Gods Of War Quotes & Sayings

The gods of war are about to bleed. — Kendare Blake

Anyway, the title The War of the Insect Gods came before we had that ending, before we knew they had become gods. That we knew the evolutionary cycle they went through. Before we even knew anything about that. We had an ending. — Michael O'Donoghue

Tolkien came to regard the tale of Beren and Tinuviel as 'the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that the great policies of world history, "the wheels of the world", are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak'. Such a worldview is inherent in the fairy-tale (and Christian) idea of the happy ending in which the dispossessed are restored to joy; but perhaps Tolkien was also struck by the way it had been borne out in the Great War, when ordinary people stepped out of ordinary lives to carry the fate of nations. — John Garth

The diversity of sounds rule my ever presence with their highs and blows, encompassing the totality of sensual experience. I'm a child of the sirens of knowledge, a warrior for the truth in a world of washed perspectives and harsh realities. My voice cries the initial cry of the unborn into the perplexing illusion. I long for the realization of the human drama, the defeat of the dogs war, and the unity of existence. The beloved Gods of virtue have been undersold for the bleeding bread of empathy. I now awaist the triumphant roar of destiny, dressed in the inviting hand of a mother, perplexed by discovering, aroused by spirit. The door is open, the road transformed. The exit code to civilization is hacked beyond dispair, chased but the moon toward the freeing sun, on our journey to light. This is an open plea to the beautiful insanity of your hearts. It is time to consummate the kiss of oblivion into the obsidian of love! — Serj Tankian

Listen: I'm not going to tell you what to do. We cannot make decisions for you. We came to help, but we do not want to interfere. We gave you a gift, yours to do with as you will. But you've heard all that before. We're happy to talk. To answer questions about why we don't stop war and suffering, cure cancer, end poverty, point the way to heaven or point out that there is no heaven. Ask us anything. We don't mind. We try our best to be candid, but there is an inevitable degree of mutual incomprehension. Because your qualia aren't our qualia. Because we're running models of who you think you are and what you think you know, but they're just models. Because the map isn't the territory. Because we aren't gods. We aren't even close. You know? At best, we're pipers at the gates of dawn. Who have come to this little blue planet to help. — Paul McAuley

The borders of man, defined by politics, war, and faith - all three manifestations of delusion - meant even more to gods. — Michael R. Fletcher

And so Nat stood up and joined the group, and followed, and watched, and awaited his chance as the light of Chaos lit the plain and gods and demons marched to war. — Joanne Harris

Artemis must be present at the solstice," Zoe said. "She has been the most vocal on the council, arguing for taking action against Kronos's minions. If she is not there, the gods will decide nothing. We will lose another year of war preparations."
Are you sugesting the gods have trouble acting together, young lady?" Dionysis asked.
Yes, Lord Dionysis."
Mr.D nodded. "Just checking. Your right, of course. Carry on. — Rick Riordan

War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor. — Steven Pressfield

It is said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. It may well be that a war neurosis stirred up by propaganda of fear and hatred is the prelude to destruction. — John Boyd Orr

Of pure poetry there are two kinds, that which mirrors the beauty of the world in which our bodies are, and that which builds the more mysterious kingdoms where geography ends and fairyland begins, with gods and heroes at war, and the sirens singing still, and Alph going down to the darkness from Xanadu. — Lord Dunsany

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave Them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us, and delivered us, bound, to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know." — Rudyard Kipling

There's a kind of theology at work here. The bombs are a kind of god. As his power grows, our fear naturally increases. I get as apprehensive as anyone else, maybe more so. We have too many bombs. They have too many bombs. There's a kind of theology of fear that comes out of this. We begin to capitulate to the overwhelming presence. It's so powerful. It dwarfs us so much. We say let the god have his way. He's so much more powerful than we are. Let it happen, whatever he ordains. It used to be that the gods punished men by using the forces of nature against them or by arousing them to take up their weapons and destroy each other. Now god is the force of nature itself, the fusion of tritium and deuterium. Now he's the weapon. So maybe this time we went too far in creating a being of omnipotent power. All this hardware. Fantastic stockpiles of hardware. The big danger is that we'll surrender to the sense of inevitability and start flinging mud all over the planet. — Don DeLillo

