NICE VERSION
—“The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.”—
LESS NICE VERSION
—“The real greatest pleasure of men is to repress rebels and defeat enemies, to exterminate them and grab everything they have; to see their married women crying, to ride on their steeds with smooth backs, to treat their beautiful queens and concubines as pajamas and pillows, to stare and kiss their rose-colored faces and to suck their sweet nipple-colored lips.”—
THE ORIGINAL?
As far as I know the original is from the carvings on the Palace of Nimrud. And is nowhere near as ‘romantic’.
WHAT DO I HEAR WHEN I READ IT?
“The greatest pleasure is to defeat, and rule.”
BTW: this is probably fabricated. Since it was written long after his death. But all falsehoods originate in some grain of truth.