Famous quotes containing the words german and/or officer:
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)
“When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had been forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can and walked out of the room.”
—Horace Walpole (17171797)