"Napoleon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION. The process of sanitary science not at the cost of religion Illustration from the policy of Napoleon III in France Effect of proper sanitation on epidemics in the United States Change in the attitude of the Church toward the cause ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... is the first link in his chain—a chain with this Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken fighting men, pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the other, with every sort of crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel Sebastian Moran, as aloof and guarded and inaccessible to the law ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is a mistake. The easiest and most natural solution of wonderful results is the supposition of genius, inspiration, heroism, as their cause. Great men explain history. Napoleon explains the history of Europe during a quarter of a century. Suppose a critic, a thousand years hence, should resolve Napoleon into half a dozen Napoleons; would they explain the history of Europe as well? Given a man like Napoleon, and we can understand the French ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... small bookcase in your dressing-room; in so doing you will learn the art of going to bed well. Read at any time when curiosity is aroused as to any person, place, or subject, and keep reference books at hand to answer questions intelligently. Napoleon read all the new novels in a travelling carriage, and pitched them out of the window as each was finished. Active minds, to read advantageously, should seek a ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... the whites of Tullahoma County to those who deal fluently with questions of which they know but little, was fain to take Bill's sincere advice. Behind the shelter of the first clump of trees, he folded his arms into a posture as near resembling that of Napoleon as he could assume. He frowned heavily. "Huh!" said he savagely, looking from one to another of the crew who made his "posse." "Huh!" he said again, and yet again, "Huh!" A cloud sat on his soul. It seemed ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... on one side, and Wellington and Blucher (the Prussian General) on the other. Its result was the defeat of Napoleon, and his imprisonment by the Allies in St. Helena. The festivities held at Brussels, the headquarters of the British Army, on the eve of the battle, were rudely disturbed by the news that ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... historical allusion compounded of the very ancient traditions of the Saracens in the south, and of the more recent wars of Napoleon. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... of desolation stands Chateau Bellevue, where King William met Napoleon in 1870. There, too, the traces of French plunderers are painfully evident; it was left to the 'Hun-Kaiser' to save this historic spot from complete annihilation. In September Wilhelm II. visited the chateau and seeing the signs of rapacity, ordered the place to be strictly guarded ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... never been a French Revolution in the home, and that Revolution itself, which modified society so extensively, scarcely modified the legal supremacy of the husband at all, even in France under the Code Napoleon and still less anywhere else. Interwoven with all the new developments, and however less obtrusive it may have become, the old tradition still continues among us. Since, also, the husband is, conventionally and in large measure really, the economic support of the home,—the ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... rumbling and whistling sounds approaching me. A high chair on wheels moved by, through the field of red light, carrying a shadowy figure with floating hair, and arms furiously raised and lowered working the machinery that propelled the chair at its utmost rate of speed. "I am Napoleon, at the sunrise of Austerlitz!" shouted the man in the chair as he swept past me on his rumbling and whistling wheels, in the red glow of the fire-light. "I give the word, and thrones rock, and kings fall, and nations tremble, and ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... to a question asked him by Napoleon on the morning of Waterloo. The nod was false, or the emperor misunderstood—and Waterloo was lost. On the nod of a farm-hand rested the fate ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... she always saw the necessities of those she loved in terms of the spirit. Napoleon is reported to have said of Jesus Christ: "He speaks from the soul as never man spoke; the soul is sufficient for him, as he ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... out, by Sir William's help, that I was not an ill-natured man, or one who could not outlive what was mistaken in himself or resentful in others. As to my opinions about Governments, the bad conduct of the Allies, and of Napoleon, and the old Bourbons, certainly made them waver as to what might be ultimately best, monarchy or republicanism; but they ended in favour of their old predilections; and no man, for a long while, has been less a republican ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... "Napoleon was the greatest man of his age—one of the greatest men of all ages—not only in war but in a hundred other ways. He spent the last six years of his life at St. Helena in excellent health, with companions that he talked freely ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... outburst from socialism or communism, which raised its red flag in the streets of Paris and was put down only after days of bloody battle with the more moderate elements. So the French middle classes wanted peace, and they elected as president of the republic Louis Napoleon, nephew of their once famous Emperor. In 1851 the President by a sudden coup d'etat overturned his own Government. He declared the land an empire under himself as Napoleon III. Enthusiastic patriots protested in burning words, but most of France appeared content. