Ww1 Soldiers Quotes

They brought the Bible and syphilis, they made people believe that life was easy, mother, that everything is gotten with money, that blacks carry a contagion, they tried to convince our soldiers that the nation is a business and that the sense of honor is a brother invented by the government so that soldiers would fight for free ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The belief that a person has a share in an unknown life to which his or her love may win us admission is, of all the prerequisites of love, the one which it values most highly and which makes it set little store by all the rest. Even those women who claim to judge a man by his looks alone, see in those looks the emanation of a special way of life. That is why they fall in love with soldiers or with firemen; the uniform makes them less particular about the face; they feel they are embracing beneath the gleaming breastplate a heart different from the rest, more gallant, more adventurous, more tender; and so it is that a young king or a crown prince may make the most gratifying conquests in the countries that he visits, and yet lack entirely that regular and classic profile which would be indispensable, I dare say, for a stockbroker. ~ Marcel Proust

While at Colonel Niel's marquee I saw a detail of soldiers bring out a man by the name of Rowland, whom they were going to shoot to death with musketry, by order of a court-martial, for desertion. He was being hauled to the place of execution in a wagon, sitting on an old gun box, which was to be his coffin. When they got to the grave, which had been dug the day before, the water had risen in it, and a soldier was baling it out. Rowland spoke up and said, 'Please hand me a drink of that water, as I want to drink out of my own grave so the boys will talk about it when I am dead, and remember Rowland. ~ Sam R. Watkins

Looking back now, success seems foreordained. It wasn't. No colonists in the history of the world had defeated their mother country on the battlefield to win their independence. Few republics had managed--or even attempted--to govern an area bigger than a city-state. Somehow, in defiance to all precedent, Washington, Hamilton, and the other founders pulled off both.
Their deliriously unlikely success--first as soldiers, then as statesmen--tends to obscure the true lessons of the American Revolution. The past places no absolute limit on the future. Even the unlikeliest changes can occur. But change requires hope--in the case of both those unlikely victories, the hope that the American people could defy all expectation to overcome their differences and set each other free.
in the summer of 1788, Alexander Hamilton carried this message to Poughkeepsie, where he pleaded with New York's leaders to trust in the possibilities of the union, and vote to ratify the new federal Constitution. Yes, he conceded, the 13 newborn states included many different kinds of people. But this did not mean that the government was bound to fail. It took an immigrant to fully understand the new nation, and to declare a fundamental hope of the American experiment: Under wise government, these diverse men and women "will be constantly assimilating, till they embrace each other, and assume the same complexion. ~ Jeremy McCarter

God finds His best soldiers on the mountain of affliction. ~ Lettie B. Cowman

During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khmer Rouge, which had been in power from 1975 to 1979, was well known. Many of the women had been raped or tortured or otherwise brutalized. Most had seen family members murdered in front of them. One woman, who never again saw her husband and three children after soldiers came and took them away, said that she had lost her sight after having cried every day for four years. She was not the only one who appeared to have cried herself blind. Others suffered from blurred or partial vision, their eyes troubled by shadows and pains.

The doctors examined the women - about a hundred and fifty in all - found that their eyes were normal. Further tests showed that their brains were normal as well. If the women were telling the truth - and there were some who doubted this, who thought the women might be malingering because they wanted attention or were hoping to collect disability - the only explanation was psychosomatic blindness.

In other words, the women's minds, forced to take in so much horror and unable to take more, had managed to turn out the lights. ~ Sigrid Nunez

Soldiers are the foundation of an army; unless they are imbued with a progressive political spirit, and unless such a spirit is fostered through progressive political work, it will be impossible to achieve genuine unity between officers and men, impossible to arouse their enthusiasm for the War of Resistance to the full, and impossible to provide an excellent basis for the most effective use of all our technical equipment and tactics. ~ Mao Zedong

We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers. ~ Otto Schily

Someone earlier made a remark about losing 500 soldiers and 2,200 wounded in Iraq. Those soldiers were sent there by the vote of Sen. Lieberman, Sen. Edwards and Sen. Kerry. I think that is a serious matter. ~ Howard Dean

