The most desirable quality in a soldier is constancy in the support of fatigue; valor is only secondary.

Every hour of lost time is a chance of future misfortune.

Leaders deal in hope.

This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog. Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

In tragedy great men are more truly great than in history. We see them only in the crises which unfold them.

A great reputation is a great noise, the more there is of it, and the further does it swell. Land, monuments, Nations, all fall, but the noise remains, and will reach to other generations.

When I had the honor to be a second lieutenant, I ate dry bread, but I never let anyone know that I was poor.