40 Quotes by William Bolitho

In short, she (Seraphina) had luck and judgment, but no morals.

But the better the training, the greater and more detailed the preparation, the more men are at the mercy of the impossible.

Yet, feeling his way, starting by the passive opposition of small thefts, stealing sausage ends and crusts of bread when Signora Squeers was asleep, he (Casanova) progressed until he arrived at the thought “ that it was ridiculous to be oppressed

He (Cicero) made Catiline and his conspiracy actually simple; the man himself had the courage to sit in front of him and listen, and at the end, it seemed as if he had exposed Catiline even to himself.

In politics, where everything romantic and sentimental is folly, the converse is usually considered true, and every brutality is thought sound sense

Where he (Alexander) came the inhabitants either accepted him with roses and wine, or fought and were beaten. He preferred the latter.

If he had wished, he could have annexed Denmark; and ended a thousand years of war and history. But Charles had no weaknesses; now and thereafter he was behaving out of a book. The first maxim of Alexanderism is never to stop; Charles continued.

Like most people of his temperament, though sociable, he (Napolean) disliked company in which he would have to appear merely as one of the crowd, even if not definitely as an inferior

And he loved her—with the exalted and romantic intensity that a social climber gives to a woman whom he thinks superior to his own class.