As we will see in the following pages, peacetime is not always kind to generals and they do not necessarily do well outside their task of generaling. Perhaps that is because during war they become as close to gods on earth as we are ever likely to see. Patton — Winston Groom

Oh the madness of battle! We fear it, we celebrate it, the poets sing of it, and when it fills the blood like fire it is a real madness. It is joy! All the terror is swept away, a man feels he could live for ever, he sees the enemy retreating, knows he himself is invincible, that even the gods would shrink from his blade and his bloodied shield. And I was still keening that mad song, the battle song of slaughter, the sound that blotted out the screams of dying men and the crying of the wounded. It is fear, of course, that feeds the battle madness, the release of fear into savagery. You win in the shield wall by being more savage than your enemy, by turning his savagery back into fear. — Bernard Cornwell

That's how religions and histories make their way into the world, not through battles and conquests, but through poems and kennings and songs, passed through generations and written down by scholars and scribes ...
After all, words are what remain when all the deeds have been done. Words can shatter faith, start a war, change the course of history. A story can make your heart beat faster, topple walls, scale mountains
Hey, a story can even raise the dead. And that's why the King of Stories ended up being King of the gods, because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart. — Joanne Harris

With no small amount of swagger, Gavin Greyling said, "I remember Gavin fucking Guile, who won the False Prism's War, who outwitted the Thorn Conspirators and ended the Red Cliff Uprising. Gavin Guile, who brought low pirate kings and bandit lords, who ended the Blood Wars with wits and one deadly wave of his hand, who brought justice to the Seven Satrapies. Gavin Guile, who hunted wights and criminals, who built Brightwater Wall in less than a week, who aborted the birth of gods, destroyed at least two bane, and killed a god full fledged at Ruic Head. Gavin Guile, who faced a sea demon and lived, saving all the people of Garriston and the Blackguard, too. Gavin Guile, who sank Pash vecchio's great ship Gargantua with a rat. Gavin Guile, who armed us for war and gave the Blackguard the seas entire with ou sea chariots and hull wreckers. Gavin Guile, heart of our heart, our Promachos, the one who goes before us in war, who came and conquered and will come again. — Brent Weeks

I know who you are," he says.
Something about his tone causes my heart of smoke to flicker in response, and I throw my guard up. "Oh? And who, O boy of Parthenia, am I?"
He nods to himself, his eyes alight. "You're her. You're that jinni. Oh, gods. Oh, great bleeding gods! You're the one who started the war!"
"Excuse me?"
"You're the jinni who betrayed that famous queen - what was her name? Roshana? She was trying to bring peace between the jinn and the humans, but you turned on her and started the Five Hundred Wars."
I turn cold. I want him to stop, but he doesn't.
"I've heard the stories," he says. "I've heard the songs. They call you the Fair Betrayer, who enchanted humans with your . . ." He pauses to swallow. "Your beauty. You promised them everything, and then you ruined them. — Jessica Khoury

You were small, but far-famed. We were in Oldtown at your birth, and all the city talked of was the monster that had been born to the King's Hand, and what such an omen might foretell for the realm."
"Famine, plague, and war, no doubt." Tyrion gave a sour smile. "It's always famine, plague, and war. Oh, and winter, and the long night that never ends."
"All that," said Prince Oberyn, "and your father's fall as well. Lord Tywin had made himself greater than King Aerys, I heard one begging brother preach, but only a god is meant to stand above a king. You were his curse, a punishment sent by the gods to teach him that he was no better than any other man."
"I try, but he refuses to learn." Tyrion gave a sigh. "But do go on, I pray you. I love a good tale."
"And well you might, since you were said to have one, a stiff curly tail like a swine's. — George R R Martin

During the war, my mother used to take me to the local repertory theatre on a Monday night, and we used to get two seats for the price of one, for nine pence, in the gods. — Geraldine McEwan

We have a thousand machines for making war but none for making peace. We have computers and iPhone apps that can make millions out of a tiny change in exchange rates, but none that can rescue the poorest countries from their plight. We know how to make Internet pornography, but not how to repair marriages. The very objectivity or neutrality of scientific knowledge as commonly conceived has played into the hands of the gods we secretly worship. — N. T. Wright

