Famous quotes selected by my friend Alex(in six years-now he is 20+ and in love,living in London, with an ideal Romania surviving far away!)

-Your sex [feminine] has far too few advantages, so you might as well make the most of the ones you have- Marquis de Merteuil, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

-A great reputation is like a great noise. The more noise one makes, the further it carries one. Laws, institutions, monuments, nations- all these disappear- but the noise remains and echoes down through the generations-  Napoleon

-Victory is always a coronation- Napoleon

-Philosophy is a bridge between science and religion- Bertrand Russell

-In a constitutional principality the ruler needs neither prowess nor fortune but luck- Machiavelli, Il Principe

-Christianity today is the violated religion of the age of freedom

-Totul depinde de oameni

-It is the role of philosophy to make peace between religion and science

-The magnet has a soul in it because it moves the iron

-Monumental art comes with a wealthy prince- Vasari

-Great enterprises are often driven by a touch of naiveti

-Cel mai mare pacat al omului este nestinta- Dimitrie Cantemir

-The further you are from the world, the prettier it looks

-If you want to beat the killer at his own game, you have to become one yourself- Sue Ellen.

-To divorce literature from history is to impoverish both

-Books make one see the great sketches of the world

-On Americans: Simplicity of manners, willingness to oblige, love of country and of liberty and an easy equality prevail here. The richest and the poorest are on the same level and although there are immense fortunes, I defy anyone to find the least difference in their bearing toward each other- Alexis de Tocquville, Democracy in America

-An analytical mind uses both a telescope and a microscope in the quest for an answer

-Muzica clasica este muzica iubitorului de intelepciune- HR Patapievici

-Ambition is the golden screw of our inner engine

-Do not let evil into your heart; if you do, it will make a home there- Hercule Poirot, Death on the Nile

-The wars of a Republic are fought in defence, the ones of an Empire are offensive- Napoleon

-Nations often pursue power the way a miser hoards money

-Big words are no longer used because they attract suspicion

-The higher the office, the higher the paranoia.

-Women always remind men of marriage- Oscar Wilde

-The way up and the way down is one and the same

-There is a certain pleasure in our tears

-The Papacy is the ghost of the Roman Empire

-I’m not asking you to break the law, I’m merely asking you to bend it

-I don’t know how to caress with words, I need to touch- Josephine to Napoleo

-Plutarch stresses the power of character in historical figures

-Religion is the opium of the people- Karl Marx

-Our hands often go where we do not tell them

-The Confucian code in china discouraged private wealth and noveaux riches

-Dictatorship is the only alternative to emergency powers

-The happiest occupation for any man is to manage his private concerns without injustice

-The best time to quit is while you’re undefeated

-If you have profited from life, you have had your fill; now go away satisfied

-Grace cannot be learnt; it is something you either have, or don’t – Grace Kelly

-A world without tyrants would be as dull as a zoo without hienas

-When one is in Egypt, one should dwell deeply into its treasures- James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me

-Diplomacy must never become a statement

-Better a little caution than a great regret

-Stupidity is a bad quality, but to be unable to put up with it is another — my favourite quote

-They think that virtue is but a word and that sacred groves are meer matchwood

-In an era of personal monarchy it is important to see the king regularly because he is the source of patronage and power

-Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac- Henry Kissinger

-If you wish to take over a country, start first by taking over public opinion

-We must take one step back in order to take two steps foward- Lenin

-Mergi in sat, dai de veste, vii acasa – faci cum poti

-The wise courtier senses when his master secretly wants him to disobey- Lavrenti Beria

-Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always with the noblest motivev- Oscar Wilde

-The Swiss are a people little given to vanity and lying

-Nothing poisons monarchs more than flattery

-If you want to know the people around you, find out what they read- Stalin

-Social cohesion determines individual liberty

-The three centres of learning of the ancient world where Athens, Antioch and Alexandria

-Death is the origin of another life

-Experience is futile if after it you do not draw some sort of judgment – Alex Mihai

-One must be a fox to recognise traps, and a lion to scare off the wolfs- Machiavelli

