The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second. Poverty privation and want are the school of the good soldier.
A people that is able to say everything, becomes able to do everything. The crowd which follows me with admiration, would run with the same eagerness were I marching to the Guillotine.
The keys of a fortress are always well worth the retirement of the garrison when it is resolved to yield only on those conditions. On this principle it is always wiser to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has made a vigorous resistance than to risk an assault.
As to moral courage, I have very rarely met with the two o'clock in the morning kind. I mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgement and decision.