Quotes of the day 18th June 2015

On the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo:

"Hard pounding this, gentlemen; let's see who will pound longest." permalink

(Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo,18th June 2015)
 
 
"My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won."

(First Duke of Wellington, Letter from the field of Waterloo (June 1815), as quoted in Decisive Battles of the World (1899) by Edward Shepherd Creasy)

"It has been a damned serious business... Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. … By God! I don't think it would have been done if I had not been there."

(First Duke of Wellington, remark after the battle to Thomas Creevey (18 June 1815), using the word nice in the old sense which means uncertain or delicately balanced)
 
 
"We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France." permalink
 
(Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington As quoted in Wellington and His Friends (1965) by Gerald Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington, p. 138, and in The Economist, 16 June 2005)
 
 

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