Battleground Quotes

Cheat propped his elbows on his knees and gazed up at Kestrel. He scrutinized her: the long, loosely clasped hands, the folds of her dress. Kestrel's clothes had mysteriously appeared in the suite's wardrobe, probably while she had slept, and she was glad. The dueling ensemble had served well enough, but wearing a dress fit for society made Kestrel feel ready for different kinds of battle.
"Where is Arin?" Cheat said.
"In the mountains."
"Doing what?"
"I don't know. I imagine that, since the Valorian reinforcements will come through the mountain pass, he is analyzing its values and drawbacks as a battleground."
Cheat gave her a gleeful smirk. "Does it bother you, being a traitor?"
"I don't see how I am."
"You just confirmed that the reinforcements will come through the pass. Thank you."
"It's hardly worth thanking me," she said. "Almost every useful ship in the empire has been sent east, which means there is no other way into the city. Anyone with brains could figure that out, which is why Arin is in the mountains, and you are here."
A flush began to build under Cheat's skin. He said, "My feet are dusty."
Kestrel had no idea how to respond to that.
"Wash them," he said.
"What?"
He took off his boots, stretched out his legs, and leaned back against the bench.
Kestrel, who had been quite still, became stone.
"It's Herrani custom for the lady of the house to wash the feet of special guests," said Cheat.< ~ Marie Rutkoski

When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer. ~ Aysha Taryam

The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end. ~ C. G. Jung

Ambivalence and contradiction energize nearly every figure Michaelangelo carved, from the adolescent Madonna of the Stairs onward...But the four allegories atop the sarcophagi raise them to a symphonic crescendo. Each is a battleground of conflicting emotions and motives, in which will and paralysis battle for supremacy. ~ Eric Scigliano

The black devil and the blue devil: that was how he'd come to think of the two opposing sides of his nature. Since his early adolescence, the bloodthirsty pair had staked his mind as their battleground, and even now he could feel their presence, lurking, waiting to make their next move. ~ Grace Callaway

You could eat sushi off my bookshelf. My cleaning regime is like a battleground. I'm Genghis Khan and my cleaning products are my Mongolian army and I take no prisoners. The rest of my life is an experiment in chaos so I like to keep my flat neat. ~ Ryan Adams

I'm friends with a lot of actresses, but my 'SNL' friends are my closest. The experience of working there is something of a battleground, a great one, but complicated. I think there's a deep connection for having survived that workplace. ~ Ana Gasteyer

Something that had been a single cell, a cluster of cells, a little sac of tissue, a kind of worm, a potential fish with gills, stirred in her womb and would one day become a man
a grown man, suffering and enjoying, loving and hating, thinking, remembering, imagining. And what had been a blob of jelly within her body would invent a god and worship; what had been a kind of fish would create, and, having created, would become the battleground of disputing good and evil; what had blindly lived in her as a parasitic worm would look at the stars, would listen to music, would read poetry. ~ Aldous Huxley

Spiritual Christians look upon the world not as a playground but as a battleground. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

And they can appreciate, through personal experience, that the really decisive battleground of American freedom is in the hearts and minds of our own people ... The path we travel is narrow and long, beset with many dangers. Each day we must ask that Almighty God will set and keep His protecting hand over us so that we may pass on to those who come after us the heritage of a free people, secure in their God-given rights and in full control of a Government dedicated to the preservation of those rights ... ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Where they differ is in temper. Izzy has no control over hers. When the anger switch flips in her tiny little brain, no one can turn it off. She is focused to a fault, her tantrums often triggered by the fear of her sightless world. Morgan sighs. She is ready to be released. She quiets easily and quickly. She is a gentle giant, not a fighter. She bites only to defend herself. If her intent were to eliminate her assailant, it would happen in one quick snap of her jaw. She cannot understand why this monster was brought into our peaceful home. We were a happy family until Izzy appeared. She is the Anti-Christ. She is pure evil. Our home has become a salient battleground with opponents always vigilant, wary of the other, waiting for the first sign of war. Finally, ~ Barbara Boswell Brunner

The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It's very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work. ~ Harlan Coben

Every city is a ghost.
New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park. ~ Libba Bray

The next great First Amendment battleground is just six inches high. It is a license plate bearing the Confederate flag. ~ Anonymous

The world is a battleground and for that we must keep our eyes open. ~ Sara-Sadiya

Illness and accidents were mysterious manifestations of the war of the spirits, fought on the battleground of the body. ~ Jean M. Auel

Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for mastery, and the battleground is the heart of men. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The purpose of the word "slut" is: controlling women through shame and humiliation. Women's bodies are always the ones that are being vied over for control - whether it's rape, reproductive rights, or violence against women, it's our bodies that are the battleground, not men's. ~ Jessica Valenti

I've had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it's paparazzi photographers or for film posters. [The topless Interview shoot] was one of the ones where I said: 'OK, I'm fine doing the topless shot so long as you don't make them any bigger or retouch.' Because it does feel important to say it really doesn't matter what shape you are. I think women's bodies are a battleground, and photography is partly to blame. Our society is so photographic now, it becomes more difficult to see all of those different varieties of shape. ~ Keira Knightley