Every now and then a green dot shifted to yellow. A soldier down, their armored suits detecting the injuries or death that rendered them combat ineffective. Combat ineffective. Such a nice euphemism for one of his kids bleeding out. ~ James S.A. Corey

The Foolish Warrior attacks Enemy soldiers. The Supreme Warrior battles the Mind. ~ John Viril

She clambered to the shoreline. Numb and shaken, she began to dress. It wasn't easy as she fumbled with slick fingers to put dry clothes over wet skin. She instantly regretted her naked swim. She pulled on her long-sleeved white chemise first.
She faced the forest, away from her rescuer. He quietly splashed to shore. His lifeblood burned into her back. He wasn't far behind, but he stopped. She refused to look at him until she was fully clothed, not out of embarrassment of her nudity, but for what had just happened. He released a groan and mumbled under his breath about wet boots. His voice was not one of her father's soldiers.
When she put the last garment on, her brown wool work kirtle, she squeezed out her sopping hair and swept her hands through the knotty mess. She fastened her belt and tied the lacings up the front of the kirtle. Blood returned to her fingertips, and she regained her composure. Belated awareness struck her, and she leaned down and searched through her bag for her dagger. She spun around.
She gasped as she saw the man sitting on the stone-covered shoreline, his wet boots off. Confusion and the hint of a scowl filled his strong-featured face. She staggered back, caught her heel on a stone, and fell, dropping the dagger. Dirt and pebbles stuck to her wet hands and feet, and she instinctively scrambled away from him.
His glower, iridescent dark blue eyes, and disheveled black hair were not unfamiliar. Staring at her was the man she had se ~ Jean M. Grant

I imagined two leather chairs near a fire in a paneled room, where two old soldiers could drink and talk. But she took us into the kitchen. She had put two straight-backed chairs at a kitchen table with a white porcelain top. That table top was screaming with reflected light from a two-hundred-watt bulb overhead. Mary had prepared an operating room. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

No country in history ever sent mothers of toddlers off to fight enemy soldiers until the United States did this in the Iraq war. ~ Phyllis Schlafly

God's side is determined not by geography, but by those who do His will. If Germans, English, Japanese, and Americans prayed right, they would all be praying for the same intention: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And what is that Will? The reign of Justice and Charity in the hearts of men. Through a prayerful contemplation of war we will see not soldiers of different nations in combat, but one great family, quarreling, fighting, wounding, and all in need of the peace and charity of Christ which we hope to obtain by our supplications. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Do you know anyone who would be willing to die to save those five-thousand serial killers?"
"No. Everyone I know is too smart for that!"
"Yet Someone did die to save all of the serial killers, and all of the old women, and all of the soldiers, and all of the babies that the world has ever known. That one is Jesus Christ. He died for you and for me. He died for everyone, because in this world our sin has condemned us to death, and the only way that we can be saved was for someone who was Himself without sin to be willing to die in our place."
Molly was silent. Her bright smile had faded, and she felt tears well up in her eyes. ~ Joyce Swann

I write back to all the soldiers who write to me and send them posters and calendars. ~ Brooke Burke

He had never seen such eyes before, not even in the faces of soldiers unmanned in the midst of great carnage. Eyes like black mirrors, at once shallow and bottomless. He had the feeling that if he pressed his finger to one of those eyes, it would shatter and fall inward through a black cavern of grief and loss that could never be filled. ~ Greg Iles

Just as soldiers at their best cannot be equalled in courage, so at their worst nobody can excel them in vandalism. ~ Dennis Bardens

For the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such a state of a nation can be called a peace); ~ Thomas More

Well, we have to do something. There are all sorts of rumours about soldiers coming up."
"These people are full of rumours. They love rumours." Paterson stood watching the bridge. "Their whole life is a rumour. ~ H.E. Bates