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... be held responsible for prejudices too deep to be fathomed, too strong to be overcome. "We do naturally hate the French," observes Mr. Pepys, with genial candour; and this ordinary, everyday prejudice darkened into fury when Napoleon's conquests menaced the world. Our school histories have taught us (it is the happy privilege of a school history to teach us many things which make no impression on our minds) that for ten years England apprehended a descent upon her shores; but we cannot ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... year the British defeated the French at Alexandria, and received as a part of the conqueror's spoils a collection of Egyptian antiquities which the savants of Napoleon's expedition had gathered and carefully packed, and even shipped preparatory to sending them to the Louvre. The feelings of these savants may readily be imagined when, through this sad prank of war, their invaluable treasures were envoyed, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... Joseph, the Napoleon of the restaurant, keeps an eye on everyone. He is yellow, and pigeon-breasted, but his voice is like grease, and he speaks caressingly of food, pencils entries in his pocket-book, and stimulates jaded appetites by signalling the "voiture aux hors d'oeuvres" to approach. The rooms ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... XIV. From this time on, for over 125 years, England was involved in a series of wars with France. They began with the threat of Louis to dominate Europe and ended with the similar threat on the part of Napoleon. In all this conflict the sea power of England was a factor of paramount importance. Even when the fighting was continental rather than naval, the ability of Great Britain to cut France off from her overseas possessions resulted in the transfer ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... it in the great things of history. Witness the inferior mentality but the burning ardor of a Peter the Hermit, moving all Europe to the most extraordinary war the world has seen. Consider Napoleon crossing the Alps—an achievement all men said was impossible. Impossible! That word is found only in the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... without reason, the apparent impossibility of rivalling his inimitable predecessor. Milton, blind and poor, found a solace for all the crosses of life in listening, in old age, to the verses of Euripides. Napoleon, at St Helena, forgot the empire of the world, on hearing, in the long evenings, the masterpieces of Corneille read aloud. Stratford-on-Avon does not contain the remains of mere English genius, it is the place of pilgrimage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... them to the daring and the free, and allowing full vent to "the flash and outbreak of fiery spirits," had led naturally to the production of such a poet as Byron; and that he was, in short, as much the child and representative of the Revolution, in poesy, as another great man of the age, Napoleon, was in statesmanship and warfare. Without going the full length of this notion, it will, at least, be conceded, that the free loose which had been given to all the passions and energies of the human mind, in the great struggle of that period, together with the constant ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to One that is able to do it—to the Eternal God.' During the days that followed, his weakness reduced him to ejaculatory sentences of prayer. 'Come, Lord Jesus. Sweet Jesus, into Thy hands I commend my spirit' But Scotland was still on his heart; and as Napoleon in his last hours was heard to mutter tete d'armee, so Knox's attendants caught the words, 'Be merciful, O Lord, to Thy Church, which Thou hast redeemed. Give peace to this afflicted commonwealth. Raise up faithful pastors who will take charge of Thy ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... again, Louise continued in the same yielding mood, which was wholly different from the emotional expansiveness of the past weeks. Maurice took a glad advantage of her willingness to please him, and they had several pleasant walks together: to Napoleon's battlefields; along the GRUNE GASSE and the POETENWEG to Schiller's house at Gohlis; and into the heart of the ROSENTAL—DAS WILDE ROSENTAL—where it was very solitary, and where the great trees seemed to stagger under their load of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Next came the sitting-room with its tall, red, flag-bottomed chairs, its two-leaved table, its light stand that held the Bible and work-basket and lamp. The chest of drawers and tall clock were piously dusted, and the frames of the Family Register, "Napoleon Crossing the Alps," and "Maidens Welcoming Washington in the Streets of Alexandria," were carefully wiped off. Once a week the parlor was cleaned, the tarlatan was lifted from the two plaster Samuels on the mantelpiece, their kneeling forms were cleaned with a damp cloth, the tarlatan replaced, and ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a new man got the mail contract. Ben Holliday was his name, and in his day he was known as a Napoleon. Perhaps it was the first time that term was used in connection with American promoters. Holliday, who had begun as a small storekeeper in a Missouri village, had made one canny turn after another until, at the time when the mail came to the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... When Napoleon (then a student at Brienne) was asked how he would supply himself with provisions in a closely-invested town, he answered, without a moment's hesitation, "From the enemy," which so pleased the examiners that they ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... the terrible danger in which his command was placed from the position of the Indians, at once mounted about twenty men, and at the head of them he dashed forward with a valour unsurpassed by Napoleon at the Bridge of Lodi, and made a charge on the savages between the command ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... dear Grand; 'I owe Grand love and duty,' That next one is Tennyson; 'I have won laurels.' There's Swan; Swan said he did not know whether he was born in 1813 or 1814; so Johnnie did them both. 'The principal thing's muck as these here airly tates require.' You see the first Napoleon, looking across the Channel at Britannia with the boot: he says, 'I hate white cliffs,' which means Trafalgar; and 'I cry, Jam satis,' father has just invented for Charles, that King of Spain who was Emperor of Germany too. You can ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... have familiarized with insurrection, may to-morrow sweep them away, their work and their majority.