“We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France.”
As quoted in Wellington and His Friends (1965) by Gerald Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington, p. 138, and in The Economist (16 June 2005) http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4079435
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington 45
British soldier and statesman 1769–1852Related quotes


“We must always have old memories and young hopes.”
Attributed to Houssaye in: Forty Thousand Sublime and Beautiful Thoughts Gathered from the Roses, Clover Blossoms, Geraniums, Violets, Morning-glories, and Pansies of Literature, Christian Herald, 1915.

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: There is nothing between the paradise dreamed of and the paradise lost. There is nothing, since we always want what we have not got. We hope, and then we regret. We hope for the future, and then we turn to the past, and then we begin slowly and desperately to hope for the past! The two most violent and abiding feelings, hope and regret, both lean upon nothing. To ask, to ask, to have not! Humanity is exactly the same thing as poverty. Happiness has not the time to live; we have not really the time to profit by what we are. Happiness, that thing which never is — and which yet, for one day, is no longer!

In response to journalist for his views on the future of mankind at his 70th birthday (16 April 1959)

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 23
Context: A reasonable naturalist then settles down to this life with a sort of animal satisfaction. As Chinese illiterate women put it, "Others gave birth to us and we give birth to others. What else are we to do?".... Life becomes a biological procession and the very question of immortality is sidetracked. For that is the exact feeling of a Chinese grandfather holding his grandchild by the hand and going to the shops to buy some candy, with the thought that in five or ten years he will be returning to his grave or to his ancestors. The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed.

Book II, Chapter 10
From St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony