#w

...all this time I've been worshiping you - when other men wanted to kiss you, I've been offering the praise of my lips... ↗

— John Geddes

#praise #words #worship #love

That small caress, such a simple show of affection, unleashed something coiled deep within Kenric. In that moment he finally understood what drove men to wage wars over a woman, why a man would give almost anything to possess the woman he wanted above all others. No amount of gold, fame, or glory could come close to arousing the emotions she stirred in him. Nothing else in the world. ↗

— Elizabeth Elliott

#kenric #the-warlord #men

Men, being accustomed to act on reflection themselves, are a great deal too apt to believe that women act on reflection, too. Women do nothing of the sort. They act on impulse; and, in nine cases out of ten, they are heartily sorry for it afterward. ↗

— Wilkie Collins

#men-and-women #relationships #men

In the midst of the heavy, hot fragrance of summer, and of the clean salty smell of the sea, there was the odor of wounded men, a sickly odor of blood and antiseptics which marked the zone of every military hospital. All Athens quickly took on that odor, as the wounded Greek soldiers were moved out of hospitals and piled into empty warehouses to make way for German wounded. Now every church, every empty lot, every school building in Athens is full of wounded, and on the pathways of Zappion, the park in the heart of Athens, bandaged men in makeshift wheel chairs are to be seen wherever one walks. Zappion is a profusion of flowers, heavy-scented luxurious flowers; but even the flower fragrance is not as strong as that of blood. ↗

— Betty Wason

#blood #flowers #fragrance #military-occupation #odor

But to us of a later generation...it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connections between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#men

Truths were carved from the identical wood as were lies--words--and so sank or floated with identical ease. But since truths were carved by the World, they rarely appeased Men and their innumerable vanities. Men hhad no taste for facts that did not ornament or enrich, and so they willfully--if not knowingly--panelled their lives with shining and intricate falsehoods. ↗

— R. Scott Bakker

#men

I walk into the office of the counselor and figure out a few things. His name is Bob. It’s written on the plastic sign his door. Bob Kissock. Also, he wears too much cologne. It smells up the tiny room and makes me think of men wearing towels around their waists on TV commercials. ↗

— Janet Gurtler

#men

One dead body required two men either to bury it or to transport it to the rear. A wounded soldier, on the other hand, immobilized five men for an indeterminate amount of time; and who knew whether it was even worth the effort. ↗

— Stéphane Audeguy

#efficiency #war #wounded #men

Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state. ↗

— Harry S. Truman

#government #individual-worth #men

This praise, though far from fulsome, gave me pleasure and that is to my shame. But there was something in him, some power of spirit, that made me want to please him. Perhaps, it occurs to me now, it was no more than the intensity of his wish. Men are distinguished by the power of their wanting. What this one wanted became his province and his meal, he governed it and fed on it from the first moment of desire. Besides, with the perversity of our nature, being tested had made me more desire to succeed, though knowing the enterprise to be sinful. ↗

— Barry Unsworth

#wanting #men