—They maintain only a disputed, limited and transient ascendancy over their adherents. They are not military chieftains like Cromwell and Napoleon, generals of an army obeyed without a murmur, but common stump-speakers at the mercy of an audience that sits in judgment on them. There is no discipline in this public; every Jacobin remains independent by virtue of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... endured, whether they affected political boundaries or constitutions, came about by slow instalments. At no stage of the development was there any general cataclysm such as had followed the dissolution of the Frankish Empire, and was to follow the advent of Napoleon. New ideas matured slowly in the medieval mind; by the twelfth century the forces making for social stability had grown until they balanced those of disruption; and it was only in the age of the Renaissance that the equilibrium was ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... to him tidings of the distress of his advanced guard. They terrified Berthier; but Napoleon sent for the officer who brought them, pressed him with his interrogatories, daunted him with his looks, brow-beat him with his incredulity. The assertions of Murat's envoy lost much of their assurance. Napoleon took advantage of his ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... with its flanks exposed to attack. Sempronius at Trebbia and Varro at Cannae, so placed their armies that the Carthagenians attacked them, at the same time, in front, on the flanks, and in rear; the Roman consuls were defeated: but the central strategic position of Napoleon at Rivoli was eminently successful. At the battle of Austerlitz the allies had projected a strategic movement to their left, in order to cut off Napoleon's right from Vienna; Weyrother afterwards changed his plans, and ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... effect of commerce—a modern reading of "Trade Follows the Flag." The Labour Party cheered the new departure vociferously, but the rest of the House seemed a little chilly, and Mr. CHURCHILL, at the PRIME MINISTER'S elbow, looked about as happy as NAPOLEON on the return ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... fact. That such is the case is shown in a curiously vivid way by two references to two great men in particular, which occur not far from each other in Spencer's Study of Sociology. One is a reference to the last Napoleon, the other is a reference to the first. He refers to the former when he is emphasising his main proposition, that the importance of the ruler, considered as an individual, is small, and almost entirely merged in the conditions of society generally. ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... models? If French models point in any one direction rather than another, it is away from disintegration and straight towards centralisation. Everybody knows that this is one of the most notorious facts of French history from the days of Lewis XI. or Cardinal Richelieu down to Napoleon Bonaparte. So far from French models encouraging "arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race and dialect," France is the first great example in modern history, for good or for evil, of a persevering process of national unification, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... his marvellous march, checked the course of victory of Napoleon and saved Spain for a time. Cradock organized an army, and Wellesley hurled back Soult's invasion of the north, and drove his army, a dispirited and worn-out mass of fugitives, across the frontier, and in less than a year from the commencement of the campaign carried the war into Spain. So far ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... asinorum over chasms which shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove. You can buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span, which couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other. Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "Napoleon said that Providence was on the side of the heaviest battalions," he replied, "and therefore I hope ours will increase ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... weakness of the really great—had his vanity as well as Richard, and would have been pleased had folk thought him of a fancy that, on occasion, could break away from those more sodden commodities of politics and law-building. Caesar and Napoleon were both unhappy until they had written books, and Alexander cared more for Aristotle's good opinion ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... you my diamonds," said she, "for the first of those thirty reasons that prevented Napoleon's general from bringing up his guns—I haven't got them: they're at Rose ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... attention. He had had one of those sudden, luminous ideas, which help a man who does not do much thinking as a rule to restore his average. He stood there for a moment, almost dizzy at the brilliance of his thoughts; then hurried on. Napoleon, he mused as he walked, must have felt rather like this after thinking up a hot one ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... in its foreign-book department, had imported some copies of Bourrienne's Life of Napoleon, and a set had found its way to Bok's desk for advertising purposes. He took the books home to glance them over, found himself interested, and sat up half the night to read them. Then he took the set to the editor ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... as Cissy entered the little parlor, "and how is your dear father? Still startling the money market with his fearless speculations? This, brother Jones," turning to a visitor, "is the daughter of our Napoleon of finance, Montagu Trixit. Only last week, in that deal in 'the Comstock,' he cleared fifty thousand dollars! Yes, sir," repeating it with unction, "fifty—thousand—dollars!—in about two hours, and with a single stroke of the pen! I believe I am not overstating, Miss Trixit?" ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... would tend to drive them out soon. Thirty thousand able-bodied men are a heavy additional load on the markets of a small city, blockaded by sea, and with primitive communications by land. Upon this rested Nelson's principal hope of obliging them to come forth, if Napoleon himself did not compel them. Their position, he wrote the Secretary for War soon after he joined the fleet, seemed to favor an attack by rockets; "but I think we have a better chance of forcing them out by want of provisions: it is said hunger ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... same time an attack was made with the same ill-success on La Madalena, a small island belonging to the Sardinians in the Straits of Bonifacio, by a small republican force from Corsica, among which was Napoleon Buonaparte, It was months after Truguet's Sardinian adventure, when the English put to sea for the purpose of encountering the French fleet. On the 14th of July Lord Howe took the command of the channel-fleet; and though he kept cruizing till the 10th of December, and several times ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... said