“History shows that there are no invincible armies.”
“Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?”
“When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.”
“The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.”
“Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.”
“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.”
“If I should die, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.”
“There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles II. But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen.”
“I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that you call a Gentleman and is nothing else.”
“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.”
“Rogues, would you live forever?”
“Drinking is the soldier's pleasure.”
“Making the world safe for hypocrisy.”
“We are as near to heaven by sea as by land.”
“The army is the true nobility of our country.”
“The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.”
“War is too important a matter to be left to the military.”
“The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.”
“We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”
“The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.”
“'Tis the soldier's life to have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.”
“Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?”
“There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.”
“Conscription may have been good for the country, but it damn near killed the army.”
“I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.”
“In this country it's a good thing to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others.”
“The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.”
“Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.”
“An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.”
“There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to death.”