Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

At first it was a lie, then a strong delusion, and at last downright madness.

Not at all. If I had lost the battle, they would have shot me.

Sparrow-hawks, Ma'am

There is no mistake; there has been no mistake; and there shall be no mistake.

I have no small talk and Peel has no manners.

You must build your House of Parliament on the river: so... that the populace cannot exact their demands by sitting down round you.

Mistaken for me, is he? That's strange, for no one ever mistakes me for Mr. Jones.

They wanted this iron fist to command them.

Circumstances over which I have no control.

My rule always was to do the business of the day in the day.

The French system of conscription brings together a fair sample of all classes; ours is composed of the scum of the earth — the mere scum of the earth. It is only wonderful that we should be able to make so much out of them afterwards.

The only thing I am afraid of is fear.

I used to say of him that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men. It is very true that I have said that I considered Napoleon's presence in the field equal to forty thousand men in the balance. This is a very …

All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called "guessing what was at the other side of the hill."

The real question that now divides the country and which truly divides the House of Commons, is church or no church. People talk of the war in Spain, and the Canada question. But all that is of little moment. The real question is church or …

Buonaparte's foreign policy was force and menace, aided by fraud and corruption. If the fraud was discovered, force and menace succeeded; and in most cases the unfortunate victim did not dare to avow that he perceived the fraud.

Buonaparte's whole life, civil, political, and military, was a fraud. There was not a transaction, great or small, in which lying and fraud were not introduced.

I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.

He was not only not prepared to bring forward any measure of this nature, but he would at once declare that as far as he was concerned, as long as he held any station in the government of the country, he should always feel it his duty to …

Buonaparte's mind was, in its details, low and ungentlemanlike. I suppose the narrowness of his early prospects and habits stuck to him; what we understand by gentlemanlike feelings he knew nothing at all about.

Publish and be damned.

Just to show you how little reliance can be placed even on what are supposed the best accounts of a battle, I mention that there are some circumstances mentioned in General —'s account which did not occur as he relates them. It is …

The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment …

They came on in the same old way, and we sent them back in the same old way.