battle quotes

  • Now you battle for your all.

    -Aeschylus
    Persae, l.402^5 (translated by H  Weir Smyth).

  • When the guns begin to rattle And the men to die Does the Goddess of the Battle Smile or sigh?

    - George Granville Barker
      'Battle Hymn of the New Republic'.

  •    Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Samuel11:15.

  • Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Chronicles 20:15.

  • He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha, and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 39:24^5.

  • I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes 9:11

  • For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians14:8.

  • Battle, n. A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

    - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
      The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

  • Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victorie! Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lour; See approach proud Edward's power, Chains and Slaverie!

    - Robert Burns
      'Bruce's  Address at Bannockburn', stanza1.

  •    'You know,' he said very gravely,'it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battleto get one's head cut off.'

    -Dodgson
    Through the Looking-Glass, ch.4,'Tweedledum and Tweedledee'.

  • Tweedledum and Tweedledee Agreed to have a battle; ForTweedledum said Tweedledee Had spoilt his nice new rattle.

    -Dodgson
    Through the Looking-Glass, ch.4,'Tweedledum and Tweedledee'.

  • Battles decide everything.

    - Karl von Clausewitz
      Principles of  War (translated by  J  J Graham).

  • Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle, Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?

    - Arthur Hugh Clough
      Amours de Voyage, canto 5, pt.6.

  • In anguish we uplift A new unhallowed song: The race is to the swift, The battle to the strong. See Bible101:85.

    -John Davidson
      'War Song', stanza1.

  • Sagest in the council was he, kindest in the hall: Sure we never won a battle'twas Owen won them all. Had he lived, had he lived, our dear country had been free; But he's dead, but he's dead, and 'tis slaves we'll ever be.

    -Thomas Osborne Davis
      'Lament for the Death of Owen Roe O'Neil'.

  • The first blow is half the battle.

    - Oliver Goldsmith
      She Stoops to Conquer, act 2, sc.1.

  • It takes up no falling cause; fights no uphill battle; advocatesnogreat principle; holdsout a helping hand to no oppressed or obscure individual. It is 'ever strong upon the stronger side'.

    -William Hazlitt
      Of  The Times. In the Edinburgh Review, May.

  • The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead.

    - Felicia ne  e Browne Hemans
      'Casabianca'.

  • Ben Battle was a soldier bold, And used to war's alarms: But a cannon-ball took off his legs, So he laid down his arms!

    -Honorius of Autun
      'Faithless Nelly Gray'.

  • There is no other course but the one we have chosen, except the course of humiliation and darkness, after which there will be no bright sign in the sky or brilliant light on earth† All this will make us more patient and steadfast, and better prepared for the battle which God blesses and which good men support. Then there will only be a glorious conclusion, where a brilliant sun will clear the dust of battle, and where the clouds of battles will be dispelled.

    - Saddam Hussein
      Baghdad radio broadcast, 21 Feb.

  • [Winston Churchill] mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

    -John F(itzgerald) Kennedy
      On conferring honorary US citizenship on Winston Churchill, 9  Apr.

  • Skiing is a battle against yourself, always to the frontiers of the impossible.But most of all, it must give you pleasure. It is not an obligation but a joy.

    -Jean-Claude Killy
      In Sports Illustrated,18 Nov.

  • With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

    - Abraham Lincoln
      Second inaugural address, 4 Mar, a month before the end of the Civil War.

  • All thenightthefrogsgo chuckle, all theday thebirdsare singing In the pond beside the meadow, by the roadway poplar- lined, In the field between the trenches are a million blossoms springing 'Twixt the grass of silver bayonets where the lines of battle wind Where man has manned thetrenches for the maiming of his kind.

    - Patrick MacGill
      Soldier Songs,'The Trench'.

  • He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.

    - Edward (Edgar) R(oscoe) Murrow
      Of Churchill. Broadcast, 30 Nov, quoted in In Search of Light (1967).

  • The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of  World War I. Never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

    - Peggy Noonan
      What I Saw at the Revolution.

