“Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.”

“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.”

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

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