that Wellington or Napoleon, we forget which, once stood watching the muster of the men who were to form the forlorn-hope in storming a citadel. There were many brave, strong, stalwart men there, in the prime of life, and flushed with the blood of high health and courage. There ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... delicacies had he ever offered to poor Jacob, for David was not a young man to waste his jujubes and barley-sugar in giving pleasure to people from whom he expected nothing. But an idiot with equivocal intentions and a pitchfork is as well worth flattering and cajoling as if he were Louis Napoleon. So David, with a promptitude equal to the occasion, drew out his box of yellow lozenges, lifted the lid, and performed a pantomime with his mouth and fingers, which was meant to imply that he was delighted to see his dear brother Jacob, and seized the opportunity of making ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... this, as he had on other occasions, that masterly military genius and profound knowledge of the science of war which has astonished the mere martinets of the profession. His plan was very similar to that by which Napoleon effected the reduction of the fortress of Ulm, and General Scott was so perfectly well satisfied with it that he could not interfere with any part of it, but left it to the gallant projector to carry into ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... sour bread, a can of bully beef and a small piece of cheese. This was given to us because we had a long march ahead and our kitchens would not be in place for several hours. We were taken off the transport on barges built especially for that purpose. We were then marched to the Napoleon Barracks, built by the Emperor Napoleon, eight miles from Brest, and were glad to put our feet on land again, even though the march was a long one after a thirteen day sea voyage. We had only a passing glimpse of ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... arrested development and life itself an exhausted convention. Have you ever tried to count the number of reasons Gibbon gives (each one is a principal reason) for the cause of Roman decline? His philosophy reminds me of Flaubert's hero, who observed that if Napoleon had been content to remain a simple soldier in the barracks at Marseilles, he might still be on the throne of France. If we really accept Gibbon's view of history, I am not surprised that any one should be nervous about the British Empire. The great intellectual idea of the Roman dominion, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... the ascendency of Pisistratus, so the ascendency of Pisistratus paved the way for the renewal of the republic. As Cromwell was the representative of the very sentiments he appeared to subvert—as Napoleon in his own person incorporated the principles of the revolution of France, so the tyranny of Pisistratus concentrated and imbodied the elements of that democracy ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and member of the Legislative Assembly, who narrowly escaped with his life on the 10th of August. He lived thenceforward in retirement until after the fall of Robespierre and the jacobins, and came again to the fore under Napoleon.-ED. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... attack has ceased. Napoleon is moving off southward. Our fellows smartly pursued and cut off 1,600 men; in spreading along the other side of the Sandusky they fell on a flanking column of the enemy's Army of the West and sent it to the right-about with a loss of 800 left upon the field. This shows how perilously ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the vital air which you take into your lungs, and on the purity of which depends the purity of blood and brain and nerve, is vitiated. In the wigwam or tent you are constantly taking in poison, more or less active, with every inspiration. Napoleon had his army sleep without tents. He stated, that, from experience, he found it more healthy; and wonderful have been the instances of delicate persons gaining constantly in vigor from being obliged, in the midst of hardships, to sleep constantly in the open air. Now the first problem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... "Annus Haud Mirabilis," which the satirist would hold up to scorn, was 1822, the year after Napoleon's death, which witnessed a revolution in Spain, and the Congress of Allied Sovereigns at Verona. Earlier in the year, the publication of Las Cases' Memorial de S^te^ Helene, and of O'Meara's Napoleon in Exile, or a Voice from St. Helena, had created a sensation on both sides of the Channel. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... and unimpassioned existence than a man, whose life is so often one of toil, trouble, and excitement. Setting aside these theories, however, the census of French centenarians is not devoid of interest in some of its details. At Rocroi an old soldier who fought under the First Napoleon in Russia passed the century limit last year. A wearer of the St. Helena medal—a distinction awarded to survivors of the Napoleonic campaigns, and who lives at Grand Fayt, also in the Nord—is one hundred and three years old, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... 1848, attracted the attention of one destined to take a most important part in the new movement—Susan B. Anthony, who, for her courage and executive ability, was facetiously called by William Henry Channing, the Napoleon of our struggle. At this time she was teaching in the academy at Canajoharie, a little village in the beautiful valley ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... hundred ships to France and four hundred ships to Italy. Our ancestors smashed the Spanish Armada. Our grandfathers baffled Napoleon and their sons defy the Hun and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Hill Father Mathew George Stephenson Wheatstone St. James's Palace Prince Albert The Queen in Her Wedding-Dress Sir Robert Peel Daniel O'Connell Richard Cobden John Bright Lord John Russell Thomas Chalmers John Henry Newmann Balmoral Buckingham Palace Napoleon III The Crystal Palace, 1851 Lord Ashley Earl of Derby Duke of Wellington Florence Nightingale Lord Canning Sir Colin Campbell Henry Havelock Sir John Lawrence Windsor Castle Prince Frederick William Princess Royal Charles Kingsley ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... revolving inside an internal gear. The diameter of the pitch circle of the spur gear was one-half that of the internal gear, with the result that the pivot, to which the piston rod was connected, traced out a diameter of the large pitch circle (fig. 13). White in 1801 received from Napoleon Bonaparte a medal for this invention when it was exhibited at an industrial exposition in Paris.