fighting quotes

Peace, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

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

He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza 23.

The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desparate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate.

- Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
  His preface to E L Spears Liaison1914.

The damned whores the moment that they got below fell a fighting amongst one and another and Capt Meridith order the Sergt. notto partthem butto letthem fight it out. See Chisholme 213:16.

- Ralph Clark
c.1789  The Journal and Letters of Lt Ralph Clark1787^1792. The phrase'damned whores' was adopted by Australian feminist Anne Summers in her feminist critique of  Australian culture, Damned Whores and God's Police (1975).

The most important thing in the Olympic games is not winning but taking partjust as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.

- Pierre de, Baron Coubertin
  Speech to Olympic Games officials, London, 24  Jul.

When you're fighting, you're fighting for one thingmoney.

- (William Harrison) Jack Dempsey
Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble. Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying, If the world be worth thy winning, Think, oh think, it worth enjoying.

-John Dryden
  Alexander's Feast, l.97^102.

In enterprise of martial kind, When there was any fighting, He led his regiment from behind He found it less exciting. But when away his regiment ran, His place was at the fore,O That celebrated, Cultivated Underrated Nobleman, The Duke of Plaza-Toro!

- Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck) Gilbert
  Duke's song, The Gondoliers, act1.

   And life is colour and warmth and light And a striving evermore for these; And he is dead, who will not fight; And who dies fighting has increase.

-Julian Henry Francis Grenfell
  'Into Battle', in The Times, 27 May.

   Articulation is the tongue-tied's fighting.

-Tony Harrison
  'On Not Being Milton'.

It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilitiesitentailsisfighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.

- Henry James
  Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 4 Feb.

Land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts. It will come to you, this love of the land.

- Margaret Mitchell
  Gone  with  the Wind.

Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed.

- Margaret Mitchell
   Ashley Wilkes. Gone  with  the Wind, ch.31.

When the war in Spain is over I shall have to find something else: the Italian character has to be formed through fighting.

- Benito also called Il Duce [the Leader] Mussolini
  Quoted in Thomas The Spanish Civil War, p.226.

What istheuse offighting for thevoteif we donot havea country to vote in? With that patriotism that has nerved womento enduretorture inprison for thenational good, we ardently desire that our country shall be victorious.

- Emmeline ne  e  Goulden Pankhurst
  Declaring a truce on suffragette activities for the duration of WorldWar I,10 Aug.

   When we, the Workers, all demand: What are WE fighting for? Then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madnessWar.

- Robert William Service
Ballads of a Bohemian,'Michael'.

   Football causeth fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel- picking, murder, homicide, and agreateffusionof blood, as daily experiences teaches.

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