Best Quotes from Hero Of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan with Page Numbers

"I can recall no time in my life when I did not love stories of glorious deeds, or have dreams of traveling the world in search of fame."

"I will not tell you if I am Gaul or Frank, I hope to be Gaul… I prefer Vercingétorix defending our mountains than Clovis and his successors."

"A truly perfect horse would live free of the whips and whims of mankind."

"Most of life is out of our hands. Both the road ahead and the road behind set by accident, fate, or luck."

"The joy of being loved and of loving is a rare constant amidst a world of inevitability, loss, and duty."

"When a twelve-year-old boy is told his mother has died, the wretchedness of lonely depression haunts him no less in the eighteenth century than in the twenty-first century."

"It was only by happy accident the newlyweds discovered they actually liked each other."

"Lafayette believed a truly perfect horse would live free of the whips and whims of mankind."

"When the goodness of life comes crashing down, one must either rise to the depths of despair or find strength in memory and hope."

"Even at a young age, Gilbert showed signs of the ambition and self-esteem that would later lead him to make monumental decisions."

He was not a naturally gifted rider.

He showed himself so awkward and so gauche the queen could not help laughing.

I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence.

Memory is the intellect of fools.

When I first learned of the quarrel, my heart was enlisted, and I thought of nothing but joining the colors.

A well-built clock was a beautifully engineered design he found nowhere in the kingdom he now ruled.

It is hard to pin down the precise moment Lafayette latched on to the great ideas that animated the rest of his life: liberty, equality, and the rights of man.

I did not think about and hardly heard things that did not seem to me worth discussing.

His cold and serious bearing...sometimes created a false impression of timidity and embarrassment, but it concealed the most active spirit, and the most burning soul.

Those poor children have a father who is something of a rover, but who is basically a good and honorable man, a good father who truly loves his family.

When the rebellion in America broke out, the cause of les insurgents became all the rage in French society.

The time had come for enemies of enemies to become friends.

To facilitate the transfer of French military surplus to the colonists, Beaumarchais established an allegedly Spanish trading company.

Why stop at four engineers and a single ship’s worth of supplies? Why not think bigger?

I shall buy a ship to transport your officers. Be confident. I want to share your fortune in this time of danger.

Lafayette now altered it to the more whimsically adventurous cur non: 'why not?'

The secrecy of those negotiations and of my preparations was truly miraculous.

Once I am victorious, everyone will applaud my enterprise.

This sort of thing is all very well for the vicomte de Noailles...but what on earth would you find to do over there?

Determination, far more than cunning, guile, or raw intelligence, was his greatest strength.

One day follows another here, and, what is worse, they are all alike.

I expect to write you in a few days that we have arrived on foot.

I am here to learn not to teach.

The richest man and poorest are on the same level.

I have often mentioned to you the distress I am in.

Don’t you believe that the people are united by the love of virtue and liberty?

I shall be much obliged for you to stop the shoals of Frenchmen who are coming.

The boy could be a major asset in the dream of securing the support not just of penniless French rogues, but the full might of the Kingdom of France.

When I succeed everyone will applaud my efforts.

But the blood he spilled at Brandywine was not the end of the story, but the beginning.

"If a man wishes to be wounded for his own amusement, he should come and see my wound and have one just like it."

"The power that will first recognize the independence of these Americans will be the first to reap the fruits of this war."

"It will be no disadvantage to have it known in Europe, that you had received so manifest a proof of the good opinion and confidence of Congress as an important and detached command..."

"The violence of party spirit divided provinces, cities, and families... brothers, officers in opposing armies, meet by chance in their father’s house and seize their arms to fight each other."

"I walked into a kind of civil war."

"Heroes are not made in battle; they are forged in the crucible of experience and wisdom."

"Eager for something to do, I volunteered for the mission; Washington’s approval came with a joyous bonus: I would personally command a unit composed of Continental soldiers..."

"The truth is that, on the question of who my parents were, I have better pretentions than most of those who in this country plume themselves on ancestry."

"In America, you have to explain why and then they will do it."

"Fame and glory demand sacrifice. And though this is terrible for those doing the sacrificing, it is more terrible still for the sacrificed."

“The key to victory was a handsome retreat.”

“Whatever France did was always right.”

“I would rather be a soldier in the French service than a general officer anywhere else.”

“Not a man was left behind, not the smallest article lost.”

“He who believes their country can do no wrong has moved from healthy patriotism to cultish nationalism.”

“If they were to go off without me, I would hang myself.”