Eric stood alone, perched above the battleground as he looked out at the city beyond and tried to remember a time when he wasn't fighting. He knew that there had been such times. In fact, he knew intellectually that he had spent more time at peace in his life than he had at war. Why then, can I only remember the war? ~ Evan Currie

It reminded him of that definition of his father's. A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind. The mind was the first and final battleground; the stuff in between was just noise. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Habit is the daily battleground of character ~ Dan Coats

Remember, the conventional wisdom is, "Yeah, you can do this like [Donald] Trump has done it during the primaries, buuuut once you get to the general, it's not about national votes. It's about states! It's about swing states. It's about battleground states. And you've gotta have targeted expenditures, great ads running against your opponent in those swing states." ~ Rush Limbaugh

The mosquitos were gone from the porch, and surely when they abandoned the conflict the war with Time was really done, there was nothing for it but that humans also forsake the battleground. ~ Ray Bradbury

My mind didn't clear. It had been clear before. Instead it muddled, suddenly ablaze with rioting factions of insecurities and dreams, a cacophonous battleground of conflicting moral codes and dogma. I was, therefore, back to normal. ~ David Wong

The battleground has been moderates of all faith traditions in all the countries of the world against the radicals of all faith traditions in all parts of the world. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf

It may seem from a cursory look at the news that the streets are a battleground, a deadly arena of fists, guns and knives. In fact armed attacks are not at all common, though they are serious enough to merit attention when they do happen. Lesser levels of violent assault are more frequent, but even these are not as likely as many people think.
The perception of constant street violence derives mainly from the fact that it gets reported while its absence does not. Headlines like 'nobody got stabbed today' would not sell a lot of newspapers, so we are told about incidents that do happen and never hear about the millions of people who go about their business unharmed. To illustrate that, look at this page. The words stand out but there is a lot more white space between and around them. You do not notice it because it is not brought to your attention. So it is with violence - a lot more people do not encounter violence than do. ~ Martin J. Dougherty

Sooner or later it must come out, even if other men rediscover it. And then ... Governments and powers will struggle to get hither, they will fight against one another and against these moon people. It will only spread warfare and multiply the occasions of war. In a little while, in a very little while if I tell my secret, this planet to it's deepest galleries will be strewn with human dead. Other things are doubtful, but this is certain ... It is not as though man had any use for the moon. What good would the moon be to men? Even of their own planet what have they made but a battleground and theatre of infinite folly? Small as his world is, and short as his time, he has still in his little life down there far more than he can do. No! Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand. Let him find it out for himself again-in a thousand years' time. ~ H.G.Wells

The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure and positive. ~ Jeanette Coron

Pakistan is both an ally in the war on terror, and in some sense, a battleground of the war on terror. ~ Stephen Hadley

A big move into the "internet of things", the next big battleground between dominant technology groups. ~ Anonymous

That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy - a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it any prettier. ~ Hermann Hesse

I want to be the first to bless you on what God has blessed you with - fighting in the heart of the Muslim world that was a battleground for large historic Islamic wars and what is now the place of Islam's greatest war in the present era. ~ Bill Vaughan

the euro, it seems, is stuck in a political no man's land – trapped between two opposing world views. And the battleground is not economics, but ethics. ~ Martin Cohen

I was a battleground of fear and curiosity. ~ H.G.Wells

The Scots say that Nature itself dictated that golf should be played by the seashore. Rather, the Scots saw in the eroded sea coasts a cheap battleground on which they could whip their fellow men in a game based on the Calvinist doctrine that man is meant to suffer here below and never more than when he goes out to enjoy himself. ~ Alistair Cooke

The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

And do you know what a full-fledged war would look like, Percy?"
"Bad?" I guessed.
"Imagine the world in chaos. Nature at war with itself. Olympians forced to choose sides between Zeus amd Poseidon. Destruction. Carnage. Millions dead. Western civilization turned into a battleground so big it will make the Trojan War look like a water-balloon fight."
"Bad," I repeated. ~ Rick Riordan

I finally placed where the images in my morning dream might have come from - the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War. Thousands of young soldiers lay dead on the battleground in a peach orchard in full bloom. It was said that the blossoms fell upon them, covering them like a thin layer of fragrant snow. I wondered why I had dreamed that, but then again, why do we dream about anything? ~ Patti Smith

I hope you will understand that architecture has nothing to do with the inventions of forms. It is not a playground for children, young or old. Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit. ~ Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

[These]were the legitimate acts of self-defense which had been forced upon the Irish people by English aggression... We did not initiate the war, nor were we allowed to choose the battleground. ~ Michael Collins

What I had done was nothing so extraordinary. I had simply taken [the prisoners] as human beings and not mistaken them for mechanisms to repair. I had interpreted them in the same way they had interpreted themselves all along, that is to say, as free and responsible. I had not offered them a cheap escape from guilt feelings by conceiving of them as victims of biological, psychological, or sociological conditioning processes. Nor had I taken them as helpless pawns on the battleground of id, ego, and superego. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Only here had he come to understand that he was not a battleground - to be divided and conquered by his grandparents - but a garden, where each person who'd contributed to his existence longed to see that something of themselves had taken root and grown. ~ Mary Doria Russell