[29] Some steam engines employing White's mechanism were built, but without conspicuous commercial success. White himself rather agreed ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee from the hilltop looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm, The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than in his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry, were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... the Lake may be seen at a considerable depth near McKinney's, and looks like a piece of mosaic work. The low conical peak, back of McKinney's is about 1400 feet above the Lake and used to be called by McKinney, Napoleon's Hat. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... including the army. This was right enough, if he had been fit for his post, because a country must have a supreme head, and the army is only a part, though the most important part, in war. A soldier may be also a statesman and at the head of everything, as were Cromwell, Napoleon, and Frederick the Great. But a statesman who is not a soldier only ruins an army if he tries to command it himself. And this was precisely what Vaudreuil did. Indeed, he did worse, for, while he did not go into the field himself, he continued to give orders to Montcalm at every turn. Besides, ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... attached to a very handsome brother, James; he was colonel of the 94th regiment, or Scots Brigade, and died in India in 1804, at the early age of twenty-seven. He had been at the siege of Seringapatam in 1799, and was much distinguished by the notice of Napoleon at Paris in February 1803, whence he writes ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Red Indians?" said Uncle George. "A nasty rough game. No, we'll talk about History. You must mould your character upon that of the great heroes, William. You must be a Clive, a Napoleon, a Wolfe." ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... Italian whom a fortuitous circumstance made the citizen and the master of a country not his own, grasped both the vital necessity of unity from an Italian point of view, and the certainty of its ultimate achievement. Napoleon's notes on the subject, written at St Helena, sum up the whole question without rhetoric but with unanswerable logic:—'Italy is surrounded by the Alps and the sea. Her natural limits are defined with ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, Saint Helena was garrisoned by the British during the 17th century. It acquired fame as the place of Napoleon BONAPARTE's exile, from 1815 until his death in 1821, but its importance as a port of call declined after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Ascension Island is the site of a US Air Force auxiliary airfield; Gough Island ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... society. Rabelais introduces Francois Villon and the King of England into a tale so inflamed with military bravado that it might have been told over the camp fire in an almost identical manner by one of Napoleon's grenadiers.[140] In his preface to the poem we have just quoted, Chapelain writes of the occasions when "la patrie who is our common mother, has need of all her children." Already the old poet expresses himself like the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... WHEN Napoleon, in 1808, passed through the town of Pau, the Bearnais felt wounded and humbled at the indifference he showed to the memory of their hero, Henri Quatre: he scarcely deigned to glance at the chateau in which their ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... on the outer boulevard, not far from the tomb of Napoleon, a bench shaded at that date by a shabby tree, and commanding a view of muddy roadway and blank wall, I sat down to wrestle with my misery. The weather was cheerless and dark; in three days I had eaten but once; I ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... history of the popular hero has ever been the same. To king and patriot, to the favorite girl at school and the small boy who is leader of the "gang," to politician, to preacher, to actor and author, comes first worship then eclipse. The great Napoleon did not escape this common fate; and the public idol who was kissed only yesterday for his gallant deeds is scorned to-day for having permitted the kissing. Oh, caprice of the human heart! Oh, cry of the ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... measure of their practical utility, and that the beautiful and the useful are usually deemed to be incompatible; thereby affording, however reluctantly we may admit it, at least some justification of Napoleon's celebrated and bitter reproach, that we are a nation of shopkeepers. It would seem, in truth, that we do not possess that quick perception of the beautiful which is enjoyed by the more excitable and imaginative sons of the south. In painting, we believe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... present century. He passed through great events, but they did not excite him; his eye was upon the arts. When Napoleon drew his conquering sword on England, Triplet's remark was: "Now we shall be driven upon native talent, thank Heaven!" The storms of Europe shook not Triplet. The fact is, nothing that happened on ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... painter, received L300 for the worthless labour he bestowed on restoring it. He seems to have employed some astringent restorative which revived the colours temporarily, and then left them in deeper eclipse than before. In 1770 the fresco was again restored by Mazza. In 1796 Napoleon's cavalry, contrary to his express orders, turned the refectory into a stable, and pelted the heads of the figures with dirt. Subsequently the refectory was used to store hay, and at one time or another it has been flooded. In 1820 the fresco was again ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... saw, but that was a trifle compared with the thrill that I had as I stood at last before the little mound about as high as a California bungalow; the mound that held the dust of this great Chinese sage. During the war I stood before the grave of Napoleon in France. Before I went to France I visited Grant's tomb. I have also stood many times beside a little mound in West Virginia, the resting-place of my mother, and I think that I know something of the sacredness of such experiences to a ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... reprint of Boileau's Satires; an Alphabetical and Analytical Table of all