“The first joint Franco-American operation in history could have gone better. It also could have gone much worse.”

“Though a furious ride got him to Boston just hours after the French fleet arrived, Sullivan’s nine-point anti-French manifesto beat them both.”

“The promise of glory lay ahead.”

“He was personally loyal to his fellow American officers, but Lafayette never forgot he was a Frenchman.”

I am not so fond of seeing Dukes and Lords at the head of such business… I prefer the yeoman and farmers.

It is easy to believe and hard to express.

What you did, not who you were, that mattered.

I enjoyed the honor of being consulted by all the ministers, and what was far better, being kissed by all ladies.

Men were born to be free, and freedom was to be perfectly enjoyed but upon American shores.

I am not of the court and still less a courtier.

A new life was set to begin.

His financial manager was left to juggle the bills Lafayette left in his wake.

I counted myself lucky I did not have to spend any time in the Bastille.

I am purchasing my glory at the expense of my fortune.

Lafayette found that whenever he crossed the Atlantic, he was always coming home.

This powerful example of political self-abnegation was one of the most important virtues Washington modeled for Lafayette.

The indefatigable republican commitment to civilian authority displayed by Washington stuck with Lafayette the rest of his life.

I’m going to tell you a big secret derived from forty years experience. There are no troops more easily beaten than when they have lost the confidence in their commander.

The men who die on the battlefield are real.

Deep and bitter adversity is what they got.

They were not deaf to the complaints of the mutineers. They desperately hoped France could bail them out before the whole army quit and went home.

The breaking point finally came for soldiers of the Pennsylvania line on New Year’s Day 1781.

You are to do no act whatever with Arnold that directly or by implication screens him from the punishment due to his treason and desertion.

Lafayette bounced back from this face-plant, as he always did.

"War is a contest of wills."

"Victory and defeat are subjective psychological events, not objective material conditions."

"If the enemy’s will is broken, a million cannons will sit idle."

"It is impossible to describe the situation I am in."

"You are too cruel my dear Aglaé. You know the torments of my heart."

"To speak the truth, I’ve become timid in the same proportion as I become independent."

"I follow and one would think I pursue him."

"The Americans withdrew so that the enemy's vanguard arrived on the ground just as they had left it."

"This is a generous and noble proof of your humanity."

"If it be a wild scheme, I had rather be mad that way, than to be thought wise on the other track."

"His country stood in need of his talents."

"It was an absurd and unsustainable contradiction that could not last forever."

"I flatter myself we may get a kind of House of Representatives in each province..."

"The millions abandoned to plunder and greed are the fruit of sweat, tears, and blood..."

"The King’s heart would disavow these prisons as well as the laws of the kingdom that sent prisoners there..."

"Let us follow those millions into the country cottages..."

"The imprescriptible right of determining the public taxes belongs to the representatives of the nation alone..."

"The idea which had just been thrown forward... that is to say of a national assembly..."

"Their defiance set a new tone, as the narrow financial crisis gave way to a wider political conflict..."

"Lafayette departed in high spirits, convinced the Assembly of Notables was the first step in the complete transformation of the Kingdom of France."

The spirit of liberty is prevailing in this country at a great rate—liberal ideas are cantering about from one end of the kingdom to the other.

Nothing in that way can be stipulated but by an Assembly of the Nation.

From the proceedings that have taken place these six months past, we shall at least obtain the infusion of this idea into every body’s head… that the King has no right to tax the Nation.

The general freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing… the spirit of criticism prevailed everywhere.

The people, my dear General, have been so dull that it has made me sick.

This country will, within twelve or fifteen years, come to a pretty good constitution.

It is to you, the hero of American liberty, the wise and zealous advocate for the noble resolution on behalf of the Negroes… it is to you that belongs the defense there of liberty and the rights of man.

The general effect of all this will lead us, by the shortest possible road, to the winning of that constitutional liberty for the attainment of which other countries have not thought torrents of blood in 100 years of wars and misfortunes too high price to pay.

What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been in the political order? Nothing. What does it ask to be? To become something.

Little more irritation would be necessary to blow up the spark of discontent into a flame that might not easily be quenched.

"At the age of nineteen, I dedicated myself to liberty of mankind and the destruction of despotism so far as an individual as weak as I am can venture upon such a task."

"They both wanted dignity and respect. Liberty and equality. When these two forces merged, the Kingdom of France would never be the same. The world would never be the same."

"What France needed more than anything was King Louis XVI to step up and be a king. To lead his people."

