“Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.”

“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

“The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

“The soldier—that is, the great soldier—of to-day is not a romantic animal, dashing at forlorn hopes, animated by frantic sentiment, full of fancies as to a love-lady or a sovereign; but a quiet, grave man, busied in charts, exact in sums, master of the art of tactics, occupied in trivial detail; thinking, as the Duke of Wellington was said to do, most of the shoes of his soldiers; despising all manner of èclat and eloquence; perhaps, like Count Moltke, ‘silent in seven languages’.”

“Life is a school of probability.”

“The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency.”

“Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.”