We're an Ag college," I explain to them. "Not as good as the one in Yanco but we have livestock."
"Cows?" Anson Choi asks, covering his nose.
"Pigs, too. And horses. Great for growing tomatoes.
The Cadets are wanna-be soldiers. City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.
"I'm going to throw up," one of the guys says.
"Don't feel too bad," I explain. "Some of our lot did while they were laying out this stuff. Actually, right there where you're standing. ~ Melina Marchetta

All the rest of us - you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa - we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over. ~ Ernie Pyle

Denise, the Nazi soldiers in those trucks do not suspect they're about to be outfoxed by two girls." In the stillness before we spring back itno action, Denise looks to me, grinning like mad. She quotes a line from King Kong, one of my favorite movies I watched with Tom.
"'Oh no. It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast. ~ Amy McAuley

Support our troops!" we cry, but I say, "Love our veterans!" And when he neglects church, take him cookies anyway. Sing him a song. Pet his cat. ~ Chila Woychik

Opposing sports teams shake hands when the game is over. Dead soldiers just rot. ~ Dan Sheehan

No, my son. Not she. I. I lay on the rocks and the sun gnawed at my flesh. I pleaded for my life with a useless stump of a tongue. I watched your precious Cveti close up my severed breasts in a silver box. And I listened to the soldiers praise her false name - Ghyfran! Ghyfran! The whore who betrayed her god for power. This body is new, but I am Ragnhild, first of my name, and I am the plague which will burn through the marrow of the Anointed City. ~ Catherynne M Valente

As soldiers we have few saving graces. Perhaps our willingness to die for what we believe in is all that matters. ~ Leo Gordon

Seeing that he could not go on, seeing that he was near ters, Brys simply nodded. He turned to study what he could see of the Malazan position.
Nothing but armored lizards, weapons lifting and descending, blood rising in a mist.
But, as he stared he noticed something.
The Nah'ruk were no longe advancing.
You stopped them? Blood of the gods, what manner of soldiers are you? ~ Steven Erikson

The brave men die in war. It takes great luck or judgment not to be killed. Once, at least, the head has to bow and the knee has to bend to danger. The soldiers who march back under the triumphal arches are death's deserters. ~ Jean Giraudoux

In 302, the Roman emperor Diocletian commanded "there should be cheapness," declaring, "Unprincipled greed appears wherever our armies ... march ... Our law shall fix a measure and a limit to this greed." The predictable result of Diocletian's food price controls were black markets, hunger and food confiscation by his soldiers. Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices
that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities. ~ Walter E. Williams

I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like your won't dare show their face on a college campus. Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors and fight for just causes and for people's needs-such freedom fighters can be counted throughout American history and they certainly will be counted again. ~ John Daly

And the PRCS [Palestinian Red Crescent Society] had not lost just one hospital: thirteen clinics and nine hospitals all over Lebanon had been destroyed in this way. Only Gaza Hospital, for a reason I was to discover three years later, was still standing. At the height of the air raids, when the Palestinians found out that every single PRCS hospital and clinic was a bomb target, they put three Israeli soldiers captured in south Lebanon on the upper floors of Gaza Hospital, and radioed a message to the Israeli Army saying that any further military action on Gaza Hospital would result in Israeli lives being lost. That saved Gaza Hospital from further destruction. ~ Ang Swee Chai

Writing 'Native Guard,' I didn't know I was working on a single book. I began writing that book because I was interested in the lesser-known history of these black soldiers stationed off the coast of my hometown. ~ Natasha Trethewey

Now normally," the man said, cradling his weapon in one arm while scratching the blond beard covering the lower half of his face with his free hand, "me and Mad Dog" - he dipped his chin toward the soldier holding Umar hostage - "and the rest of the boys wouldn't hesitate to just go ahead and let you eat a bullet." And, as if on cue, four more soldiers emerged from the undergrowth, quiet as ghosts. "But as it happens, there are some folks back in the States who are just itchin' to ask you a few questions. ~ Julie Ann Walker

