Go, sir, gallop, and don’t forget that the world was made in six days. You can ask me for anything you like, except time.

The remark (as commonly attributed) dramatizes Napoleon’s impatience with delay and his belief that time is the one resource even supreme power cannot purchase. By invoking the biblical creation in six days, the speaker contrasts decisive, rapid action with human procrastination: if the world itself could be made quickly, a subordinate has no excuse for slowness. The second sentence sharpens the point into a maxim of command—money, favors, and authority may be negotiable, but time is irrecoverable. In quotation culture, it functions as a terse lesson in urgency and the limits of control, whether in war, administration, or personal discipline.