the Authors, Sacred and Profane, discovered or published in the forty-three volumes of the celebrated Cardinal Mai; a 'Month in Africa,' by Pierre Napoleon Buonaparte, &c. There have also been more than the usual average of works in the Greek, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... unknown, that fulfil what we never should dare to attempt; but they will not come to our aid if they find not, deep down in our heart, an altar inscribed to their worship. Men of the mightiest will—men like Napoleon—were careful, in their most extraordinary deeds, to leave open a good share to fate. Those within whom there lives not a generous hope will keep fate closely confined, as they would a sickly child; but others ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... this quest, we jostle against "that fool of a word," as Napoleon said, "impossible." At once, on either side, we assume that we know what is possible and what is ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... himself into the party which secretly caballed against Bonaparte until Marengo. If it had not been for Kellermann's charge and Desaix's death, du Bousquier would probably have become a minister. He was one of the chief assistances of that secret government whom Napoleon's luck send behind the scenes in 1793. (See "An Historical Mystery.") The unexpected victory of Marengo was the defeat of that party who actually had their proclamations printed to return to the principles of the Montagne in case ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... personal relations during the afternoon. They discuss flower-shows on their merits, and recent Operas on theirs. They censure the fashions in dress—the preposterous crinolines and the bonnets almost hanging down on the back like a knapsack—touch politics slightly: Louis Napoleon, Palmerston, Russian Nicholas. But they follow male precedents, dropping trivialities as soon as womankind is out of hearing, and preserve a discreet silence—two discreet silences—about their respective recencies. They depart to their ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... trouble; their whole nature was naught else but their master-passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty husks from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered, like Caesar; transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon. This fearful consolation—that historical men have not enjoyed what is called happiness, and of which only private life (and this may be passed under various external circumstances) is capable—this consolation those may draw from history who stand in need of it; and it is craved by envy, vexed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... on one or two salient points. Europe has often been accustomed to watch with anxiety the rise of some potent arbiter of her destinies who seems to arrogate to himself a large personal dominion. There was Philip II. There was Louis XIV. There was Napoleon a hundred years ago. Then, a mere shadow of his great ancestor, there was Napoleon III. Then, after the Franco-German war, there was Bismarck. Now it is Kaiser Wilhelm II. The emergence of some ambitious personality naturally makes Europe suspicious and watchful, and ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... intelligence of execution to redeem their hideousness: their horror is of the simplest bugaboo kind. A man blowing his head to pieces with a pistol-shot; a supposed corpse coming to life in its coffin; the First Napoleon in the flames of hell, with a multitude of women shaking at him the bloody severed limbs of their sons and husbands; a child burned alive in its cradle; the head of a decapitated criminal, and the visions that filled its brain,—such are some of the ghastly imaginings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... so manifest our rebellious spirit on the subject of fortifying a peaceful farm on the banks of the Hudson, that the captain undoubtedly feared he might not be very zealously supported by us in his future movements, and, like Napoleon on assuming command of the Army of Italy, sought to test the devotion of his men. After amusing us a-while in broken English, appealing to our patriotism and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Flaubert as a disgruntled son of the Second Empire. Between his literary advent and hers there is an interval of a generation, during which the proud expansive spirit and the grandiose aspirations imparted to the nation by the first Napoleon dwindled to a spirit of mediocrity and bourgeois smugness under a Napoleon who had inherited nothing great of his predecessor but his name. This change in the time-spirit may help to explain the most significant difference between Flaubert and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... rear of all this labor, are grandiose to a degree. Men wonder at the First Napoleon's mad notions in that kind. But no Napoleon, in the fire of the revolutionary element; no Sham-Napoleon, in the ashes of it: hardly a Parisian Journalist of imaginative turn, speculating on the First Nation of the Universe and what its place is,—could go higher than did this ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... this way: I was born Bertrand, and then I took the name of Napoleon, and I mostly always call ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... several years past, was a tall, thin, delicate-looking man of some thirty years of age. He was by birth a Frenchman, but had lived mostly in England, his parents having come over as political exiles from the tyranny of Louis Napoleon, afterwards settling permanently in this country. He was an engineer by profession, but a poet at heart, and all his spare time and thought he devoted to tackling the problem of aerial navigation. His day was ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... bore me through the air to Sicily and bade me look up at blazing AEtna; then we took wing to Venice and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto, and anon she set me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of Napoleon. But there was one scene—its locality she could not tell—which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeous palaces and churches, because the fancy haunted me that I myself the preceding summer had beheld ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 1870-71 arose from just such relations. A Napoleon on the throne of France was bound to establish his rights by political and military success. Only for a time did the victories won by French arms in distant countries give general satisfaction; the triumphs ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... flew