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fight quotes

  • Ningue  m no cais tem um nome so  .Todos te"  m tambe  m um apelido ou abreviam o nome, ou o aumentam, ou lhe acrescentam qualquer coisa que recorde uma histo  ria, uma luta, um amor. No one onthe dockshasjust onename.Everybody has a nickname too, or the name is shortened, or lengthened, or something is added that recalls a tale, a fight, a woman.

    -Jorge Amado
      Mar morto (Sea of Death,1984),'Iemanja ' .

  • I know one thing we did right Was the day we started to fight, Keep your eye on the prize, Hold on, hold on!

    -Anonymous
    Civil rights song, quoted in  Juan Williams Eye on the Prize (1987).

  • Our cock won't fight.

    -Baron
      Of Edward VIII. Comment to Winston Churchill during the abdication crisis. Quoted in Francis Donaldson Edward VIII (1974).

  • Fight the good fight of faith.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
      Timothy 6:12.

  • I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
      Timothy 4:7.

  • I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.

    -William Blake
      Milton, preface. Stanza 4.

  • The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

    -Jorge Luis Borges
      In Time,14 Feb.

  • No, when the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something.

    - Robert Browning
      Men and Women,'Bishop Blougram's  Apology'.

  • For, those that fly, may fight again, Which he can never do that's slain.

    - Samuel Butler
      Hudibras, pt.3, canto 3, l.243^4.

  •    The Fight for our National Intelligence.

    - Raymond B(ernard) Cattell
      Title of book.

  • Ulster will not be a consenting party.Ulster, attheproper time, will resort to the supreme arbitrament of force; Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right.

    - Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
      Public letter,7 May.

  • We shall not flag or fail.We shall go on to the end.We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be.We shall fight on the beaches, weshall fight onthelanding grounds, weshall fight inthe fields and in thestreets, we shall fight inthehills.We shall never surrender.

    - Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
      Speech in the House of Commons,4  Jun, after the Dunkirk evacuation.

  • 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.

  • To fight for the right, to abhor the imperfect, the unjust, or the mean, to swerve neither to the right hand nor the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or odium or abuseit is so easy to have any of them in Indianever to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim but to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the greatest of his ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little forward in your time and to feel that somewhere among those millions you have left, a little justice, or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a springof patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenmentora stirringofduty whereit did not exist beforethat is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India.

    - Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (of Kedleston)
      Farewell speech on departing from Bombay as Viceroy of India.

  • To fight aloud, is very brave, But gallanter, I know, Who charge within the bosom The Cavalry of Woe.

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    c.1859  Complete Poems, no.126 (first published1890).

  • There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.5.

  • Some of us will fight and fight again to save the party we love.We will fight and fight againtobring back sanityand honestyand dignity, so that our party, with its great past, may retain its glory and its greatness.

    - Hugh Gaitskell
      Denouncing unilateralists trying to gain control of the party. Labour Party conference speech, Oct.

  • When we began this fight, we had clean handsare they clean now? What's gentility worth if it can't stand fire?

    -John Galsworthy
      The Skin Game, act 3.

  • Why are you telling me this? The British won't fight.

    - Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri
      Responding to a warning from US Secretary of State Alexander Haig about the consequence of the invasion.

  • One cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.

    -W(illiam) E(wart) Gladstone
      Speech on the Reform Bill, House of Commons, 27  Apr.

  • You don't need to be 'straight'to fight and die for your country.You just need to shoot straight.

    - Barry M(orris) Goldwater
      On homosexuals in the military. In Life, Dec.

  • I purpose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.

    - Ulysses S(impson) Grant
      Despatch to Washington from Spottsylvania,11 May. Quoted in P C Headley The Life and Campaigns of General U  . S. Grant (1869), ch.23.

  • The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference: the doubter fights only with himself.

    - (Henry) Graham Greene
      Monsignor Quixote, pt.1, ch.4.

  • Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement.With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of ourcause, each one of us must fight on until the end.

    - Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig (of Bemersyde)
      Order to British troops facing the German offensive across the Somme battlefields,12  Apr. Quoted in  A Duff Cooper Haig (1936), vol.2, ch.23.

  •   The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight.You have to do that cold.But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief. 394

    - Ernest Millar Hemingway
      Of whisky. Letter to Ivan Kashkin,19  Aug.

  • One omen is best of allto fight for your country.

    -Homer   8c
    c.700  BC  Iliad, bk.7, l.243 (translated by Martin Hammond).

  • This is the best portent, to fight in defence of one's country.

    -Homer   8c
    c.700  BC  Iliad, bk.12, l.243 (translated by Martin Hammond).

  • We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too!

    - G W Hunt
      Music-hall song, inspired by Disraeli's speech of 9 Nov1876 threatening Russia with war if it sent volunteers into Serbia and Montenegro. This is the origin of 'jingoism'.

  • If they come we are ready.We will fight them on the streets, from the rooftops, from house to house.We will never surrender our independence no matter what happens in any invasion.

    - Saddam Hussein
    Quoted in George Galloway I'm Not the Only One (2004).