"We must move ahead without bothering ourselves about the consequences and either build edifices or leave the materials behind us."

"Never to separate myself from your efforts to maintain peace and confirm public liberty."

"No man can be subject to laws except those agreed to by him or his representatives, previously promulgated and legally applied."

"All sovereignty resides in the nation. No body, no individual can have an authority that does not expressly emanate from it."

"The exercise of natural rights has only those limits which ensure their enjoyment to other members of society."

"Laws must be clear, precise, uniform for all citizens."

"It must be possible for the nation to have, in certain cases, an extraordinary convocation of deputies, the sole purpose of which is to examine and correct, if necessary, the defects of the constitution."

The cause of the people triumphed when the Bastille was taken.

I reign in Paris. But it is over a furious people driven by abominable cabals.

Where there is no liberty, there is no justice.

I demand respect for the law, without which there is no liberty.

If the king refuses the constitution, I will fight him.

I place before you a cockade which will go around the world.

No one can build a nation on oppression if it does not destroy its own foundation.

I have only one ambition—to return to zero.

The day I lose their confidence, I must leave a post where I can no longer be of use.

I shall decline no burden, no danger.

His attachment to both is equal, and he labors incessantly to keep them together.

If a person cannot be considered free in a world without a constitution or bill of rights, they certainly could not be considered free in a world where they lacked the basic necessities of life.

There is no liberty on an empty stomach.

The patience of the people, who have less of that quality than any other nation in the world, is worn threadbare.

I thought it better to come here to die at the feet of Your Majesty than to die uselessly on the Place de Grève.

Monsieur, Cromwell would not have come here alone.

Things turned out better than we dared hope.

Our army took an oath of loyalty to the king, in spite of scheming and plotting.

The solidarity of the troops prevented what I feared from happening.

The fate of the monarchy and revolution now lay in Paris.

"We are lost if the service continues to perform with such great sloppiness."

"We alone must defend the royal family from any attack; we alone must establish the freedom of the representatives of the nation; we are the only guardians of the public treasury."

"No one may be disquieted for his opinions, even religious ones, provided their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law."

"The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law."

"It seems to me these words have something of that American character, the precious fruit of the new world which was to serve a great deal in the rejuvenation of the old."

"We will suppress these words: made noble, and say instead: such a person saved the state on such a day."

"Give me leave, my dear General, to present you… with the main key of that fortress of despotism—it is a tribute which I owe as a son to my adoptive father, as a aid de camp to my general, as a missionary of liberty to its patriarch."

"The nation, wanting to be free at last, asked you to give it a constitution."

"We swear to be forever faithful to the nation, Law and King, to protect persons and property… to remain united with all Frenchmen by unbreakable bonds of fraternity."

"The Fête de la Fédération was the zenith of Lafayette’s influence. He would never be as high as he was right then."

"Happy am I, my good friend, that amidst all the tremendous benefits which have assailed your political ship, you have had address and fortitude enough to steer her hitherto safely through the quick-sands and rocks, which threatened instant destruction on every side."

"All honest folk from the least comfortably off sections of the people, to those who were not out and out aristocrats, are for me."

"I claim this for him, for the obedient troops, and for the national guards, who were created by liberty and will die for it."

"Whatever expectations I conceived of a speedy termination to our revolutionary troubles, I am still tossed about in the ocean of factions and commotions of every kind—for it is my fate to be attacked, with equal animosity, from every side."

"My dear General, I assure you I have often contemplated with great anxiety... the danger to which you are personally exposed by your peculiar and delicate situation in the tumult of the times."

"Does your Majesty have any orders for me?" The king shook his head: "It seems that I am more subject to your orders than you are to mine."

"Blood has just flowed in the field of the federation; the altar of the nation is stained with it; men and women have been slaughtered; the citizens are appalled."

"He is dead with the name Lafayette on his lips, looking at him like an ambitious officer who never had a soul large enough to play the role of Washington."

"The only way to know was to count the bodies."

"The loss which took place on the side of the assailants has been madly exaggerated."

There was only one final blunder left for us to make and sure enough we made it.

At the moment when the National Assembly has deposited its powers, when the functions of its members have ceased, I also reach the end of the engagements which I contracted.

You opposed with indefatigable firmness all perverse combinations, the fury of the factions, seductions of all types, for the pure love of the homeland.

Live free or die.

Do not believe, however, my dear General, the exaggerated accounts you may receive, particularly from England. That liberty and equality will be preserved in France, there is no doubt.

