Duty is the great business of a sea officer; all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be.

I am ill every time it blows hard, and nothing but my enthusiastic love for the profession keeps me one hour at sea.

Thank God I have done my duty.

I have only one eye, I have a right to be blind sometimes... I really do not see the signal!

Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman, as you do the devil.

No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.

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.