  • En skulde aldrig ha'sine bedste buxer pafi  , nafi   r en er ude og strider for frihed og sandhed. You should never have your best trousers on when you turn out to fight for freedom and truth.

    - HenrikJohan Ibsen
      En folkefiende (An Enemy of  the People), act 5.

  • If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will.

    -William James
      The Will to Believe.

  • And as for you, archers, soldiers, gentlemen, and all otherswhoare besieging Orleans,depart in God'sname to your own country† I assure you that wherever I find your people in France I shall fight them, and pursue them, and expel them from here, whether they will or not.

    -StJoan of Arc
      Letter to the English at Poitiers, 22 Mar. Quoted in Les Proce'  s de Jeanne d'Arc (translated by C Larrington), p.33.

  • Sir, I have not yet begun to fight.

    -John Paul Jones
      His reply to a request for surrender when his ship was sinking, 23 Sep. Helashedhis ship to his enemy's andboardedit, accepting the enemy captain's surrender. Quoted in  Anna de Koven Life and Letters of  John Paul Jones (1913). US  jazz  trumpeter,  songwriter  and record producer.  His  many albums include Body  Heat (1974)  and The Dude (1981).  As Vice- President  of  Mercury  Records  he  promoted  Frank  Sinatra  and MichaelJackson among others.

  • O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the clouds of the fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! Keynes And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through thenight that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

    - Francis Scott Key
      'The Star-Spangled Banner', originally published as'The Defence of Fort M'Henry' in the Baltimore Patriot, 20 Sep; it commemorates the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, by the British,13^14 Sep.

  • This fight is bigger than life itself.

    - Don King
    On the heavyweight title bout between Lennox Lewis and Hasim Rahman. In the Observer, 30 Dec.

  • Get up, stand up Stand up for your rights Get up, stand up Don't give up the fight.

    - Bob (Robert Nesta) Marley
      'Get Up, Stand Up'.

  • The man who runs away will fight again.

    -Menander
    Fragment quoted in  Aulus Gellius Noctes  Atticae,17.21.31 (translated by J C Rolfe,1967).

  • Servant of God, well done, well hast thou fought The better fight.

    -John Milton
      God to his faithful angels. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.6, l.29^30.

  • How beautifully the English fight! But they must give way.

    -Napoleon I
       Attributed, at the Battle of  Waterloo,18  Jun.

  • Je combattrai pour l'Homme. Contre ses ennemis. Mais aussi contre moi-me"  me. I shall fight for mankind. Against his enemies.But also against myself.

    - Antoine de Saint-Exupe  ry
      Pilote de guerre.

  •    'And everybody praised the Duke, Who this great fight did win.' 'But what good came of it at last?' Quoth little Peterkin. 'Why that I cannot tell,'said he, 'But 'twas a famous victory.'

    - Robert Southey
      'The Battle of Blenheim'.

  • Well, maybe like Casy says, a fellowain't got a soul of his own, but on'ya piece of a big onean then† Then it don'matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be everywherewherever you look.Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there.Wherever they's a cop beatin'up aguy,I'll bethere.If Casyknowed, why,I'll be inthewayguysyell whenthey'remad an'I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an'they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they buildwhy, I'll be there. See?

    -John Ernest Steinbeck
      The Grapes ofWrath, ch.28.

  • It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.

    - Adlai E(wing) Stevenson
      Speech, NewYork, 27 Aug.

  •    For as concerning football playing, I protest unto you it may be rather called a friendly kind of fight than a play or recreation, a bloody or murmuring practice than a fellowly sport or pastime.

    - Philip Stubbes
      Anatomie of Abuses in the Realme of England.

  • The allies are too frightened to fight each other, too stupid too agree.

    -Benevento
      Congress ofVienna, Nov.

  • You help them get elected, and then the Senate becomes the wife, the mistress. That was one lady I couldn't begin to fight. She was too tough.

    - Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor
      After her marriage to SenatorJohnWarner. In Cosmopolitan, Sep.

  •    It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill; I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind, I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assigned.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.3, sect.6, stanza 5, l.57^9.

  •    That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

    -Tennyson
      'The Grandmother', stanza 8, l.31^2.

  • At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: 'Spanishships of warat sea! Wehavesighted fifty-three!' Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ''Fore God I am no coward; But I cannot meetthem here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but followquick. Wearesix ships oftheline; canwefight withfifty-three?' Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: 'I know you are no coward; You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.' So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven.

    -Tennyson
      'The Revenge', stanzas1^3, l.1^14.

  • And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

    -Tennyson
      'The Revenge', stanza 9, l.56^7.

  • I shall fight. I will fight on.

    - Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness Thatcher
      To reporters, on learning that she had not won the necessary majority to secure her re-election as party leader, two days before announcing her decision to step down, 21 Nov.

  • The Soviet Republic needs an army that will be able to fight and conquer.

    - Leon originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein Trotsky
      Speech to the Moscow Soviet of Workers', Soldiers'and Peasants' Deputies,19 Mar.

  • There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight; there issuch a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.

    - (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
      Speech in Philadelphia,10 May.

  • I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death', l.1.^4. Collected inThe Wild Swans at Coole (1919).

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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