What you felt, the beast that swallowed you all and spat you back out, that is the great big bloody point of all this. If you learn nothing else from this bizarre and awkward experience--this gathering of strangers to blow into horns and pluck catgut--remember that you have the power to feel that. The power to create that. With your hands. Your breath. You are gods, children, and you can make war. — Kate Racculia

It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe youtry to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as Gods will yourself! — Thomas Merton

However, what he wanted was impossible: the serenity of the Gods cannot be achieved by the sword. — Andrew Ashling

I don't give a damn, laddie. Until the actual moment, when they cut me down, I shall still be looking to win. And the gods of war are fickle at best. — David Gemmell

So we left the spear in the wagon and I dressed and still was not sick and together we walked to the head of the century. Tears had been ready to lead them. Macer was there, holding his horn. I saw them both shrug and get ready to swap Tears' shield for the horn.
'No, stay as you are,' I said. 'It doesn't hurt to have someone else learning the signals. Tears can stay as Macer's shield-man. Taurus, stay with Horgias.'
'And you?' someone asked.
'Don't worry about me.' I grinned, careless of the listening gods. 'I'm indestructible. I'll outlive you all. — M.C. Scott

It is your duty,' he said, 'to recover your country not by gold but by the sword. You will be fighting with all you love before your eyes: the temples of the gods, your wives and children, the soil of your native land scarred with the ravages of war, and everything which honor and truth call upon you to defend, or recover, or avenge. — Livy

The evil spirits returned to Belial inside the mountain. He stared with a dire face into the blackened ooze of the Abyss that filled the large lake inside their sanctuary. Small flames of fire flitted across the surface of it. The sixty plus other gods gathered around their leader like a bodyguard of Watchers, swords drawn, javelins and maces held tight. Would they fight this day? Belial said, still staring into the oblivion, "It is worse than I thought." Molech whined, "Are the heavenly host approaching?" "No. He transfigured." "Glorification," said Molech. "Is that not a call to battle?" "He is not attacking us on our turf. He is challenging us to his." "It is almost upon us," said Belial. "All gods, prepare for war. — Brian Godawa

I have lived a long life, and I have seen a few things. I walked away from the Last Great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained; no time, no space. Just me. I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a madman. I watched universes freeze and creations burn. I have seen things you wouldn't believe, I have lost things you will never understand. And I know things, secrets that must never be told, knowledge that must never be spoken. Knowledge that will make parasite gods blaze! So come on then! Take it! Take it all, baby! Have it! You have it all! — Neil Cross

All gods are tricksters, and war gods worst of any. — Janet Morris

The ancients placed love and war in the hands of closely related gods. — John Steinbeck

Is it just me or does it seem like the gods have a vendetta against us?" Hector
"They want us dead" Aricles
"Ah, good. I'm not the only one who's noticed. And here I thought it was just me." Hector
"It is disconcerting, isn't it? And battle isn't all I thought it'd be." Galen
"Is that remorse I hear?" Aricles
"It's remorse. I keep going back to that day on the farm when they came to recruit us. Do you remember what you said to me while we packed?" Galen
"Not to forget your cloak?" Aricles
"You told me that battle wouldn't be the same as the war games I' played. That the day would come when I'd grow tired of walking through blood-saturated fields." Galen
"And has that day come brother?" Aricles
Galen nodded. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You see, King, we have a legend - I used to believe that it was all fairy-tale rubbish and empty smoke. It is a legend about how such things as war and death and despair were common in our country at one time. These terrible words, which we have long since stopped using in our language, can be read in collections of our old tales, and they sound awful to us and even a little ridiculous. Today I've learned that these tales are all true ... But now tell me, don't you have in your soul a sort of intimation that you're not doing the right thing? Don't you have a yearning for bright, serene gods, for sensible and cheerful leaders and mentors? Don't you ever dream in your sleep about another, more beautiful life where nobody is envious of others, where reason and order prevails, where people treat other people only with cheerfulness and considerations? — Hermann Hesse

Santa Claus is a god. He's no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus. Think of the white beard, the chariot pulled through the air by a breed of animal which doesn't ordinarily fly, the prayers (requests for gifts) which are annually mailed to him and which so baffle the Post Office, the specially-garbed priests in all the department stories. And don't gods reflect their creators' society? The Greeks had a huntress goddess, and gods of agriculture and war and love. What else would we have but a god of giving, of merchandising, and of consumption? — Donald E. Westlake

