#battle

You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect. ↗

— Miyamoto Musashi

#does #enemy #expect #knowing #timing

Avarice seems to have so pervaded our vital principles as to battle all hopes of a remedy but for peace and plenty. ↗

— Edmund Pendleton

#battle #hopes #our #peace #pervaded

No battle is worth fighting except the last one. ↗

— Enoch Powell

#except #fighting #last #worth

The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought. ↗

— Henry Waxman

#fought #history #importance #institutions #military

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. ↗

— Arthur Wellesley

#except #half #lost #melancholy #nothing

[O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in The Dream of John Ball that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-persuasion and I strive to be alert to its traps, but a version of what Hegel called 'the cunning of history' is a parallel commentary that I fight to keep alive in my mind. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#battles #hegel #history #life #reminiscence

Wait, I got it. We, uh, won the battle and lost the war, or was it the other way around? 'Cause around here, it's hard to tell sometimes. ↗

— Kami Garcia

#humor #war #beauty

Today is yesterday's victory, yesterday is tomorrow's conquest, and tomorrow is today's war. Though I face death, I am not fearsome. ↗

— Nadège Richards

#conquest #death #fear #hope #love

Madoka: Won't anyone notice that Mami-san is dead? Homura: Mami Tomoe's only relatives are distant relations. It will be quite some time before anyone files a missing persons report. When one dies on that side of the wards, not even a body is left behind. She'll wind up forever a "missing person"... That is what happens to magical girls in the end. Madoka: ...That's too cruel! Mami-san has been fighting all alone for a long time for everyone's sake! For no one to even notice that she's gone... That's just too lonely a fate... Homura: It is just that kind of contract that gives us the power in the first place. It isn't for anyone else's sake. We fight on for the sake of our own prayer. So for no one to notice... for the world to forget us... That is just something we have to accept. ↗

— Magica Quartet

#cruel #cruel-lesson #dead #death #dying

Bashere shrugged, grinning brhind his grey-streaked moustaches, "When I first slept in a saddle, Muad Cheade was Marshal-General. The man was as mad as a hare in spring thaw. Twice every day he searched his bodyservant for poison, and he drank nothing but vinegar and water which he claimed was sovereign against the poison the fellow fed him, but he ate everything the man prepared for as long as I knew him. Once he had a grove of oaks chopped down because they were looking at him. And then insisted they be given decent funerals; he gave the oration. Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?" "Why didn't somebody do something? His Family?" "Those not as mad as him, or madder, were afraid to look at him sideways. Tenobia's father wouldn't have let anyone touch Cheade anyway. He might have been insane, but he could outgeneral anyone I ever saw. He never lost a battle. He never even came close to losing. ↗

— Robert Jordan

#humor #madness #family