Fleet Quotes
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The drafts from the regiments at Ticonderoga are a miserable set; indeed the men on board the fleet, in general, are not equal to half their number of good men.
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More Fleet Quotes
We have a wretched motley crew, in the fleet; the marines the refuse of every regiment, and the seamen, few of them, ever wet with salt water.
benedict arnold— Letter to General Gates (21 September 1776), in Battle of Valcour on Lake Champlain, October 11th, 1776 by Peter Sailly Palmer (1876, p. 5)
He could not even stand up to review his fleet when the ships were already at their fighting stations, but lay on his back and gazed up at the sky, never rising to show that he was alive until Marcus Agrippa had routed the enemy.
— Marcus Antonius, taunting Augustus for his conduct during the Sicilian war against Sextus Pompey in 36 BC; in Suetonius, Divus Augustus, paragraph 16. Translation: Robert Graves, 1957.
Beauteous the fleet before the gale; Beauteous the multitudes in mail, Rank'd arms and crested heads: Beauteous the garden's umbrage mild, Walk, water, meditated wild, And all the bloomy beds.
Christopher Smart— 1763 A Song to David, stanza 78.
He could not even stand up to review his fleet when the ships were already at their fighting stations, but lay on his back and gazed up at the sky, never rising to show that he was alive until Marcus Agrippa had routed the enemy.
augustus— Marcus Antonius, taunting Augustus for his conduct during the Sicilian war against Sextus Pompey in 36 BC; in Suetonius, Divus Augustus, paragraph 16. Translation: Robert Graves, 1957.
West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides I must go Where the fleet of stars is anchored and the young Star captains glow.
james elroy flecker— 1913 'The Dying Patriot'.
The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of theThames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctityand truth of the revelation of Mahomet.
Edward Gibbon— 1776-88 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.52.
A fleet of British ships of war are the best negotiators in Europe.
— 1801Letter to Lady Hamilton, Mar, before the Battle of Copenhagen.
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.
— 1916 'Early One Morning'.
Bonaparte has often made his boast, that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea, that his was kept in order, and increasing, by staying in port; but he now finds, I fancy, if emperors hear truth, that his fleet suffers more in a night, than ours in one year; however, thank God, the Toulon fleet is got in order again, and I hear the troops embarked, and I hope they will come out to sea in fine weather.
horatio nelson— From a letter to Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, written while aboard HMS Victory and dated March 14, 1805. Quoted in full in Captain Edward Pelham Brenton (1824), The Naval History of Great Britain from the year 1783 to 1822, Vol III London: C. Rice, p. 406.
One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.
ezra pound— "Affirmations: As for Imagism", The New Age, January 1915
Oh for a fleet that could look the proudest power in Europe in the face, on this our rightful Western Ocean! But alas, it must be left to posterity — at the age of 50 I can't expect to view it unless from above.
edward rutledge— As quoted in John and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina (1997) by James Haw, p. 272
The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, because—it is not yet in sight!
Richard Brinsley Sheridan— Act II, sc. ii.
It is possible that the Germans will attack, and it is necessary that the fleet be in readiness.
semyon timoshenko— Quoted in "The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad" - Page 33 - by Harrison Evans Salisbury - 1972
All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd.
john gay— Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
The god looked out upon the troubled deep Waked into tumult from its placid sleep; The flame of anger kindles in his eye As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky; He lifts his head above their awful height And to the distant fleet directs his sight.
— "Translation From The Æneid, Book I" written while at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts (c. 1824).
Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.
David Hume— Demea to Philo, Part X
The speed of the fleet is not determined by the fastest vessel; rather it is determined by the slowest one.
wen jiabao— Wen Jiabao (2007) cited in: Joseph Kahn, China isn't looking to replace U.S., prime minister says, The International Herald Tribune, 16 March 2007
Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Maidenhood, st. 3 (1842)
In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a drum-head court on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the General follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal.
Herman Melville— Ch. 21 (Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891))
Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.
— To-morrow, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past. For years fleet away with the wings of the dove, the dearest remembrance will still be the last. Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.
— Lord Byron The First Kiss of Love, stanza 7 (1806).
All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd.
john gay— John Gay, Sweet William's Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan.
Lysander when handing over the command of the fleet to Callicratidas, the Spartan, said to him, "I deliver you a fleet that is mistress of the seas."
— Lysander. See Plutarch, Life of Lysander.
Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.
nathaniel cotton— Nathaniel Cotton, To-morrow, line 36
There is no choice but to force a decisive fleet encounter. If we set out from here to do that and we go to the bottom of the Pacific in a double suicide, things will be peaceful on the high seas for some time.
— Admiral Yamamoto to the Japanese Naval General Staff before Operation Mi, the attack on Midway Island.[ ]
Our ships have been salvaged and are retiring at high speed toward the Japanese fleet.
— Admiral William F. (“Bull”) Halsey, radio message following Japanese propaganda broadcasts about most of his Third Fleet had been lost on the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 1944).[ ]
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in fleet Street.
Charles Lamb— 1802 Letter to Thomas Manning,15 Feb. Collected in E W Marrs Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol.2 (1975).
When I assumed command of the Pacific fleet in 31 December, 1941; our submarines were already operating against the enemy, the only units of the fleet that could come to grips with the Japanese for months to come. It was to the Submarine Force that I looked to carry the load until our great industrial activity could produce the weapons we so sorely needed to carry the war to the enemy. It is to the everlasting honor and glory of our submarine personnel that they never failed us in our days of peril.
chester w. nimitz— Foreword, in United States Submarine Operations in World War II. (1949) by Theodore Roscoe, p. v