away on wings of elation, imagining a future. He would be a Napoleon of peace, or a Bismarck—and she the woman behind him. She had read Bismarck's letters, and had been deeply moved by them. And Gerald would be freer, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... tourist turns the summit of Aboudid suddenly appears, like an ornamental detail in a panorama, this vast fortress, originally named Fort Napoleon, and since the collapse of the empire called Fort National. During the French troubles of 1871, in the month of August, General Ceres was obliged to inspire terror by burning the village of Thizzi-Ouzzou beneath, and then went on to relieve the fort. When ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... stiff breeze. This freshened to something like a gale of rebellion when he reflected that his case was all but hopeless; for, whatever might have been the truth of the statement regarding the French army under Napoleon, that "every soldier carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack," it did not follow that soldiers in the British army of the present day carried commissions in their knapsacks. Indeed, he knew it was by no means a common thing for men to rise from the ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... Napoleon And Wellington adorn, America, her Washington, And later heroes born; Yet Johnston, Jackson, Price, and Lee, Bragg, Buckner, Morgan towers, With Beauregard, and Hood, and Bee— There is no land ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... for polite life, and all the splendours and amenities belonging to it. That very evening the resolute old gentleman, leaning on his nephew's arm, made his appearance in the halls of the Kursaal, and lost or won a napoleon or two at the table of 'Trente-et-quarante.' He did not play to lose, he said, or to win, but he did as other folks did, and betted his napoleon and took his luck as it came. He pointed out the Russians and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that is sufficient to convince anyone who has got his weather-eye open that they only want a pretext for war, decent or indecent. The news has just arrived, though it has not yet been made public, that we should be suspicious of the designs of Louis Napoleon, who has so wonderfully been transmogrified into an emperor—though for my part, I believe that no ruler of France has ever been more friendly disposed towards us, and the Russians will find that they are mistaken in wishing to set us by the ears. That Prince Menzikoff, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... earnest advice to young gentlemen of fashion will be found in the golden rule, 'Never sit down to whist after dinner;' it is a mistake, and almost an immorality. If they must play cards, let them play Napoleon. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Foreword Biographical Notice The Two Sisters The Siwash Rock The Recluse The Lost Salmon Run The Deep Waters The Sea-Serpent The Lost Island Point Grey The Tulameen Trail The Grey Archway Deadman's Island A Squamish Legend of Napoleon The Lure in Stanley Park Deer ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... (according to Strabo, Polybius and Lucanus) by the Rhone, Vienne, Yenne, and the Dent du Chat; or (according to some intelligent minds) by Genoa, La Bochetta, and La Scrivia,—an opinion which I share and which Napoleon adopted,—not to speak of the verjuice with which the Alpine rocks have been bespattered by other learned men,—is it surprising, Monsieur le marquis, to see modern history so bemuddled that many important points are still obscure, and the most odious calumnies still rest on names ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... he was doing was part of a comprehensive scheme, whose success might very likely depend upon whether he did his assigned part manfully. The French soldier in that war had no such feeling and, of course, the result of that campaign was not long in doubt. In Napoleon's time, the confidence of the rank and file was such that time and again he was saved from defeat by the feeling of the attacked corps or detachment that it must hold its ground, or probably imperil the army. Oh, the sickening doubt and distrust of our generals ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... terror of the State, no matter of what character, Eccarius said "that his relations with the French have doubtless communicated to him this conception (for it appears that the French workingmen can never think of the State without seeing a Napoleon appear, accompanied by a flock of cannon), and he replied that the State can be reformed by the coming of the working class into power. All great transformations have been inaugurated by a change in the form ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... veins of the red-capped mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace. He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint once more. Some of his biographers think that upon this occasion the spirit of Saint Louis had descended upon him. It must have found pretty cramped quarters. If Napoleon the First had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, there would be no Lion of Lucerne, now, but there would be a well-stocked Communist graveyard in Paris which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Stael-Holstein; sympathised at first with the Revolution, but was horrified at the murder of the king, and escaped, with some difficulty, from Paris to England, where, as well as in' Germany and at Coppet, her own house in Switzerland, she passed the time till French things settled down under Napoleon. With him she tried to get on, as a duplicate of himself in petticoats and the realm of mind. But this was clearly impossible, and she had once more to retire to Coppet. She had separated, though without ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a great brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy warfare, that he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared as little for men's feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives. When the battle was over, the Doctor frequently did what no soldier ever did that I have heard tell of, apologized to his victims and drank wine or lemonade with them. It must also be remembered that for the most part his victims sought him out. They came to be tossed and ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... procession of the most illustrious characters of the middle ages have passed before it, from the days of Clement and Anastasius to those of Don John of Austria; and, finally, that it was the first herald of Egypt to Napoleon