-Real statements do not involve themselves in petty arguments – Metternich

-The liberation of Asia wand its markets would have been impossible without the putting into practice of the American Dream

-When a man is in love, he sometimes forgets conventions

-A strong passion can only be replaced by a stronger one

-Time is the father of truth – Montaigne

-If the cavemen had known how to laugh, history would have been very different

-Balzac regarded the novel as an instrument of scientific inquiry. He remarked that the differences between a soldier and a labourer are as considerable as those that mark out the wolf and the lion, and was concerned with description and classification of men and women as ‘social species’ as well as with their variations from the class as highly specialized individuals.

-From the tigers stripes and the horses hoofs you can deduce the conditions of life.

-Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition- Montaigne

-Do not lie if you have a bad memory- Alex Mihai

-Switzerland is unique because unlike many nations it has maintained that all important rusticity

-Victory is made up of a thousand successes -Alex Mihai

-Men are tormented not by things themselves but by what they think about them – Epictetus

-Fortune furnishes us with the matter and leaves us to supply the form

-Within a narrow round the mind is narrowed – Schiller

-Better in the company of silence, than in the language of falsehood- Montaigne

-Ming dynasty emerged in 1368 to save the old order and drive out the Mongols

-He who builds on people builds on mud- Mussolini

-Anger often makes us embark on enterprises which are often beyond our capacity of realization

-Yours words are the sort of things a fox says to a crow

-You can’t liable the dead

-Success always has a shadow- Alex Mihai

-The rich demand law to maintain order and tranquility, and above all to protect their possessions

-Politicians are often opportunists skilled at pursuing their private interests in the guise of public service

-A scholar must be intersted in everything

-There are many things we would like to throw away, if we were not afraid of other picking them up

-The joy of a caged bird is in her voice

-It is the perogative of good people to have evil thought of them by the bad

-All that is to happen is written down- Napoleon

-On Chess: Never put the queen at risk, she’ll get into it by herself

-Eloquence wins great reputation

-People know the price of everything, but the value of nothing

-How we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation- Machiavelli

-A man who values his reputation will not think of starting a love affair with a woman who is either timid, fearful, lascivious, frivolous, or to well guarded

-Never leave anything to chance- Alex Mihai

-Tiberius was a diplomat; he took it bit by bit.

-Will there ever come a day when hills shall be made low?

-Too long a sacrifice, can make a stone of a heart

-The price of power is not being cheerful

-Intoxication is the destruction of prudence

-The key to success is patience

-A great writer is, so to speak, a second government of his country

-What a silly tastless age we live in!

-A banks role is to make money, not preserve its chastity- Alex Mihai

-The base must equal the height

-I learnt from him like the Greek learnt from the Egyptians

-Persian empire was founded on the ruins of the Babylion

-Instability is an opportunity…for some

-Governments which are set up overnight, much like everything in nature who growth is forced, lack strong roots and ramifications

-Pleasure is the test of nature

-What we learn in school we are taught for schoolroom, not for life

-The Spartans were accustomed to deeds not words

-Heaven belong by right to those who have fought great fights and accomplished fine works on earth

-Truth can no longer be ascertained by consulting authority, but by inner meditation

-Plato remarked that the ideal state is one in which philosophers are kings, and vice versa

-Sometimes the mind has to escape from itself- Alex Mihai

-International systems live precautiously

-Every world order expresses an aspiration of permanence- Henry Kissinger

-The historian does not have the luxury of reshaping events to fit the skeleton of a plot, which means that the story he tells can have neither a clear beginning nor a definite end

-Intellect is in itself an exageration, and its destroys the harmony of any face – Lord Henry, Picture of Dorian Grey

-Once you let the individual rule, disorder follows! – Alex Mihai

-The less a man has relied on fortune, the stronger his position -

-In an autocracy, the accounts are only audited by the ruler!

-The fall of Troy marks the beginning of a struggle between East and West

-If a man says no without a reason, take the hint, and find the answer to his decline elsewhere -Alex Mihai

-Vices are less powerful than they seem