  •    The only candidate who can whistle Dixie while humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

    -JohnJ O'Brien
      Of President Johnson. Quoted in HaroldBrayman (ed)  The President Speaks Off the Record (1976).

  • In the early morning the mill girls clumping down the cobbled street, all in clogs, making a curiously formidable sound, like an army hurrying into battle. I suppose this is the typical sound of Lancashire.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      Diary entry,18 Feb. He used this as material for his book The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).

  • Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing- fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.One of the dominant facts in English life during the past three-quarters of a century has been the decay of ability in the ruling class.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
    The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, pt.4.

  • It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

    -Wilfred Owen
      'Strange Meeting', collected in Poems (published1920).

  • Outsidetheir laboratories, thephysicianand chemist are soldiers without arms on the field of battle.

    - Louis Pasteur
    Some Reflections on Science in France, pt.1.

  • The strife is o'er, the battle done; Now is theVictor's triumph won;

    - Frances Pott
    English  author  and  illustrator  of  books  for  children,  whose characters have become classics of children's literature.

  • Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futuritycastsuponthepresent; thewordswhichexpress what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    A Defence of Poetry.

  • When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun roseand set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle.Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?† What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my country?

    -Sitting Bull real name Tatanka Iyotake
    c.1866  Quoted inT C McLuhan Touch the Earth (1973).

  • The Englishwoman's clothes, too, have improved out of all knowledge†no longer are our hats, as inVictorian days, a kind of Pageant of Empire, whereon the products of all the colonies battle for precedence.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      EnglishWomen.

  • Love invincible in battle.

    -Sophocles
    Antigone,781^90 (translated by H Lloyd-Jones,1994).

  • 'There is no terror, brotherToby, in its looks, but what it borrowsfromgroans and convulsionsand theblowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms ofcurtains, ina dying man'sroomStrip itofthese, what is it?''Tis better in battle than in bed,'said my uncle Toby.

    - Laurence Sterne
    ^67  Of death.Tristram Shandy, bk.5, ch.3.

  • Marriage is like life in thisthat it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
    Virginibus Puerisque,'Virginibus Puerisque', pt.1.

  • I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, council, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windyTroy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.6^24.

  • So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'The Passing of Arthur', l.170^1.

  • Capital accounting in its formally most rational shape†presupposes the battle of man with man.

    - Max Weber
      Collected in Guenther Roth and ClausWittich (eds) Economy and Society (1978), ch.1.

  • Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.

    - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
      Of the Battle of Waterloo. Comment to Lady Shelley, Jul. Quoted in Richard Edgecumbe (ed) The Diary of Frances, Lady Shelley (1912), vol.1, ch.9, p.102.

  • The history of a battle is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost; but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference.

    - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
      Of the Battle of Waterloo. Letter, 8 Aug.

  • The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

    - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
    Attributed, and probably apocryphal. Quoted in Count Charles de Montalembert De l'Avenir politique de l'Angleterre (1856), ch.10:'C'est ici qu'a e  te   gagne   la bataille deWaterloo'.

  •    A strange manner of battle, where one side works by constant motion and ceaseless charges, while the other can but endure passivelyas it standsfixed tothesod.The Norman arrow and sword worked on: in the English ranks the only movement was the dropping of the dead: the living stood motionless.

    -William of Poitiers   11c.
    c.1071 Of theBattle of Hastings,14 Oct1066. Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum (edited by R Foreville,1952).

  • L'expe  rience†d'une femme e  crivain est comple'  tement schizophre  nique. Il faut toujours faire coupure entre les deux: d'une part, employer un langage qui n'est pas le no" t re†et la lutte qu'on me'  ne sur un autre plan, qui tend 'a casser tout  c° a, a'   essayer de faire a'   travers et dans le langage autre chose. The experience†of the woman writer is completely schizophrenic.One is always torn between two approaches: on the one hand, to use a language that is not ours†and on the other, the battle one fights to break all this up, in order to do something else through and in language.

    - Monique Wittig
    Quoted inJean-Fran c° ois Josselin'Lettre   a' Sapho' in Le Nouvel Observateur (1973).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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