and Mohammed Ali. A monument like this will truly be cherished by every citizen. The obelisk of the Piazza del Popolo claims great interest, as it also stood before the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis. Lepsius attributes it to Meneptha. It ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... furnished, too, just as you might have known he would furnish it, in the rich and sober Style Empire, and yet not so exclusively in the Style Empire as to make the plain American business man fear he had dropped into Napoleon's library at Malmaison. That is what Rashleigh would have liked, but other men could do what in him would be thought finicky. To take the "cuss" off his refinement, as he put it to Barbara, he scattered modern American office ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... disadvantage with their compeers of today. The wonderful thing is that the right men have been in the right place at the right time. Scipio met Hannibal; Philip of Spain was forced to meet Howard of Effingham and Drake; Napoleon Bonaparte, the "Man of Destiny," found Wellington and Nelson of the Nile to deal with him; and, in America, men like George Washington and Grant and Lincoln seem, in the light of history, like timed, calculated, controlling devices ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... are the old soldiers who were organized in accordance with your proposition, my dear count. They are yearning for home, and long to obtain, in place of the scanty rations they receive here, the fleshpots which the Emperor Napoleon has promised to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Aeschylus is most true to nature, when in his Prometheus Bound he makes Strength tauntingly to remind Prometheus, or The Prudent, how ill his name and the lot which he has made for himself agreed, bound as he is with adamantine chains to his rock, and bound, as it might seem, for ever. When Napoleon said of Count Lobau, whose proper name was Mouton, 'Mon mouton c'est un lion,' it was the same instinct at work, though working from an opposite point. It made itself felt no less in the bitter irony which gave to the second of the Ptolemies, the brother-murdering ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... finds its way into the newspapers. I mean the impression that they are much older than we thought they were. We connect great men with their great triumphs, which generally happened some years ago, and many recruits enthusiastic for the thin Napoleon of Marengo must have found themselves in the presence of the fat ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... in the history of human society, and this list has grown until it includes the names of thousands, representing every profession and vocation. Homer, Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Pliny, Maecenas, Julius Caesar, Horace, Shakespeare, Bacon, Napoleon Bonaparte, Dante, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Israel Putnam, John Quincy Adams, Patrick Henry—these geniuses all were bald. But the baldest of all was the philosopher Hobbes, of whom the revered John Aubrey has recorded that "he was very bald, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... has less meaning for them than their pleasure; and, with religion a dead letter, the spirit that won Trafalgar and armed the Thames against Napoleon, must ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... anonymous writer, who in order to prove how easily we may pass beyond the truth in our wish to seek and find allegory everywhere, undertook with keen subtlety to prove that the great personality of Napoleon I. was altogether allegorical and represented the sun. Napoleon was born in an island, his course was from west to east, his twelve marshals were the twelve signs of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... rode into the streets of the former Polish capital. Soon after the Russian general had taken up his quarters in Praga, close to Warsaw, there appeared on the other side of the town the pioneers of the great army of Napoleon. The Prussians and Russians withdrew from the town. Milhaud arrived with the main body of Murat's forces; in Napoleon's name the Prussian Government was dissolved, and its officials were superseded by native Poles. Hence Hoffmann was left without employment. He and his colleagues divided ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... one of whom, Cetewayo, succeeded his father in 1882. He fell into border disputes with the English, and the result was one of the fiercest clashes of Europe and Africa in modern days. The Zulus fought desperately, annihilating at one time a whole detachment and killing the young prince Napoleon. But after all it was assagais against machine guns, and the Zulus were finally defeated at Ulundi, July 4, 1879. Thereupon Zululand was divided among thirteen semi-independent chiefs and ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... Cledat pointed out that for long years the only important literature in Europe was the French, and that the French language had on three several occasions almost established itself as the language of European civilization—once in the thirteenth century, again in the seventeenth, and finally when Napoleon had made himself temporarily master of the Continent. The earlier universities of Europe were modelled on that of Paris, where Dante had gone to study. Frederick the Great despised his native tongue, spoke ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... and had a lover—was, in point of fact, actually engaged; and, in looking back, I can remember I was too much in love to feel the slightest twinge of jealousy. I remember also seeing Romeo for the first time, and thinking him a greater man than Caesar or Napoleon. The worth I credited him with, the cleverness, the goodness, the everything! He awed me by his manner and bearing. He accepted that girl's love coolly and as a matter of course: it put him no more about than a crown and sceptre puts about a king. What I would have ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... On the very threshold of the -tyrannis- he was confronted by the fatal dilemma, moral and political, that the same man had at one and the same time to maintain his ground, we may say, as a robber-chieftain and to lead the state as its first citizen—a dilemma to which Pericles, Caesar, and Napoleon had also to make dangerous sacrifices. But the conduct of Gaius Gracchus cannot be wholly explained from this necessity; along with it there worked in him the consuming passion, the glowing revenge, which foreseeing its own destruction ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen |
