Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes

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

The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue.

We are graduates of the school of patience.

Courage is soldiers fighting on the front line, or people living on the bread line.

Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.

No matter where you go, poor people have the capacity to endure. Some people even compliment us on it, as if endurance is all we can achieve.

A gentleman can live through anything.

Only yield when you must, never "give up the ship," but fight on to the last "with a stiff upper lip!

Ask for a valiant heart which has banished the fear of death, which looks upon length of days as one of the least of nature's gifts; which is able to suffer every kind of hardship, is proof against anger, craves for nothing, and reckons the trials and gruelling labours of Hercules as more desirable blessings than the amorous ease and the banquets and cushions of Sardanapallus. The things that I recommend you can grant to yourself.

My parents inspired me by their example. They both grew up in the Depression, and both of them had to quit school when they were quite young to work, because there actually was no choice. So they've always impressed me with their resilience, their good spirits, their courage. I just remember them carrying on and just doing their lives. They really made a strong impression on me.

I'm weary of the battle. But a tired fighter can still be a fighter.

For, as I said a little way back, perfect souls are in no way repelled by trials, but rather desire them and pray for them and love them. They are like soldiers: the more wars there are, the better they are pleased, because they hope to emerge from them with the greater riches.

The most vital quality a soldier can possess is self-confidence.

We packed up all the worldly possessions we could carry with us and took the next flight to Hawaii from Washington. It took just about every cent my family had to our name just to pay the plane fare. When we arrived, we had about $15 left among us. We were really in pitiful shape. But we were together, and we were alive, and this was all that mattered.

Life isn't about the number of times you're knocked down, it's about the number of times you get back up.

To the disgrace of men it is seen that there are women both more wise to judge what evil is expected, and more constant to bear it when it happens.

Never flinch, never weary, never despair.

Granana doesn't understand what the big deal is. She didn't cry at Olivia's funeral, and I doubt she even remembers Olivia's name. Granana lost, like, ninety-two million kids in childbirth. All of her brothers died in the war. She survived the Depression by stealing radish bulbs from her neighbors' garden, and fishing the elms for pigeons. Dad likes to remind us of this in a grave voice, as if it explained her jaundiced pitilessness: "Boys. Your grandmother ate pigeons."

All through my life, I have been tested. My will has been tested, my courage has been tested, my strength has been tested. Now my patience and endurance are being tested.

Gold is tried by fire, brave men by adversity.

I can bear scorpion's stings, tread fields of fire, in frozen gulfs of cold eternal lie, be tossed aloft through tracts of endless void, but cannot live in shame.

Fortitude is a great help in distress.

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught by a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it--even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.

It's easy to fight when everything's right And you're mad with the thrill and the glory; It's easy to cheer when victory's near, And wallow in fields that are gory. It's a different song when everything's wrong, When you're feeling infernally mortal; When it's ten against one, and hope there is none, Buck up, little soldier, and chortle!