Surely, though, I must have stolen into the future and landed in an H.G. Wells-style world - a horrific, fantastic society in which people's faces contained only eyes, millions of healthy young adults and children dropped dead from the flu, boys got transported out of the country to be blown to bits, and the government arrested citizens for speaking the wrong words. Such a place couldn't be real. And it couldn't be the United States of America, "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
But it was. I was on a train in my own country, in a year the devil designed. 1918. ~ Cat Winters

It's ironic however that God would give you such a low threshold for pain when what you do is slay the demonic soldiers of the army of darkness. ~ The Alpha Jan

With the smugness of an end man on parade, he bounced along on his sinewy legs, effortlessly marching to attention, floating with a lightness of step remarkably different from the heavy tread of the soldiers keeping time with him. Down by his thigh he carried, unsheathed, a thin little sword – it was a small curved sabre, for ceremonial use only – and he looked and turned sideways to the commander and back to the men behind, without straining his big powerful frame or getting out of step. He seemed to strive with every fibre of his soul to march past his commander with maximum style, and his strong sense of doing this well made him a happy man. 'Left . . . left . . . left . . .' he seemed to be mouthing to himself at each alternate step, and that was the rhythm to which the solid wall of military men, weighed down by packs and guns, advanced; each face was different in its stern concentration, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed to mouth his own 'Left . . . left . . . left . . .' at each alternate step ~ Leo Tolstoy

It was a roadblock, manned by an officer and several other soldiers.
Sivaram and the trishaw driver were ordered out of the vehicle, and I was
told to stay where I was. The soldiers held their rifl es aimed and ready as the
offi cer interrogated the trishaw driver, a Muslim man, who fumbled out his
documents. He was soon allowed to get back in his trishaw. When it was
Sivaram's turn, he just stood there, completely quiet. After several questions,
the offi cer started screaming at him. Then he ordered his soldiers to take him,
and gestured for the trishaw driver to go on. Without thinking, I jumped out
of the trishaw. I was a visiting professor at Colombo University and he was one
of my students, I lied, approaching them. I threatened to call the American
Embassy if they arrested my 'student.' The offi cer yelled, in English, for me to
come no closer, to get back in the trishaw. Then he barked an order, and one
of the soldiers lifted his rifl e and aimed it directly at my head. I kept babbling
on about the embassy, but even I did not hear myself. All I could see was that
hole at the end of the rifl e and, above it, the sweaty face and very frightened
eyes of the soldier. He looked very young, maybe 18. I thought, I'm going to
die right now. And then we grew very quiet.
The offi cer barked another order, the soldier lowered his gun, and the
other soldiers pushed Sivaram bac ~ Mark P. Whitaker

The figure stood in the flames, dark, hard to make out. "I've given you the blessing of pewter, Spook," the voice said. "Use it to escape this place. You can break through the boards on the far side of that hallway, escape out onto the roof of the building nearby. The soldiers won't be watching for you - they're too busy controlling the fire so it doesn't spread."
Spook nodded. The heat didn't bother him anymore. "Thank you."
The figure stepped forward, becoming more than just a silhouette. Flames played against the man's firm face, and Spook's suspicions were confirmed. There was a reason he'd trusted that voice, a reason why he'd done what it had said.
He'd do whatever this man commanded.
"I didn't give you pewter just so you could live, Spook," Kelsier said, pointing. "I gave it to you so you could get revenge. Now, go! ~ Brandon Sanderson

I have lived most of my life in soldiers' camps. I know what they saw. I know how they think. Their confidence sours as sudden as curdled milk. ~ Geraldine Brooks

It was a question above all of personal and national honour, because the important thing was that Greece should come through this trial without the slightest imputation of turpitude. When soldiers are dead, when a country is devastated and destroyed, it is honour that survives and endures. It is honour that breathes life into the corpse when evil times have passed. ~ Louis De Bernieres

The male role models I had all seemed to have been in the military. My father served in the army. My uncle was in the Marine Corps. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII. There weren't any career soldiers in my family, but when I was young it seemed like a way of arriving at adulthood. ~ Kevin Powers