Antoine Baudouin Gisbert de Dedem Quotes

Nothing fails like success.

The very strength of a nation eventually proves to be its weakness.

Napoleon—mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream.

As soon as you're put on a pedestal, you're easily knocked off it.

And he that strives to touch the stars, Oft stumbles at a straw.

We've seen a lot of people self-destruct because of a small taste of success.

A certain death of an artist is overconfidence.

Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

Thinking you're a genius is death.

As soon as you think you can do whatever you want and you have whatever great professional in the world waiting to work with you, then you are sunk.

The tragedy of Eliot Spitzer is almost Greek: Ascendant son of wealth and privilege dedicates his life to social justice, warns of the corruption lurking among us, and falls victim to his inner demons at the very moment of vindication.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure.

When you have success, people think you know what you're doing, and you start to agree with them, you think you can conquer the world. But you go from grandiosity to panic.

I had always been fascinated with Napoleon because he was a self-made emperor; Victor Hugo said, 'Napoleon's will to power,' and it was the title of my paper. And I submitted it to my teacher, and he didn't think I had written it. And he wanted me to explain it to him.

I used to say of Napoleon that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.

You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans.

The Turkish Empire has just committed suicide.

[Of Napoleon BonaparteII:] His mind was a kind of extinct sulfur pit.

The greatest enemy a man can have is his prosperity.

The success is too dearly bought.

[Napoleon Bonaparte:] A very great mind, and a rather small soul.

We shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto unheard of power, but every other nation will think we shall abuse it.

Enormous monarchies are probably destructive to human nature in their progress, in their continuance and even in their own downfall.

A London retail tradesman with the aims of a Napoleon! A queer monstrosity to be justified only by success. And above all a loop-hole into the socialist party; one of the small body of men with whom I may sooner or later throw in my lot for good and all.