Quotes from Jean Lartéguy

In the course of its development, civilization eliminates heroism.

I've made two mistakes, gentlemen. I've confided in a woman and I've slept in a bed.

Colonel Parsabel regarded Raspéguy as an equation, all the terms of which were false but the solution correct.

Everyone hates the mob, but everyone belongs to it

When her existence is threatened, the Church is absolved of all moral commandments

In 1950, at Orange, a train full of Far East wounded had been stopped by the Communists who had insulted and struck the men lying on the stretchers. A Paris hospital advertising for blood donors had specified that their contribution would not be used for the wounded from Indo-China. At Marseilles, which could now be seen looming over the horizon, they had refused to disembark the coffins of the dead.

The explosion of the grenade in his dug-out made him take leave of the Greco-Latin-Christian civilized world. When he regained consciousness he was on the other side... among the Communists.

It's always a mere handful of men who account for the masses, and nothing great, alas, has ever emerged from peace, neither a nation- as Amar has just pointed out- nor a great work. Peace has always been the reign of mediocrities, and pacifism the bleating of a herd of sheep which allow themselves to be led to the slaughter-house with defending themselves.