The French nation is my only party, and my friends and I are at the disposal of anyone who will act for the best, defend liberty and equality, uphold the Constitution.

The violence committed in the Tuileries has excited the indignation and alarms of all citizens, and particularly of the army.

I implore the national assembly to arrest and punish the leaders of violence for high treason against the nation.

Solitary confinement was a punishment which should be experienced to be rightly appreciated.

I regard solitary confinement as leading to madness.

"Nothing in the world, I swear it to you on my honor, my love, and on the dead souls we mourn, can persuade me to give up the retirement plan that I have formed and in which we will spend the rest of our lives quietly."

"To pronounce this sentence myself, to proclaim it, so to speak, by expatriation, is repugnant to my hopeful nature… I cannot understand how, without being compelled to do so by a material force, I would leave this land, however disadvantageous it may seem; still less, how I could abandon the smallest hope…"

"In her, at every moment of a union of thirty-four years, I have found the greatest blessing my heart could wish for and more than a compensation for every public misfortune."

"The crimes and excesses of the terrorist tyranny? They only made me hate any arbitrary regime even further and commit myself more and more to my principles."

"Will Alexander fight pitched battles? Will he ask for conferences? There is a risk, in either case, of being defeated or caught; but if he drags the war long, he may well embarrass his rival."

"I have become a pretty good agriculturalist... and manage to do and to oversee what is essential."

"During the thirty-four years of a union in which her tenderness, her goodness, her elevation of mind, her delicacy and generosity charmed and embellished my life and made of it an honorable thing."

"I cannot vote for such a magistracy until public liberty is sufficiently guaranteed. Only then will I give my support to Napoleon Bonaparte."

"He has never retreated a line. You see him quiet; well, I tell you, he is quite ready to start again."

"It was a lot, I dare say it, to have stood for twelve years amid prostrations from within and without; thus showing, in my isolation, a signal of disapproval and hope."

"In 1814, France was tired of Bonaparte’s ambition, his despotism, and his interminable wars; he himself had employed all the resources of his genius to kill the public spirit… on the day of danger, he finds himself alone."

"The Emperor Napoleon had for a long time taken it upon himself to weary the patience of the French, the submission of the powers of the Continent, and the favors of fortune."

"It was shown that not only the best, but the only means of salvation was returning to the first principles of the revolution."

"If the resistance of the Bourbons and their party necessitated a new July 14, it could still be done under the auspices of civil authority and by the best-intentioned men of the revolution."

"The nation had to shrink, like on Procrustes's bed, to the level of the humiliating circumstances and the contemptible prejudices of the counter-revolution; it was too much at once."

"One feels a great distress, that with him gone, one could avoid the war."

"Now is the time to rally around the old tricolor banner… that of liberty, equality and public order; it is this alone that we have to defend against foreign pretensions and against internal attempts."

"If we are overturned, the people must know what it has lost and what it must regain."

"I wish to be assured that the Emperor can resign himself to such institutions; so far I don’t see him wanting it."

"By what right does the speaker dare to accuse the nation of having been fickle, of having lacked perseverance towards the Emperor Napoleon?"

"Has he given either his service or his praise to the caprices of despotism? I do not think he has."

"I have asked no writer to speak well of me, nor bothered anybody for speaking ill of me."

"If this reconstruction of history was imperfect, the general principles are not in doubt."

"The agriculture, industry, the public education of France, the ease and independence of three-quarters of its population...have improved to a degree of which there is no example in any equal period of history."

"To violate the charter is to annul it, to dissolve the mutual guarantees of the nation and the throne."

"Do not force them, by threatening them to lose all the useful results of the revolution, to seize themselves again the sacred fasces of the principles of eternal truth and sovereign justice."

"We need irons, executioners, torture. Death, death alone can frighten their accomplices and put an end to their plots."

"The words liberty, equality, fraternity, republic, nation, and citizenship...awaken memories and fears that our opponents know how to make the most of."

"I saw Turgot and Malsherbes propose popular reforms. They were told: ‘the French people were of their nature both taxable and willing to work for free.’"

"I believe in the fault of the prefects and other agents; nonetheless often things occur which are due only to their powerlessness."

"I must say, it is not true that in my youth the moral state of society in France was better than today. I affirm, on the contrary, that public morals, marital union, the love of fathers for their children, of children for their parents, far from having deteriorated over thirty years, have undergone a very noticeable improvement."

"If ever, in the general interest, these opinions need some clarification, the national tribune is where I will comment."

"You have that opinion; I have another; Europe will judge us."

