Most captains have trouble with their ship’s people from time to time – on occasion it is a continual sullen covert war – and unless they make cronies of their first lieutenants, as some do, they have to chew it over alone. I do not wonder that so many of them grow strange or bloody-minded; or run melancholy mad, for that matter.
~Capt. Jack Aubrey, Patrick O’Brian
Falsehood always seeks to imitate the truth.
~Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges
The winning side is most widely applauded when the victory is evident.
~Patrick O’Brian
Political trials are always vain formalities; for the very passions that produce the accusation also lead to the condemnation. Such is the terrible logic of revolutions.
~Alexandre Dumas, Twenty Years After
Very little achievement is required in order to pity another man’s shortcomings.
~George Eliot, Middlemarch
As long as a man is in command, be he the worst of fools, there are people around him committed to the belief that he commands well.
~Maurice Druon
Stupidity is no bar to enterprise; on the contrary, it tends to conceal difficulties which an intelligent man would consider insuperable.
~Maurice Druon
It is terrifying to think how much research is needed to determine the truth of even the most unimportant fact.
~Stendhal
It is a great misfortune to be born with the soul of a king if one is not destined to reign.
~Maurice Druon
The best friendships are based on mutual interest and common plans for the future.
~Maurice Druon
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