“To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.”
Gentlemen-Rankers, Stanza 1.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)
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Rudyard Kipling 200
English short-story writer, poet, and novelist 1865–1936Related quotes

"So Many Roads" (song)
("So Many Roads" - video on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IbYJoWrOIg
(+ Lyrics version of "So Many Roads" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBUt6gyNgQI
Studio albums, What We Made (2007)

“I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.”
Quote in a letter to Ella Wolfe, "Wednesday 13," 1938, as cited in Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera (1983) ISBN 0-06-091127-1 , p. 197. In a footnote (p.467), Herrera writes that Kahlo had heard this joke from her friend, the poet José Frías.
1925 - 1945
Variant: I tried to drown my sorrows but the bastards learned how to swim.

“Men, you may all do as you damn please, but I'm a-goin' home.”
Forrest to Charles Clark, Governor of Mississippi and Isham G. Harris, former Governor of Tennessee, in response to the request that he keep fighting. As quoted in May I Quote You, General Forrest? by Randall Bedwell.
1860s

“My policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please!”
Attributed to Bevin in the Spectator, 20 April 1951.
Bevin's definition of his foreign policy. Variously quoted as "to be able to buy a ticket at Victoria Station to anywhere I damn please!".

“Sing away sorrow, cast away care.”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 8.