Quotes
Quotes about War
In the reign of Charles II. a certain worthy divine at Whitehall thus addressed himself to the auditory at the conclusion of his sermon: "In short, if you don't live up to the precepts of the Gospel, but abandon yourselves to your irregular appetites, you must expect to receive your reward in a certain place which 't is not good manners to mention here."
Hobbes clearly proves that every creature
Lives in a state of war by nature.
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.
For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds,
And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.
My voice is still for war.
Gods! can a Roman senate long debate
Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?
It must be so,--Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'T is the divinity that stirs within us;
'T is Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!
I 'm weary of conjectures,--this must end 'em.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Cos. Pray now, what may be that same bed of honour?
Kite. Oh, a mighty large bed! bigger by half than the great bed at Ware: ten thousand people may lie in it together, and never feel one another.
Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile.
One to destroy is murder by the law,
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name,
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame.
Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time's noblest offspring is the last.
[Tar water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate.
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.
What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
See how the world its veterans rewards!
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards.
Then marble soften'd into life grew warm,
And yielding, soft metal flow'd to human form.
Religion blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame nor private dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire Chaos is restor'd,
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all.
I war not with the dead.
Note 41.The canvas glow'd beyond ev'n Nature warm;
The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form.
Oliver Goldsmith: The Traveller, line 137.
Who stemm'd the torrent of a downward age.
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.
Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger at his death.
I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."... There was another fine passage too which he struck out: "When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for I found that generally what was new was false."
