You shouldn’t feel sorry for the lifestyle you haven’t tasted, but for the one you are about to lose.
Those who have experienced good and bad luck many times have every reason to be skeptical of successes.
Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit; but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures.
Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.
The sufferings that fate inflicts on us should be borne with patience, what enemies inflict with manly courage.
Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
Now the only sure basis of an alliance is for each party to be equally afraid of the other.
But the prize for courage will surely be awarded most justly to those who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger.
Human nature is the one constant through human history. It is always there.
I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire...
Those who really deserve praise are the people who, while human enough to enjoy power, nevertheless pay more attention to justice than they are compelled to do by their situation.
Stories happen to those who tell them.
There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another; but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school.
A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power clearly to express it is no better off than if he never had any ideas at all.
People are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an uncritical way – even when these stories concern their own native countries.
What we should lament is not the loss of houses or of land, but the loss of men’s lives. Men come first; the rest is the fruit of their labour.
To feel pity, to be carried away by the pleasure of hearing a clever argument, to listen to the claims of decency are three things that are entirely against the interests of an imperial power.
We all look with distaste on people who arrogantly pretend to a reputation to which they are not entitled; but equally to be condemned are those who, through lack of moral fibre, fail to live up to the reputation which is theirs already.
What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy, but our own mistakes.
You know and we know, as practical men that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength and that the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.