Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am ill every time it blows hard, and nothing but my enthusiastic love for the profession keeps me one hour at sea.
I don't employ Talleyrand when I want a thing done, but only when I want to have the appearance of wanting to do it.
So as through a glass and darkly The age long strife I see Where I fought in many guises, Many names - but always me.
To fight the United States is like fighting the whole world. But it has been decided. So I will fight the best I can.
No amount of money will induce someone to lay down their life, but they will gladly do so for a bit of yellow ribbon.
From first to last, Jesus is the same; always the same--majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle.
From triumph to downfall is but a step. I have seen a trifle decide the most important issues in the gravest affairs.
An army must have but one line of operations. This must be maintained with care and abandoned only for major reasons.
The fate of war is to be exalted in the morning, and low enough at night! There is but one step from triumph to ruin.
Give me an Army of West Point graduates and I'll win a battle... Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war.
Moses has revealed the existence of God to his nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent.
Conscription is the vitality of a nation, the purification of its morality, and the real foundations of all its habits
There's only one way for a professional soldier to die. That's from the last bullet of the last battle of the last war.
Duty is the great business of a sea officer; all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be.
When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation
It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.
Since the discovery of printing, knowledge has been called to power, and power has been used to make knowledge a slave.
In war, moral factors acount for three quarters of the whole; relative material strength accounts for only one quarter.
Toil and risk are the price of glory, but it is a lovely thing to live with courage and die leaving an everlasting fame.
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death.
Strangers are just friends waiting to happen. To become a good man, one must have faithful friends, or outright enemies.
It is easy to know when a government wishes for peace by observing the character of the person sent to negotiate for it.
Do you know what is more hard to bear than the reverses of fortune? It is the baseness, the hideous ingratitude, of man.
A constitution should be framed so as not to impede the action of government, nor force the government to its violation.
This army stays here until the last wounded man is removed. Before I leave them to the enemy, I will lose many more men.
Had we taken ten sails, and let the eleventh to escape, being able to get at her, I could never have called it well done.
If you (to General Bertrand) do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, very well; then I did wrong to make you a general.
Ambition never is in a greater hurry that I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.
Ambition never is in a greater hurry than I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.
I sincerely believe that I have served a criminal. I led my soldiers in good conscience... but for a criminal government.
A real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.
The only way you get on in this profession is to have the reputation of doing what you are told as thoroughly as possible.
Recollect that you must be a seaman to be an officer and also that you cannot be a good officer without being a gentleman.
I'm against war with the United States. But I am an officer of the Imperial Navy and a subject of His Majesty the Emperor.
I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.
Life is strewn with so many dangers, and can be the source of so many misfortunes, that death is not the greatest of them.
The sentiment of national honor is never more than half extinguished in the French. It takes only a spark to re-kindle it.
The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.
I do not want to give any orders to the airmen, but get hold of a Komsomol air unit, and say I want volunteers for the job.
The process of quitting smoking doesn't end with the last cigarette. It's not quitting itself, the real key is staying quit
Those who failed to oppose me, who readily agreed with me and accepted all my views, were those who did me the most injury.
It is often in the audacity, in the steadfastness, of the general that the safety and the conservation of his men is found.
Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolution.
It is soldiers who pay most of the human cost. In war it is extraordinary how it all comes down to the character of one man.
It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most persevering researches.
The fixed determination to have acquired the warrior soul, to either conquer or perish with honor, is the secret of victory.
The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.
I cannot approve of your method of operation, you proceed like a bewildered idiot, taking not the least notice of my orders.
He is cautious. He ought to be. But he is NOT slow. Lee is a phenomenon. He is the only man whom I would follow blindfolded.