The supreme empire is that of the Emperor who renounces all normal life, that of other men, and in who the care of supremacy doesn't weigh like a load of jewels.

I always live in the present. The future I can't know. The past I no longer have.

I will be what I want. But I will have to want what I'll be. Success is in having success, not conditions for success.

There's no regret more painful than the regret of things that never were.

The orators-and the despots-have the least power in their cities ... since they do nothing that they wish to do, practically speaking, though they do whatever …

Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own i…

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.