"Time at present hangs heavy on my hands and on my heart... write to me my friend—my father. One word will suffice—but let me know that word soon and often."

"This hope is completely destroyed."

"Our meeting was scarcely without tears, (at least on my side)... he evidently shared my emotion."

"The ascendant ultraroyalists would inevitably make themselves so hated their behavior would guarantee the success of Lafayette’s plan to launch a national rebellion."

"Why did we have the foolish idea that we could overthrow, by the plots of students and second lieutenants, a government supported by the laws and inertial force of 30 million men?"

"As long as duty and even honor point out the field of action, can an old herald of the charge now sound a retreat?"

"Congress has passed a resolution… in which the sincere attachment of the whole nation to you is expressed, whose ardent desire is once more to see you amongst them..."

"This distinguished friend of civil liberty is again on our shores after a long absence… he left us weak, unorganized and tottering with infancy; he returns to us, and finds our shores smiling with cultivation, our waters white with the sails of every nation, our cities enlarged, flourishing and wealthy, and our free government, for whose establishment he himself suffered, perfected in beauty, union, and experience."

"When we landed in New York, the people of the United States were occupied by the choice of a new political chief.… The newspapers, which, the evening before, were furiously combating for their favorite candidate, now closed their long columns on all party disputes and only gave admission to the unanimous expression of public joy and national gratitude."

"At the public dinners, instead of caustic toasts, intended to throw ridicule and odium on some potent adversary, none were heard but toasts to the guest of the nation, around whom were amicably grouped the most violent of both parties."

"Whether Lafayette intended it or not, his very presence reminded local and state leaders they were a single nation with a shared past and collective future."

"I have often during the War of Independence seen African blood shed with honor in our ranks for the cause of the United States."

"If there be any aristocracy in American manners… the great officers of the government partake of no such privileges."

"Hamilton was to me more than a friend, he was a brother… our friendship forged in days of peril and glory suffered no diminution from time."

"It appears to me, that slavery cannot exist a long time in Virginia, because all enlightened men condemn the principle of it, and when public opinion condemns a principle, its consequences cannot long continue to subsist."

"If slave owners do not endeavor to instruct the children of the blacks, to prepare them for liberty; if the legislatures of the southern states do not fix upon some period, near or remote, when slavery shall cease, that part of the union will be for a still longer time exposed to the merited reproach of outraging the sacred principle contained in the first article of the Declaration of Rights; that all men are born free and equal."

"What more can I say to the great citizen whom South America hailed by the name of Liberator, a name confirmed by both worlds, and who, endowed with an influence equal to his disinterestedness, carries in his heart the love of liberty without any exception and the republic without any alloy?"

"Liberty shall triumph. Or we will perish together!"

"I have accepted with devotion and joy the powers that have been confided in me..."

"If criminal maneuvers rise up obstacles against my government... I will find the strength to overcome them in my resolution to maintain public order."

"As soon as it discovers a plot against public liberties, it will find... sufficient energy to crush it."

"I admit that I can ill reconcile legality with the Moniteur of the 26th and the fusillade of the last two days."

"The inhabitants of Paris do not hold you responsible for the orders which have been given you; come over to us, and we will receive you as brothers."

"To arms, gentlemen!"

"Our loyalty, our devotion compel us to tell you this accord does not now exist... your people are distressed by this because it is an affront to them."

"It is impossible to have lived two years in America without being of that opinion; but do you think... we can venture to adopt it here?"

"What the French people want at the present juncture, is a popular throne, surrounded by republican institutions."

The unanimity of the cries of Vive la Fayette proved that the man of 1789 had not lost, in 1830, an atom of his popularity.

The admirable Lafayette is the anchor of our liberty.

He will continue to be during a few years he has yet to live. The man of liberty and public order, loving popularity more than life, but determined to sacrifice both rather than fail in his duty.

Continue to disavow the principle of your origin and I will answer for it that the Republic... can desire no better auxiliary than your majesty.

It is not the same with my conscience of liberty.

The right of election does not come from above, it belongs to all citizens and the only ground of exception should be incapacity to exercise it.

I would not have tendered my resignation... before the crisis which we have just passed through. My conscience of public order is now perfectly satisfied.

We all know the motto of the Hôtel de Ville—a popular throne surrounded by republican institutions.

He is our fellow citizen, and the universal voice of our country would cry out against us did we not manifest our nation’s interest in his person and character.

He is a tower amid the waters, his foundation is upon a rock, he moves not with the ebb and flow of the stream.