Quotes About War

The smell of the earth, so astoundingly fresh: it strikes Brown like a thing he might eat. His ears throb. His body feels as if it is still moving through the air. He is, he thinks, the first man ever to fly and stand at the exact same time. The war out of the machine. He holds the small bag of letters up in salute. On they come, soldiers, people, the light drizzle of gray. Ireland. A beautiful country. A bit savage on a man all the same. Ireland.

In 1974, Mahmoud Darwish wrote Yasser Arafat's speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations: Today I have come bearing an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday. The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth—the filth, the war, the poverty—was that life could be capable of small beauties.

Further along, one of Picasso's doves of peace with an Armalite, not an olive branch, in its mouth.

It was Vietnam that brought me to my knees. In she came and took all three of my boys from right under my nose. She picked them up out of their beds, shook the sheets, and said, These ones are mine.

He could help put a man on the Moon, but he couldn't count the body bags. Send a satellite spinning, but he couldn't figure out how many crosses to go into the ground.

In the war I was subject to military law, but subject to law nevertheless; now I am at the mercy of an arbitrary power.

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us the concentration camp.

La Segunda Guerra Mundial enriqueció nuestros conocimientos con los estudios sobre «psicopatología de las masas» (si se me permite parafrasear el título del libro de LeBon), pues nos legó la guerra de nervios y la experiencia imborrable de los campos de concentración.

According to what he tells us himself, Mrs. Fryxell used to say of Napoleon: 'I wish he could be punished for all his slaughter by having to go through a childbirth for every human being who was shot on his account'. (A. Fryxell: Min historias historia).

They had too many rules, and they were in a war against an enemy who had none.

What a tale he's told, what a bitter bowl of war he's drunk to the dregs.

His heart beat high for war and he blazed with an implacable fire which needed no kindling.

Fracti bello fatisque repulsi ductores Danaum, tot iam labentibus annis, instar montis equum divina Palladis arte aedificant

Cui Pyrrhus:  'Referes ergo haec et nuntius ibis Pelidae genitori; illi mea tristia facta degeneremque Neoptolemum narrare memento. Nunc morere.

We have hearts valiant in war, we have spirit, and a manhood which has proved itself by deed.

Mutandae sedes:  non haec tibi litora suasit Delius, aut Cretae iussit considere Apollo. Est locus, Hesperiam Grai cognomine dicunt, terra antiqua, potens armis atque ubere glaebae;

Talibus insidiis periurique arte Sinonis credita res, captique dolis lacrimisque coactis, quos neque Tydides, nec Larisaeus Achilles, non anni domuere decem, non mille carinae.

But you, Roman, must remember that you have to guide the nations by your authority, for this is to be your skill, to graft tradition onto peace, to shew mercy to the conquered, and to wage war until the haughty are brought low.

It is for men to make wage war and make peace; for that task is theirs.

non et vario noctem sermone trahebat infelix Dido, longumque bibebat amorem, multa super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa; nunc quibus Aurorae venisset filius armis, nunc quales Diomedis equi, nunc quantus Achilles.

But of course—so Turnus can fetch his royal bride— our lives are cheap, scattered in piles across the field, unburied and unwept.

How fortunate were you, thrice fortunate and more, whose luck it was to die under the high walls of Troy before your parents' eyes!