Great Battle Quotes & Sayings

So let me put it thus: Hold on to your principles of morality and ethics, use your willpower to the limit, pay great heed to every noble, uplifting desire that is in you; but realize that these things alone are not enough, that they will never bring you to the desired place. We have to realize that all our best is totally inadequate, that a spiritual battle must be fought in a spiritual manner. — David Lloyd-Jones

It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn. — Anonymous

New York is a great place to be fed in the arts. The arts in general are a large part of my life. The city was my postgraduate course. — Kathleen Battle

Creating a world in a sci-fi show is almost the whole battle. If you have a great story and you can create a great world, as far as the acting goes, it makes my job a whole lot easier. — Thomas Jane

when I look at people fighting with ammunition and weapons of all kind I ponder within me;somehow as a cynic. Ammunition's and weapons are good for war; Yes,they are better necessities to winning battle but the best choice of weapons are neither ammunition nor the strength of a battalion of army but wisdom; a pen on a paper backed by a great mind — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

In engineering, that only is great which achieves. It matters not what the intention is, he who in the day of battle is not victorious is not saved by his intention. — Henry Ward Beecher

Do not be tired of doing good things. Victory comes after the battle; the crown follows the fight; the same way, behind purposeful actions is a great deal of success. Don't give up on the fight. Fight till them end; win till all is won. — Israelmore Ayivor

Just as we need battle support from our brothers and sisters in the Lord in spiritual warfare, they need it from us, so we should pray for them and encourage them often. Let us inquire of them frequently, asking what battles they are facing so that we can come alongside and aid them. In this war, we are our brother's keeper. We are to have great care and concern for one another. As Roman soldiers would often stand shoulder-to-shoulder and shield-to-shield for greater protection, so also we must take up God's armor and stand strong as one! — Brian Borgman

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it's no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster's final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn't dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or some nameless tentacled thing. It's the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims. — Daryl Gregory

The only unforgivable crime is to cut short the experiment of one's own life before its natural end. To do so is a weakness and a pity - for the experiment of life will cut itself off soon enough, in all our cases, and one may just as well have the courage and the curiosity to stay in the battle until one's eventual and inevitable demise. Anything less than a fight for endurance is cowardly. Anything less than a fight for endurance is a refusal of the great covenant of life. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The Bible teaches that the human struggle happens within a single entity - the human heart. The main human struggle is not between the heart and something else, but between forces that tear it in different directions. The great battle is deciding to what your heart's greatest love, hope, and trust will be directed — Timothy Keller

Perhaps that's the best way to recover, to return to the way things were before as quickly as we can. We won the Great Battle, so nothing needs to change. — Erin Hunter

A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements. — Orison Swett Marden

Almighty God, I rely on You to lead me through every challenge and battle in my life. Help me to never operate out of fear in the face of what seems like impossible circumstances. Just as You have helped me in the past, I know You will continue to help me in the future. I praise You for the great things You will do, and thank You that Your presence is always with me. — Stormie O'martian

Now with the squadrons marshaled, captains leading each,
the Trojans came with cries and the din of war like wildfowl
when the long hoarse cries of cranes sweep on against the sky
and the great formations flee from winter's grim ungodly storms,
flying in force. shrieking south to the Ocean gulfs, speeding
blood and death to the Pygmy warriors, laonching at daybreak
savage battle down upon their heads. But Achaea's armies
came on strong in silence, breathing combat-fury,
hearts ablaze to defend each other to the death. — Fagles Robert

Courage is not walking into battle with no fear - you should know this as a soldier. Courage is feeling great fear, but walking forward anyway.
Lady Lavender by Lynna Banning — Lynna Banning

It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do. — Benito Mussolini

The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance.. — Duke Of Wellington

Failure of your first attempt does not mean you can't be a winner of great battles; it rather means, you must trigger only when your target is in focus. — Israelmore Ayivor

Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and - has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism. — Max Stirner

It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name ... That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still. — Frederick Buechner

A girl had supposedly disguised herself as a man to fight in her father's stead, had become companion to a military dragon and saved the empire by winning a great battle; — Naomi Novik

A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy's country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice - we win, or we perish! They won. — Napoleon Hill

The great battle of parenting is not the battle of behavior; it's the battle for what kind of awe will rule children's hearts. — Paul David Tripp