A woman has her Juno, just as a man has his Genius; they are names for the sacred power, the divine spark we each of us have in us. My Juno can't "get into" me, it is already my deepest self. The poet was speaking of Juno as if it were a person, a woman, with likes and dislikes: a jealous woman.
The world is sacred, of course, it is full of gods, numina, great powers and presences. We give some of them names
Mars of the fields and the war, Vesta the fire, Ceres the grain, Mother Tellus the earth, the Penates of the storehouse. The rivers, the springs. And in the storm cloud and the light is the great power called the father god. But they aren't people. They don't love and hate, they aren't for or against. They accept the worship due them, which augments their power, through which we live. — Ursula K. Le Guin

War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free. — Heraclitus

I did not want to worship gods as cruel as this - gods cruel enough to rape my mother after she objected to being deceived, or willing to waste the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of men in a useless war. I did not want to believe we could not be free. — Amalia Carosella

Gideon conquers, the church conquers, we conquer, because faith conquers. But the victory belongs not to Gideon, the church, or ourselves, but to God. And God's victory means our defeat, our humiliation; it means God's derision and wrath at all human pretensions of might, at humans puffing themselves up and thinking they are somebodies themselves. It means the world and its shouting is silenced, that all our ideas and plans are frustrated; it means the cross. The cross over the world
that means that human beings, even the most noble, go down to dust whether it suits them or not, and with them all the gods and idols and lords of this world. The cross of Jesus Christ
that means God's bitter mockery of all human grandeur and God's bitter suffering in all human misery, God's lordship over all the world. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

My voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death? — Joseph Addison

Even war gods fear their wives, then, Sigurd reflected sourly. 'She is already warping my ear for taking three sons into the same fight,' Harald went on. 'If I took you too she would make what you did to Olaf look like a kiss on the cheek.' He frowned. 'Look now! Her eyes are into us like cat's claws. — Giles Kristian

All over the ancient world populations were now set against populations, as men were set against women and against other men. Wandering over the width and breadth of this disintegrating world, masses of refugees were everywhere fleeing their homelands, desperately searching for a haven, for a safe place to go.

But there was no such place left in their new world. For this was now a world where, having violently deprived the Goddess and the female half of humanity of all power, gods and men of war ruled. It was a world in which the Blade, and not the Chalice, would henceforth be supreme, a world in which peace and harmony would be found only in the myths and legends of a long lost past. — Riane Eisler

Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else ... even the gods.'
'You feel that way?'
She [Annabeth] looked down. 'Don't you ever feel like, what if the world really is messed up? What if we could do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework.'
'I'm listening.'
'I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did - that's why the fire is still burning. That's why Olympus is still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: "If I could tear this all down, I would do it better." Don't you ever feel that way? Like you could do a better job if you ran the world? — Rick Riordan

His view of war - and he had seen a great deal of it - was that a general made as many blunders as he fought battles, but, by the grace of the gods, the opposing generals' blunders were sometimes worse. — Aubrey Menen

We were the lucky ones, the notthese, we were the ones who had survived the aerial bombing and fire-clusters, the final flash. Regrettable, unavoidable, a war to end all wars, a war for democracy, a war for freedom, peaceful war. Sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes war is right.
But to the broken and the dead, to the wounded and the maimed, to the exploded and the shrapnelshattered, to minds gone dark, to eyes that have seen agony no tears can wash away, it hardly matters that the dead language of war repeats itself through time. The bodies that can say nothing have the last word.
What is it - the last word? No.
No more war. — Jeanette Winterson

Master of magic, god of war, Odin wanders alone. — F.T. McKinstry

Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, Thou shalt make no graven image. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Vimes shook his head. "That always chews me up," he said. "People killing one another just because their gods have squabbled - " "Oh, they've got the same god, sir. Apparently it's over a word in their holy book, sir. The Elharibians say it translates as 'god' and the Smalies say it's 'man.'" "How can you mix them up?" "Well, there's only one tiny dot difference in the script, you see. And some people reckon it's only a bit of fly dirt in any case." "Centuries of war because a fly crapped in the wrong place?" "It could have been worse," said Carrot. "If it had been slightly to the left the word would have been 'liquorice. — Terry Pratchett