The internet is shared critical infrastructure for everyone on earth. It's not supposed to be a domain of warfare. We're not supposed to be putting the Unied States' economy on the frontlines in the battleground. ~ Edward Snowden

During the Cold War, we were interested because we were scared that Russia and the United States were going to go to war. We were scared that Russia was going to take over the world. Every country became a battleground. ~ Fareed Zakaria

It would take me the better part of growing up to understand that intimacy, more than sex or even sexual orientation, was the universal battleground, and no easier for straight than gay. ~ Paul Monette

Alas, the world turned out so very different from the noble battleground she had led me to expect. The stakes were puny, the people gray and gutless; my Amazon arts were futile here. ~ Anne Fortier

Moderation is based on the idea that things do not fit neatly together. Politics is likely to be a competition between legitimate opposing interests. Philosophy is likely to be a tension between competing half truths. A personality is likely to be a battleground of valuable but incompatible traits. ~ David Brooks

To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Film is a battleground. ~ Samuel Fuller

As things now stand, the office is a slightly meaner battleground than the home. Male bosses seem to dominate their women underlings as they would never dominate their wives. ~ Wilfrid Sheed

The present is a battleground ... where rival what-ifs compete to become the future 'what-is.' How does one what-if prevail over its adversaries? The answer ... 'Military and political power, of course!' is a postponement, for what is it that directs the minds of the powerful? The answer is 'belief.' Beliefs that are ignoble or idealistic; democratic or Confucian; Occidental or Oriental; timid or bold; clearsighted or delusional. Power is informed by belief that this path, and not another, must be followed. ~ David Mitchell

It is possible that the malice of writers has been overrated (by myself among others). Reading their ruminations on their craft, one sees why this writer could not possibly like that one, would indeed consider him a menace. Literature is a battleground of conflicting faiths, and nobler passions than envy are involved. ~ Wilfrid Sheed

I was conscious all the time that I was following mad whims without being able to do anything about it ... . Despite my alienation from myself at that moment, and even though I was nothing but a battleground for invisible forces, I was aware of every detail of what was going on around me. ~ Knut Hamsun

i have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in a decadent, amoral Western society that has corrupted who I really am. But who am I, really? Am I allowed to speak for myself or must my desires form the battleground for causes I do not care about? My answer to that is simple: 'no one allows anyone anything.' By rejecting that notion you discover that only you can give yourself permission on how to lead your life, naysayers be damned. In the end something gives way. The earth doesn't move but something shifts. That shift is change and change is the layman's lingo for that elusive state that lovers, dreamers, prophets and politicians call 'freedom'. ~ Diriye Osman

What have the masses been clamoring for? Jobs and welfare, and they got 'em. They've also got unions and managements like two armies converting the whole economy into a battleground with the customers as victims, except that the victims are also in the army. They think in battle terms by day and like customers at night. ~ Louis O. Kelso

In the Borderlands

you are the battleground

where enemies are kin to each other;

you are at home, a stranger,

the border disputes have been settled

the volley of shots have scattered the truce

you are wounded, lost in action

dead, fighting back; ~ Gloria E Anzaldua

I am much less concerned with whatever it is technology may be doing to people that what people are choosing to do to one another through technology. Facebook's reduction of people to predictively modeled profiles and investment banking's convolution of the marketplace into an algorithmic battleground were not the choices of machines. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

Global evangelism does not take place in a demilitarized zone but on the battleground of spiritual warfare. Satan, in vengeance and jealousy for that which belongs to God, is deceiving the nations and holding them in bondage to a lie. ~ Ed Stetzer

True innovation and disruption happens outside of the accepted playing field, outside of the court, outside of the battleground. Disrupruption breaches the field and changes the game. ~ Tony Curl

Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It's part ballet. It's part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. ~ Steve Sabol

I wonder if men find it easier than women do to consider people not as bodies, as lives, but as numbers, figures, toys of the mind to be pushed about a battleground of the mind. This disembodiment gives pleasure, exciting them and freeing them to act for the sake of acting, for the sake of manipulating the figures, the game pieces. Love of country, or honor, or freedom, then, may be names they give that pleasure to justify it to the gods and to the people who suffer and kill and die in the game. So those words - love, honor, freedom - are degraded from their true sense. Then people may come to hold them in contempt as meaningless, and poets must struggle to give them back their truth. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Politics is likely to be a competition between legitimate opposing interests. Philosophy is likely to be a tension between competing half-truths. A personality is likely to be a battleground of valuable but ~ David Brooks

Chaos is indeed the normal state of affairs on the battleground, and no army has figured out a way to plan effectively for, let alone alleviate, the so-called fog of war. When the military is confronted with the fratricidal carnage that predictably results, denial and dissembling are its time-honored responses of first resort. ~ Jon Krakauer

What good would the moon be to men? Even of their own planet what have they made but a battleground and theatre of infinite folly? Small as his world is, and short as his time, he has still in his little life down there far more than he can do. ~ H.G.Wells

I feel so naked without my book in my hand, like not having a shield on battleground. ~ Me