His response in 1824 to John Joseph Stockdale who threatened to publish anecdotes of Wellington and his mistress Harriette Wilson, as quoted in Wellington — The Years of the Sword (1969) by Elizabeth Longford. This has commonly been recounted as a response made to Wilson herself, in response to a threat to publish her memoirs and his letters. This account of events seems to have started with Confessions of Julia Johnstone In Contradiction to the Fables of Harriette Wilson (1825), where she makes such an accusation, and states that his reply had been "write and be damned".
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington: Damn
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was British soldier and statesman. Explore interesting quotes on damn.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington:
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Remark to Thomas Creevey (18 June 1815), using the word nice in an older sense of "uncertain, delicately balanced", about the Battle of Waterloo. Creevy, a civilian, got a public interview with Wellington at headquarters, and quoted the remark in his book Creevey Papers (1903), in Ch. X, on p. 236; the phrase "a damned nice thing" has sometimes been paraphrased as "a damn close-run thing."
“It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.”
Remark to Thomas Creevey (18 June 1815), using the word nice in an older sense of "uncertain, delicately balanced", about the Battle of Waterloo. Creevy, a civilian, got a public interview with Wellington at headquarters, and quoted the remark in his book Creevey Papers (1903), in Ch. X, on p. 236; the phrase "a damned nice thing" has sometimes been paraphrased as "a damn close-run thing."
Context: It has been a damned serious business... Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. … By God! I don't think it would have been done if I had not been there.
“[I don't] care a twopenny damn what [becomes] of the ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte.”
As quoted in The Times [London] (9 October 1944); this attribution probably originates in a letter by Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (6 March 1849), in which he states "How they settle the matter I care not, as the duke says, one twopenny damn."
Disputed