Marquis de Lafayette

I am able to say that I was very much liked at the school. I even had quite some ascendancy over my comrades, and as soon as I appeared in the school yard, I was surrounded by young friends, most of them bigger than I, but who were quite willing to give the appearance of disciples; they would have defended me furiously if necessary.

It is the pride of my heart to have been one of the earliest adopted sons of America.

Let not ambition take possession of you; love the friends of the people, but reserve blind submission for the law and enthusiasm for liberty.

The Spaniards are slow in their motions but strong in their attachments.

Do not calculate what I have done, for I shall accept no recompense. Calculate the public advantage, the welfare and liberty of my country, and believe that I shall refuse no burden, no danger, provided that, at the hour of tranquillity, I may return to private life, for there now remains but one step for my ambition - that of arriving at zero.

The affairs of America I shall ever look upon as my first business whilst I am in Europe. Any confidence from the king and ministers, any popularity I may have among my own countrymen, any means in my power, shall be, to the best of my skill, and till the end of my life, exerted in behalf of an interest I have so much at heart.

If the king refuses the constitution, I shall oppose him; if he accepts it, I shall defend him; and the day on which he gave himself up as my prisoner secured me more fully to his service than if he had promised me half his kingdom.

Though my conduct on the 10th of August 1792 was the act of my life of which I have most reason to be proud, I will here merely do homage to the worthy martyrs of the national sovereignty and the sworn laws, who, while they supported constitutional royalty, manifested the highest degree of republican virtue.

It was by a Maryland colonel in the year 1777 that the British received, in the gallant defense of an important fort, one of the first lessons of what they were to expect from American valor and patriotism.

I became obnoxious to the Jacobins because I reprobated their aristocracy, which aimed at usurping all legitimate authority.

We still are pestered by two parties: the aristocratic, which is panting for a counter revolution, and the factious, which aims at the division of the empire and destruction of the authority - and perhaps of the lives - of the reigning branch, both of which parties are fomenting troubles.

The continental troops have as much courage and real discipline as those that are opposed to them. They are more inured to privation, more patient than Europeans, who, on these two points, cannot be compared to them.