“I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.”
When asked what he thought of the first Reformed Parliament, as quoted in Words on Wellington (1889) by Sir William Fraser, p. 12.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington: Quotes about life
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was British soldier and statesman. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington:
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“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.
Statement in conversation with John Croker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilson_Croker and Croker's wife (4 September 1852), as quoted in The Croker Papers: The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.Dm F.R.S, Secretary of the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830 (1884), edited by Louis J. Jennings, Vol.III, p. 276.