Saint Helena Proverbs (11)

“He doesn't have a bone in his tongue.”

Said of someone who speaks whatever comes to mind, bluntly and without regard for tact or consequence.

“Put the goat in charge of the vegetable patch.”

A warning against entrusting responsibility to someone who cannot be trusted with it, the local equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

“Going right round the ridges to get to The Castle.”

Describes taking a long, roundabout way to reach a simple goal, doing something the hard way when a direct path was available — named for the steep ridges surrounding Jamestown's Castle, the seat of Saint Helena's government.

“Loyal and unshakeable.”

The official motto of Saint Helena, reflecting the steadfastness and resilience the island's people are known for.

Qu'est-ce donc que l'histoire en général? Une fable convenue.

“What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon.”

Reflecting in exile, Napoleon suggested that official histories are shaped by consensus and interpretation as much as by fact.

“I may have had many projects, but I was never truly my own master — I was always ruled by circumstances.”

Looking back from his island exile, Napoleon admitted that even at the height of his power, events controlled him as much as his own will did.

“I have fought sixty battles, and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning.”

A rueful admission from exile that experience and victory taught him less about war than he once believed.

La carrière ouverte aux talents.

“My maxim was: the career open to talents, without distinction of birth or fortune.”

Napoleon described the guiding principle of his rule — that ability and merit, not noble birth, should open the path to advancement.

“I ought to have died at Waterloo.”

From his final exile, Napoleon reflected that defeat without death on the battlefield left him to face a slower, harder ending.

“I give my decided opposition to all legislation tending to introduce distinctions either of class, colour, or creed.”

Saul Solomon's lifelong political pledge, made as a young candidate and honoured throughout his career in the Cape Parliament, opposing laws that discriminated by race or class.

“I am guilty only of being Cetshwayo's son.”

Testifying at his 1908 high treason trial in Natal, the Saint Helena-exiled Zulu king said his only true offence was his royal bloodline — a line still remembered as a statement of defiance against colonial persecution.