the guy so fascinating.
“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” Few people were as obsessed by his afterlife in the history books as Napoleon, who seemed to care more about posterity than happiness.
“History is written by the winners.” Yep, and you lost.
“Great ambition is the passion of a great character.” Which is why Napoleon’s life makes such good reading. And, “Power is my mistress.”
On the fact that nobody’s perfect: “Are there not spots upon the sun?”
Napoleon was aggressive from childhood, and viewed life as struggle. “To live is to suffer, and the honest man is always fighting to be master of his own mind.”
Napoleon was also endlessly creative, be it in battle, politics, administration, law, or public works. “Imagination governs the world,” he said.
He protested, unconvincingly, that war was forced upon him. “If we have battled in every part of the continent,” he said, “it is because two opposing social orders were facing each other.” He meant royalism and the ideals of the French Revolution.
Napoleon was fascinated by the mix of circumstance and free will that determined his own life. “Circumstances? What are circumstances? I make circumstances,” he said once. But he also commented, “I have made all the calculations, fate will do the rest.”
His view of God or the lack thereof isn’t clear, but his attitude toward organized religion was consistently cynical. “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”
He also remarked, “The surest way to remain poor is to be honest.”
His health advice? “The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.”
Bonaparte is most famous for military maxims, of which the favorite is probably, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
“I’m not sure if it would be Democrats or Republicans happier with this one: “Democracy, if it is reasonable, limits itself to give everyone an equal opportunity to compete and to obtain.”
But Teddy Roosevelt of ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ fame would have liked, “Put your iron hand in a velvet glove.”
And librarians and booksellers should quote: “Show me a family of readers, and I will show the people who move the world.”
Napoleon liked sex but was notoriously sexist, even by the standards of his day. He believed education doesn’t suit girls, said, “Women are nothing but machines for producing children,” and maintained “Women think only of dress and pleasure.” Ouch. No wonder Germaine de Stael, a noted intellectual, moved away.
Not surprisingly, he complained of loneliness, betrayal, and suspicion. “Friendship is only a word, I care for nobody,” he said once. And, “Love does more harm than good.” But then Josephine cheated on him within weeks of their marriage.
Bonaparte was certainly moody and prone to rages. He flirted with thoughts of suicide as a teen and actually tried it at his first abdication in 1814. (The poison was stale.) “Existence is a curse, rather than a blessing.”
That’s sad, but then he had a grim view of life. “Deep tragedy is the school of great men,” he remarked.
So what did he like? “There is joy in danger.”
I don’t think there is any danger of Benjamin Franklin’s homilies being eclipsed by Napoleon’s. But Bonaparte remains riveting.
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Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point. You clearly know what youre talking about, why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to your weblog when you could be giving us something enlightening to read?