Inspirational Quotes by Napoleon I (Emperor of France)

Inspirational Quotations 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

No matter where you go, however far away, a part of me will be with you and a part of you, with me, will stay
But to see her was to love her, love but her, and love her forever
As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Romance, Love

When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.
—Napoleon I

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

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
—Napoleon I

Medicines are only fit for old people.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Medicine

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Religion

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

Ability is of little account without opportunity.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Opportunities, Ability

The true policy of a government is to make use a aristocracy, but under the forms and in the spirit of democracy.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Class

The French complain of everything, and always.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Nationality

The greatest ornament of an illustrious life is modesty and humility, which go a great way in the character even of the most exalted princes.
—Napoleon I

There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Time, Time Management

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.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Evil, Crime

Power is founded upon opinion.
—Napoleon I

Ability is of little account without opportunity.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Opportunity

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Thinking, Procrastination, Action

Impossible! That is not good French.
—Napoleon I

A leader is a dealer in hope.
—Napoleon I

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one’s self to destiny.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Caution, Risk, Worry, Attitude, Perspective

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

Religion is what keeps the poor man from murdering the rich.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Religion

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Freedom, Decisions, Thought

Public instruction should be the first object of government.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Government, Education

If you wish to be success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Promises

I made all my generals out of mud.
—Napoleon I

Let the path be open to talent.
—Napoleon I

It is the cause and not merely the death that makes the martyr.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Leaders, Leadership, Heroes

To do all that one is able to do is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do is to be a god.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Awareness, Acceptance, Realization, Realistic Expectations

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.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Space, Ability, Conscience

War is the business of barbarians.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Business, War

If I had believed in a God of rewards and punishments, I might have lost courage in battle
—Napoleon I
Topics: Battle

I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
—Napoleon I

Glory is fleeting,
but obscurity is forever.
—Napoleon I

Once you have made up your mind, stick to it; there is no longer any ‘if’ or ‘but’.
—Napoleon I
Topics: Decisions

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
—Napoleon I

What do I care about circumstances? I create circumstances.
—Napoleon I