The war at Troy seemed to grow in song, poetry, and story all the while. As it faded from living memory, it grew larger and larger. Men claimed descent from one or the other of the heroes, or, failing that, anyone who had fought in the war, which now assumed the stature of a clash between the gods and the titans. — Margaret George

His men howled with him. They were caught up in Baird's madness. At this hour, under the fire of the sun and emboldened by the arrack and rum they had drunk in their long wait in the trenches, the redcoats and sepoys had become gods of war. They gave death with impunity as they followed a warmaddened Scotsman down an enemy wall that was sticky with blood. Baird would have his city or else he would die in its dust. — Bernard Cornwell

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both *may* be, and one *must* be, wrong. God cannot be *for* and *against* the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds. — Abraham Lincoln

I've fought for and against pretty much every cause there is. There will always be war of some kind. At first it was over fertile soil and good water, then precious metal and then the most popular version of human disagreement, 'My God is better than your God.' Whether you draw your faith from Jeremiah and Jesus, Allah and Muhammad or Brahma and Buddha, it doesn't matter. Someone will tell you you're wrong, and he'll fight you over it. Me, I believe in aliens, and to hell with all earthly gods. In the grand scheme of a trillion planets in the universe we're just not that damn important anyway. And humans are rotten to the core. — David Baldacci

Man was always being jerked around between different people's ideas of god, depending on who'd won the most recent war, or palace coup, or political battle. This meant mankind was always being asked to accept deities foreign to his own nature. I mean, if your prophet was sexually insecure, or if his later interpreters were, that religion demanded celibacy or repression or hatred of women; if the prophet was a homophobe, he preached prosecution of homosexuals; and if he was both lecherous and greedy, he preached polygeny. If he was luxurious, he preached give-me-money-and-God-will-make-you-rich; if he felt put upon he preached God-of-Vengeance, let's kill the other guy; and no matter how much well-meaning ecumenicists pretended all the gods were one god under different aspects, they weren't any such thing, because every prophet created God in his own image, to confront his own nightmares. — Sheri S. Tepper

I loved the old government in 1861. I loved the old Constitution yet. I think it is the best government in the world, if administered as it was before the war. I do not hate it; I am opposing now only the radical revolutionists who are trying to destroy it. I believe that party to be composed, as I know it is in Tennessee, of the worst men on Gods earth - men who would not hesitate at no crime, and who have only one object in view - to enrich themselves. — Nathan Bedford Forrest

Yes, My Son, man is a piece of wood, that can be used for everything, from the moment he's born until the moment he dies, he's always ready to obey, send him there and he goes, tell him to halt and he stops, tell him to turn back and he retreats, whether in peace or in war, man, generally speaking, is the best thing that could have happened to the gods, And the wood from which I'm made, since I'm a man, what use will it be put to, since I'm Your son, You will be the spoon I shall dip into humanity and bring out laden with men who shall believe in the new god I intend to become, Laden with men You will devour, There's no need for Me to devour those who devour themselves. — Jose Saramago

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free. — Heraclitus

proceeding to the multitude of Gods is twofold, one of which converts and the other moves the Gods to the providence of inferior natures, poetry alfo defcribes twofold fpeeches* of Jupiter to the God^. According to the firft of thefe, the one and whole demiurgus of the univerfe is reprefented as communicating aa unmingled purity to the multitude of the Gods, and imparting to them powers feparate from all divifion about the world. Hence he orders all the Gods to defift from the war and the contrariety of mundane affairs* But, according to the fecond of thefe fpeeches, he excites them to the providence of fubordinate natures, and permits their divided progreflions into the univerfe, that they may not only be contained in one demiurgic intelleft, which, as the poet fays. — Anonymous

I am the god of dreams, but not even I would dream of speaking for Hades," Morpheus replied with a mischievous look in his eyes. "But if I had to guess, I would say it's because he knows how destructive his little brother is. Hades, unlike most of the other gods, cares for mortals and doesn't want to see them at war. Probably because he has to tend their souls when they die. He has had to judge millions of souls and that has given him a strong sense of justice. Leaving you to fight Zeus with no training is something he would consider unjust. — Josephine Angelini

Choose,' she says, reaching out towards him. 'Choose to which of us the apple most belongs... — Emily Hauser

God of the battlefield, eh? Gods and devils can look much alike to us little people. You went to a ford, and a bridge, and a hill, and what did you do there except kill? What have you made? Who have you helped?" He stood there for a moment, all his bravado slithering out. She is right. And no one knows it better than me. "Nothing and no one," he whispered. "So you love war. I used to think you were a decent man. But I see now I was mistaken." She stabbed at his chest with her forefinger. "You're a hero. — Joe Abercrombie

It was those damn wool socks. He didn't realize he loved her until she
told him about out-negotiating a god of war - the most haggle-loving of the
gods - with socks! — G.A. Aiken

This internal war of reason against the passions has made a division of those who would have peace into two sects. The first would renounce their passions, and become gods; the others would renounce reason, and become brute beasts. (Des Barreaux.) [157] But neither can do so, and reason still remains, to condemn the vileness and injustice of the passions, and to trouble the repose of those who abandon themselves to them; and the passions keep always alive in those who would renounce them. — Blaise Pascal

Doesn't miss many meals, does he?" Zeus muttered. "Tyson, for your bravery in the war, and for leading the Cyclopes, you are appointed a general I. The armies of Olympus. You shall henceforth lead you breathren into war whenever required by the gods. And you shall have a new ... um ... what kind of weapon would you like? A sword? An axe?"
"Stick!" Tyson said, showing his broken club.
"Very well," Zeus said. "We will grant you a new, er, stick. The best stick that may be found."
"Hooray! — Rick Riordan

War is ninety percent myth anyway, isn't it? In order to prosecute our own wars we raise them to the level of human sacrifice, don't we, and we constantly invoke our God. It's got to be about something bigger than dying, or we'd all turn deserter. I think we need to be much more conscious of that. I think we need to be invoking the other fellow's gods too. — Denis Johnson

The industrial towns of the North are ugly because they happen to have been built at a time when modern methods of steel-construction and smoke-abatement were unknown, and when everyone was too busy making money to think about anything else. ...But since the war, industry has tended to shift southward and in doing so has grown almost comely. The typical post-war factory is not a gaunt barrack or an awful chaos of blackness and belching chimneys; it is a glittering white structure of concrete, glass and steel, surrounded by green lawns and beds of tulips. ...As Mr Aldous Huxley has truly remarked, a dark Satanic mill ought to look like a dark Satanic mill and not like the temple of mysterious and splendid gods. — George Orwell

You are well aware that it is not numbers or strength that bring the victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them. I have noticed this point too, my friends, that in soldiering the people whose one aim is to keep alive usually find a wretched and dishonorable death, while the people who, realizing that death is the common lot of all men, make it their endeavour to die with honour, somehow seem more often to reach old age and to have a happier life when they are alive. These are facts which you too should realize (our situation demands it) and should show that you yourselves are brave men and should call on the rest to do likewise. — Xenophon

The world we inhabit is abundant beyond our wildest imagination. There are trees, dreams, sunrises; there are thunderstorms, shadows, rivers; there are wars, flea bites, love affairs; there are the lives of people, Gods, entire galaxies. The simplest human action varies from one person and occasion to the next-how else would we recognize our friends only from their gait, posture, voice, and divine their changing moods? Only a tiny fraction of this abundance affects our minds. This is a blessing, not a drawback. A superconscious organism would not be superwise, it would be paralyzed. — Paul Feyerabend

Chuck Palahniuk
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War, No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't — Chuck Palahniuk

I have learned that it is one thing to kill in battle, to send a brave man's soul to the corpse hall of the gods, but quite another to take a helpless man's life ... — Bernard Cornwell

We stepped back and looked at the king of the gods, slumped in his chair snoring, and cradling his crook like a teddy bear. I placed the war flail across his lap, hoping it might make a difference - maybe complete his powers or something. No such luck.
"Sick weasels," Ra muttered.
"Behold," Sadie said bitterly. "the glorious Ra. — Rick Riordan

We are fighting for the distinction between sacrifice and mysticism, between energy and violence, between strength and cruelty, for that even finer distinction between the true and the false, between the man of the future and the cowardly gods you revere. — Albert Camus

I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I'm called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows. — Neil Gaiman

He asked, 'Croesus, who told you to attack my land and meet me as an enemy instead of a friend?'
The King replied, 'It was caused by your good fate and my bad fate. It was the fault of the Greek gods, who with their arrogance, encouraged me to march onto your lands. Nobody is mad enough to choose war whilst there is peace. During times of peace, the sons bury their fathers, but in war it is the fathers who send their sons to the grave. — Herodotus

Thank you, sweet lady.' Ser Dontos lurched clumsily to his feet, and brushed earth and leaves from his knees. 'Your lord father was as true a man as the realm has ever known, but I stood by and let them slay him. I said nothing, did nothing ... and yet, when Joffrey would have slain me, you spoke up. Lady, I have never been a hero, no Ryam Redwyne or Barristan the Bold. I've won no tourneys, no renown in war ... but I was a knight once, and you have helped me remember what that meant. My life is a poor thing, but it is yours.' Ser Dontos placed a hand on the gnarled bole of the heart tree. He was shaking, she saw. 'I vow, with your father's gods as witness, that I shall send you home. — George R R Martin

Miyata was fluent and intelligent. Nothing was beyond his curiosity. He seemed to be above the confusion of life, as if he had been commissioned to spend his own in undisturbed judgement of the world about him, protected always by a mandate from the gods. They spoke briefly of Korea and then of the past war with the United States. Miyata had been in Japan for its entire duration and must have been deeply affected, but when he talked about it, it was without bitterness. Wars were not of his doing. He considered them almost poetically, as if they were seasons, the cruel winters of man, even though almost all the work he had done in the 1930s and early 1940s had been lost when his house was burned in the great incendiary raid of 1944. He described the night vividly, the endless hours, the bombers thundering low over the storms of fire. — James Salter

Niko's angular face caught a flicker of firelight and Tempus saw his future there: sharp purpose, discipline, and power in perfect balance; love of man and gods, and mercy transcending all. If war ever wore a more humane face, this one would make it so. — Janet Morris

Well than try giving it some thought, why don't you? Apply that finely tutored mind of yours to all those bullshit hero-with-a-high-destiny legends you people are so fucking fond of telling one another. You really think, in a mudball slaughterhouse of a world like this, where war and privation harden whole populations to inhuman brutality and ignorance, where the ruling classes dedicate their sons to learning the science of killing men the way they consign their daughters to breeding till they crack
you really think the gods of a world like that have got no better thing to do with their time than take some random piece of lowborn trash and spend long years carving him into shape for a cat's-paw? — Richard K. Morgan

Are the legends true?" asked Cadmus. "Of course they are," replied Pan. "We live in an age of legends. — Sulari Gentill

It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For the man in the street, the philosophies of opposites, particularly Good and Evil, have served as a torture chamber, a crucifix made from metaphor. Thrust into a world which views him as the property of Gods and States and overwhelmed by an unrepayable debt, the metaphysics of slavery and the facts of pain, pleasure and death; bolstered by science, whose theorists have become the whores of the state, man is now informed that he is ill. The proof of this is his refusal to submit completely. The world debt is due to his saying 'no' to total slavery. He will not obey. We are at War, and man is the enemy. The question is: Who is on the other side? — Christopher S. Hyatt

And what if one of the gods does wreck me out on the wine-dark sea? I have a heart that is inured to suffering and I shall steel it to endure that too. For in my day I have had many bitter and painful experiences in war and on the stormy seas. So let this new disaster come. It only makes one more. — Homer

Thousands of years ago, after the big Titan-God war, the gods had sliced him into bits with his own scythe and scattered his remains in Tartarus, which is like the gods' bottomless recycling bin for their enemies. — Rick Riordan

His sigh spoke of fear and regret mingled with grim acceptance. 'Teach her,' he said. 'Teach her to fight. Teach her to defend herself, and teach her to kill. The five of you must be her chatoks in the Dance of Knives. Teach her as you have taught no other. Give her everything. Hold nothing back.'
'Rain ... ' Bel murmured, his eyes troubled.
Rain waved off his unspoken objection. ' She is a Tairen Soul, and we Tairen Souls were born for war. I may not like this path the gods have set before her, but Farsight is right. I must do everything in my power to ensure she is prepared to walk it' ... — C.L. Wilson

The Conspiracy Theory of Society ... [is] a typical result of the secularization of a religious superstition. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups - sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from - such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists. — Karl Popper

Learning to be flexible in values takes a very long time ... Of course I felt a little uncomfortable during questioning the concept of God, but then reading about the history and evolution of Gods. There were many different Gods: the God of war, the God of peace, the God of love, which was more like the people that invented them. They behaved, they got angry, they made sacrifices, they created floods when they didn't like the way things are going. This didn't come through as superior intelligence. — Jacque Fresco

Annabeth," he said hesitantly, "in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace."
Her expression turned guarded. "Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life - "
"I know," Percy said. "But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There's nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me ... and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over ... "
It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. "Oh," she said ...
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just ... I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned - "
"No!" she said. "Gods, Percy, that's so sweet. — Rick Riordan

Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The goddess smiled. "You are a good hero, Percy Jackson. Not too proud. I like that. But you have much to learn. When Dionysus was made a god, I gave up my throne for him. It was the only way to avoid a civil war among the gods."
"It unbalanced the Council," I remembered. "Suddenly there were seven guys and five girls."
Hestia shrugged. "It was the best solution, not a perfect one. Now I tend the fire. I fade slowly into the background. No one will ever write epic poems about the deeds of Hestia. Most demigods don't even stop to talk to me. But that is no matter. I keep the peace. I yield when necessary. Can you do this? — Rick Riordan

He believed something that he could hardly explain, even to himself. He thought it was a tragedy that would have to be played out, in the sense that water always seeks its own level. In some ultimate sense, there was no one at the controls. The war ran on its own motion...But the thing would not be stopped, because to stop it, simply to end it, would be to repudiate too much. Too many words to eat, too many unforeseen consequences, too much shame, too many unrequited dead. So the war was a force of nature, a wand of the gods... — Ward Just

I tried to imagine how things could get much worse. The gods were in the Midwest fighting a huge monster that had almost defeated them once before. Poseidon was under siege and losing a war against the sea Titan Oceanus.
Kronos was still out there somewhere. Olympus was virtually undefended. The demigods of Camp Half-Blood were on our own with a spy in our midst.
Oh, and according to the ancient prophecy, I was going to die when I turned sixteen - which happened to be in five days, the exact same time Typhon was supposed to hit New York. Almost forgot that. — Rick Riordan

It was true, of course, there was an abnormal level of narcissism in our society, but it did not do, he told himself, to spend too much time going on about it. Society changed. Narcissism was about love, ultimately, even if only love of self. And that was better than hate. By and large, Hate, of all the tempting gods, was the unhappiest today. He had his recruits, naturally, but they were relatively few, and vilified. Did it matter if young men thought of fashion and hair gel when, not all that many years ago, their thoughts had tended to turn to war and flags and the grim partisanship of the football terrace? — Alexander McCall Smith

There's a Greek legend - no, it's in something Plato wrote - about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That's why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male. — Nancy Garden

All the gods are dead except the god of war. — Eldridge Cleaver

Listen--God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.
~pages 286-287 — Haruki Murakami

Science has rolled its war wagons over the crushed myths of so many religious beliefs. It has marshaled its mechanics to explain the motions of the sun, moon, and stars. It has mapped the heavens, leaving no place for gods to live. — Walker Evans

You've got to be kidding me. I thought you were the most powerful of beings. Even the gods fear you. (Stryker) We all have predators. The entire universe exists in a system of checks and balances. I just met my zero balance. (War) Are you honestly telling me that the most powerful creature on this planet is a pathetic Cajun guttersnipe who offed himself because one of my men killed his mommy? (Stryker) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

That joy. That madness. The gods must feel this way every moment of every day. It is as if the world slows. You see the attacker, you see him shouting, though you hear nothing, and you know what he will do, and all his movements are so slow and yours are so quick, and in that moment you can do no wrong and you will live forever and your name will be blazoned across the heavens in a glory of white fire because you are the god of battle. — Bernard Cornwell