We secure our friends not by accepting favours but by doing them.

For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.

Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.

Stories happen to those who tell them.

It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions.

With reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report always being tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.

Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit; but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures.