To do nothing was disgraceful; therefore I made use of my understanding.

Treat every Frenchman as if he was the devil himself.

If I had been censured every time I have run my ship, or fleets under my command, into great danger, I should have long ago been out of the Service and never in the House of Peers.

The politics of courts are so mean that private people would be ashamed to act in the same way; all is trick and finesse, to which the common cause is sacrificed.

Buonaparte has often made his boast that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea and that his was kept in order and increasing by staying in port; but know he finds, I fancy, if Emperors hear the truth, that his fleet suffers more in a night than ours in one year.

I owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour before my time.

What the country needs is the annihilation of the enemy.