Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Napoleon I (Emperor of France)

Napoleon I (1769–1821,) also called Napoléon Bonaparte, was the Emperor of France 1804–14 and 1815. One of the greatest military conquerors in history, he remade the map of Europe through his conquests. His significant administrative and legal reforms promoted the growth of liberalism.

Of racially Italian background, Napoleon was born Napoleone Buonaparte in Ajaccio in Corsica. He was educated in the military schools at Brienne (1779) and Paris (1784.) After a meteoric rise through the French Revolutionary Army, Napoleon took power in 1799 as First Consul and assumed the hereditary title of Emperor in 1804.

Napoleon’s many reforms left a lasting mark on the institutions of France and of much of Western Europe. He revolutionized military organization and training, established a French empire that stretched from Spain to Poland, dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, and instituted the long-lived Concordat with the papacy. He also sponsored the Napoleonic Code, the modern French legal, administrative, and educational systems.

Napoleon’s driving passion was the military expansion of French dominion. After his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, he was forced into exile in 1814, and, returning to power a year later, was defeated at Waterloo (1815) by the Duke of Wellington’s Anglo-allied army. The British government banished Napoleon to the distant island of St. Helena in the mid-Atlantic, where he died of a stomach illness and was buried in the Valley of the Willows there.

Napoleon’s remains were brought to Paris in 1840 and given a magnificent funeral. Since 1861, his tomb is located in the crypt under the dome at Les Invalides.

Notable biographies of Napoleon include the British historian Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon the Great (2014; USA: Napoleon: A Life) and Frank Kafker and James Laux’s Napoleon and His Times (1989.)

The Foundation Napoléon archives the Emperor’s 33,000 surviving letters.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Napoleon I

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.
Napoleon I
Topics: Humor

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
Napoleon I
Topics: Glory

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.
Napoleon I
Topics: Peace

The art of the police is not to see what it is useless that it should see.
Napoleon I
Topics: Police, Control

The only victory over love is flight.
Napoleon I
Topics: Victory, Love

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.
Napoleon I
Topics: Wisdom

The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one’s designs to one’s means.
Napoleon I
Topics: Insanity

Who saves his country violates no law.
Napoleon I
Topics: Patriotism

Revolutions are like the most noxious dung-heaps, which bring into life the noblest vegetables.
Napoleon I
Topics: Revolution

The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.
Napoleon I
Topics: Regret, Achievements

If I were an Englishman, I should esteem the man who advised a war with China to be the greatest living enemy of my country. You would be beaten in the end, and perhaps a revolution in India would follow.
Napoleon I

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principals which direct them.
Napoleon I
Topics: Ambition

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
Napoleon I
Topics: Oppression

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.
Napoleon I
Topics: Politicians, Politics

You medical people will have more lives to answer for in the other world than even we generals.
Napoleon I
Topics: Medicine, Doctors

Fashion condemns us to many follies; the greatest is to make ourselves its slave.
Napoleon I
Topics: Fashion

The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
Napoleon I
Topics: The Military, Failures, Navy, Mistakes, Army

History is simply the version of past events that people have decided to agree on.
Napoleon I
Topics: History, Events

Even in war moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.
Napoleon I
Topics: Power

Every private in the French army carries a Field Marshall wand in his knapsack.
Napoleon I
Topics: Leadership, Leaders

Men are led by trifles.
Napoleon I
Topics: Leaders, Trifles, Leadership

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.
Napoleon I
Topics: Control

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
Napoleon I
Topics: Suffering, Bravery, Courage

Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.
Napoleon I
Topics: Music

The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.
Napoleon I

The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.
Napoleon I
Topics: Poverty

There are calumnies against which even innocence loses courage.
Napoleon I

The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.
Napoleon I
Topics: Children, Future, Mother, The Future

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.
Napoleon I
Topics: Fighting, Competition

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.
Napoleon I
Topics: Opinion, Public opinion

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