Time is everything; five minutes make the difference between victory and defeat.

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

My greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King and Country and I am envious only of glory; for if it be a sin to covet glory I am the most offending soul alive.

If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

I cannot, if I am in the field of glory, be kept out of sight: wherever there is anything to be done, there Providence is sure to direct my steps.

England expects that every man will do his duty.

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

Let me alone: I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm, so the sooner it's off the better.

I cannot command winds and weather.

Buonaparte has often made his boast that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea and that his was kept in order and increasing by staying in port; but know he finds, I fancy, if Emperors hear the truth, that his fleet suffers more in a night than ours in one year.

Our country will, I believe, sooner forgive an officer for attacking an enemy than for letting it alone.

It is warm work; and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment. But mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands. - at the Battle of Copenhagen.

Desperate affairs require desperate measures.

First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.

Firstly you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own regarding 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 hate the devil.

Gentlemen, when the enemy is committed to a mistake we must not interrupt him too soon.

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

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

Time is everything; five minutes make the difference between victory and defeat.

My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied.

If I had been censured every time I have run my ship, or fleets under my command, into great danger, I should have long ago been out of the Service and never in the House of Peers.

In honour I gained them, and in honour I will die with them.

Now I can do no more. We must trust to the Great Disposer of all events and the justice of our cause. I thank God for this opportunity of doing my duty.

Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made.

When I follow my own head, I am, in general, much more correct in my judgment than following the opinion of others.

England expects every man to do his duty

As a nation we should commit ourselves not only to the fight against terrorism, but to economic justice, defeat of the AIDS epidemic and vestiges of discriminatory policies of all kinds.

It wasn't my plan to create such a record. All I did was put in the effort to win every match I played and it went on for weeks, months and years until my defeat to Ross Norman in Toulouse in 1986.

The 'morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter.

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

You don't have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn't know you possessed.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.

I tried to contribute to the defeat of the Soviets. If I contributed 1%, it is 1% of something enormous.

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.

Terrorism is a big danger to Pakistan's independence. We will fight this danger for the sake of independence of Pakistan and will defeat it at all levels.

Yet, history has shown that if material force can defeat some ideologies it can no longer obliterate a civilization without destabilizing the whole planet.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

What is defeat? Nothing but education. Nothing but the first step to something better.

Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.

As the game enters its glorious final weeks, the chill of fall signals the reality of defeat for all but one team. The fields of play will turn brown and harden, the snow will fall, but in the heart of the fan sprouts a sprig of green.

In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.