Quotes from Napoleon Bonaparte

If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.

Imagination rules the world.

Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

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.

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

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.

In war as in love, to bring matters to a close, you must get close together.

Friendship is but a name. I love no one.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

Secrets travel fast in Paris.

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.

It is not necessary to bury the truth. It is sufficient merely to delay it until nobody cares.

The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.

To be believed make the truth unbelievable.

Lies circle the earth while Truth is still trying to put on its shoes.

I do not believe it is in our nature to love impartially. We deceive ourselves when we think we can love two beings, even our own children, equally. There is always a dominant affection.

I have never loved anyone for love's sake except, perhaps, Josephine - a little.

The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.

I have made noise enough in the world already, perhaps too much, and am now getting old, and want retirement.

Courage is like love it must have hope for nourishment.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

The army is the true nobility of our country.

As to moral courage, I have very rarely met with the two o'clock in the morning kind. I mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgement and decision.