"A first impulse was never a crime."

"True, I am young, but for souls nobly born valor doesn't await the passing of years."

"Danger breeds best on too much confidence."

"To vanquish without peril is to triumph without glory."

"How delicious is pleasure after torment!"

"This dark brightness that falls from the stars."

"It is a crime against the State to be powerful enough to commit one."

"Flee an enemy who knows your weakness."

"I don't know how to defend myself: surprised innocence cannot imagine being under suspicion."

"Love is a tyrant sparing none."

"In the service of Caesar, everything is legitimate."

"It takes good memory to keep up a lie."

"One half of my life has put the other half in the grave."

"We never taste happiness in perfection, our most fortunate successes are mixed with sadness."

"The subject of a good tragedy must not be realistic."

"Oh rage! Oh despair! Oh age, my enemy!"

"To win without risk is to triumph without glory."

"When we conquer without danger our triumph is without glory."

"One is often guilty by being too just."

"Self-love is the source of all our other loves."

"As great as kings may be, they are what we are: they can err like other men."

"Do your duty and leave the rest to heaven."

"Oh, how sweet it is to pity the fate of an enemy who can no longer threaten us!"

"One often calms one's grief by recounting it."

"To take revenge halfheartedly is to court disaster; either condemn or crown your hatred."

"I have deserved neither so much honor or so much disgrace."

"Just vengeance does not call for punishment."

"A good memory is needed after one has lied."

"Reason and love are sworn enemies."

"I can be forced to live without happiness, but I will never consent to live without honor."

"The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame."

"To die for one's country is such a worthy fate that all compete for so beautiful a death."

"Clemency is the noblest trait which can reveal a true monarch to the world."

"Master of the universe but not of myself, I am the only rebel against my absolute power."

"A true king is neither husband nor father; he considers his throne and nothing else."

"Alas, I emerge from one disaster to fall into a worse."

"We never taste a perfect joy; our happiest successes are mixed with sadness."

"It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace."

"When the patient loves his disease, how unwilling he is to allow a remedy to be applied."

"The greater the effort, the greater the glory."

"My reason, it's true, controls my feelings, but whatever its authority, it doesn't rule them so much as tyrannize them."

"Ambition aspires to descend."

"He who allows me to rule is in fact my master."

"Force is legitimate where gentleness avails not."

"Each instant of life is a step toward death."

"Treachery is noble when aimed at tyranny."

"A Victory without danger is a triumph without glory."

"An example is often a deceptive mirror, and the order of destiny, so troubling to our thoughts, is not always found written in things past."

"He who fears not death fears not a threat."

"He who can live in infamy is unworthy of life."