...an intellectual instinct which extracts the essence from the phenomena of life, as a bee sucks honey from a flower. In addition to study and refle… - Carl von Clausewitz

Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena. … But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.

Phillipsburg was the name of one of those badly drawn fortresses resembling a fool with his nose too close to the wall.

If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to pursue a positive object.