
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, p. 87
Source: The Book of Nothing (2009), chapter one "Zero—The Whole Story"
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, p. 87
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 1
“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.