Duke of Wellington War Quotations

I used to say of him that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.

What masks are these uniforms to hide cowards!

Rashness is oftener the resort of cowardice than of courage.

I have seen their backs before.

There is nothing on earth so stupid as a gallant officer.

Next to a lost battle, nothing is so sad as a battle that has been won.

A great country cannot wage a little war.

A great country ought not to make little wars.

Hard pounding, gentlemen. Let's see who pounds the longest.

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

As Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, 'I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.

The whole art of war consists in getting at what is on the other side of the hill.

The British soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact - they have all enlisted for drink.

If you had seen one day of war, you would pray to God that you would never see another.

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but by God, they frighten me.

The only thing that they can be relied on to do is to gallop too far and too fast.

A great country can have no such thing as a little war.

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 'guess what was at the other side of the hill'.

During the Peninsula War, I heard a Portuguese general address his troops before a battle with the words, "Remember men, you are Portuguese!

The only thing I am afraid of is fear.

We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be detested in France.

The hardest thing of all for a soldier is to retreat.