War and Peace

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

When you’re wounded and left on

If blood be the price of admiralty,

How far is St. Helena from the field of Austerlitz?

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Such boasting as the Gentiles use,

The tumult and the shouting dies—

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Foot—foot—foot—foot—sloggin’ over Africa—

It was involuntary. They sank my boat.

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

For as the nature of foul weather, lieth not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

What of the faith and fire within us

Yes; quaint and curious war is!

After two thousand years of mass

‘Justice’ was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.

War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.