Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Quotes

They wanted this iron fist to command them.

[I don't] care a twopenny damn what [becomes] of the ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Publish and be damned.

I have seen their backs before, madam.

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

Depend upon it, Sir, nothing will come of them!

Who will attack first tomorrow? I or Bonaparte?
-Bonaparte.
-Well, Bonaparte has not given me any idea of his projects, and as my plans will depend on his, how can you expect to tell me what mine are?

If you believe that you will believe anything.

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

There is not a Moslem heart in Asia, from Pekin to Constantinople, which will not vibrate, when reflecting upon the fact that the European ladies, and other females attached to the troops at Cabul, were made over to the tender mercies of the Moslem chief, who had with his own hand murdered the representative of the British Government at the Court of the Sovereign of Afghanistan... It is impossible to impress upon you too strongly the notion of the importance of the restoration of our reputation in the East. Our enemies in France, the United States, and wherever found, are now rejoicing in our disasters and degradation. You will teach them that their triumph is premature.

Up, Guards, and at them again.

The foreign policy of England should be to maintain peace, not only for herself but between the powers of the world. This should be her policy, not only because she can have no interest in a change of the state of possession of the several powers...but because she has the most extensive commercial relations depending upon peace with each and all the powers of the world, the interruption of which must be injurious to her prosperity.

The revolution is made, that is to say, that power is transferred from one class of society, the gentlemen of England, professing the faith of the Church of England, to another class of society, the shopkeepers, being dissenters from the Church, many of them Socinians, others atheists. I don't think that the influence of property in this country is in the abstract diminished. That is to say, that the gentry have as many followers and influence as many voters at elections as ever they did. But a new democratic influence has been introduced into elections, the copy-holders and free-holders and lease-holders residing in towns which do not themselves return members to Parliament. These are all dissenters from the Church, and are everywhere a formidably active party against the aristocratic influence of the Landed Gentry. But this is not all. There are dissenters in every village in the country; they are the blacksmith, the carpenter, the mason, &c. &c. The new influence established in the towns has drawn these to their party; and it is curious to see to what a degree it is a dissenting interest.

I have no small talk and Peel has no manners.

I should have given more praise.