The great battle (jihad) of life is the conflict of opposites. — Tim

I wondered what exactly the war had accomplished. Men had fought great battles: the Battle of the Bulge, the battle for Monte Casino, the battle for the beaches, for God and country, for God and freedom, for God and a pure race. They had left hundreds of cities in ruins and their people without shelter or food. — Miriam Darvas

The idea of full dress for preparation for a battle comes not from a belief that it will add to the fighting ability. The preparation is for death, in case that should be the result of conflict. Every Indian wants to look his best when he goes to meet the great Spirit, so the dressing up is done whether in imminent danger is an oncoming battle or a sickness or injury at times of peace. — Wooden Leg

Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.
Alexander Supertramp, May 1992 — Christopher McCandless

I've been experimenting more and more with LN2, liquid nitrogen. I've used it in battle on 'Iron Chef America,' but have also made some great ice creams at home for my family. Since it freezes basically on contact, you can have ice cream ready in mere minutes. — Cat Cora

Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed. — Neil Gaiman

Wynton and Christopher were really great experiences for me because they are both very gifted artists. — Kathleen Battle

I have not much faith in women in fiction ... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before. — Willa Cather

What really drives the battle against law enforcement and punishment is not a commitment to treatment, but the widely held view that, first, we are imprisoning too many people for merely possessing illegal drugs; second, drug and other criminal sentences are too long and harsh, and third, the criminal justice system is unjustly punishing young black men. These are among the great urban myths of our time. — John P. Walters

Something like Deckard Cain is great; it doesn't ruin your voice. But games that involve violence or battle or mutating and stuff like that really does take a toll on your voice. And I've even had to start to go to a voice guru kind of guy to do exercises to try to save and get back some of what I lost. — Michael Gough

If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit, even to Old Took's great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfibul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf was invented at the same moment. — J.R.R. Tolkien

But you must always remind yourself that a Jedi values wisdom and enlightenment over all else. The great truths we seek are often difficult to find, and sometimes it is easier to seek out an enemy to do battle with ... especially when we hunger to avenge those who have fallen. This is one of the ways even good people can fall to the dark side. — Drew Karpyshyn

This the American Black man knows: his fight is a fight to the finish. Either he dies or he wins. He will enter modern civilization in America as a Black man on terms of perfect and unlimited equality with any white man, or he will enter not at all. Either extermination root and branch or absolute equality. There can be no compromise. This is the last great battle of the west. — W.E.B. Du Bois

We are foolish to expect to serve God without opposition: the more zealous we are, the more sure are we to be assailed ... Glory be to God, we know the end of the war. The great dragon shall be cast out and for ever destroyed, while Jesus and they who are with him shall receive the crown. Let us sharpen our swords to-night, and pray the Holy Spirit to nerve our arms for the conflict. Never battle so important, never crown so glorious. Every man to his post, ye warriors of the cross, and may the Lord tread Satan under your feet shortly! — Charles Spurgeon

In the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against the assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities which we group together under the name of character. — Theodore Roosevelt

And did not Spinoza's refusing to flee from excommunication by his church and community mean the same inner battle of integrity, the same struggle for the power not to be afraid of aloneness, without which the noble Ethics, certainly one of the great works of all time, could not have been written? — Rollo May

No child of mine will ever have to be separated from their loved ones," Byron said, his voice like ice. Power flowing off him, and there was no mistake that right there and then, a war sounded great to the shark.
"I will see you dead before I have you touch my grandchild"
The situation might have escalated and a battle might have begun right then and there, but suddenly, Sterling got a strange expression on his face. It was a look of smug satisfaction, as if he knew something they did not.
"Very well, Mr. Cunningham. But there will come a time when you will take your words back. — Scarlet Hyacinth

Muhammad was a great man, an intrepid soldier; with a handful of men he triumphed at the battle of Bender (sic); a great captain, eloquent, a great man of state, he revived his fatherland and created a new people and a new power in the middle of Arabia. — Napoleon Bonaparte

While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure; but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as a friend. — Ulysses S. Grant

A man must have a battle to fight, a great mission to his life that involves and yet transcends even home and family, — John Eldredge

Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. — Vasily Grossman

Let the fortifications of the sea-coasts and the fleets of battle-ships and cruisers on the ocean be commensurate with the vast national interests and honor intrusted to their protection and defense; let the standing army be sufficient to discharge the duties which require long and scientific education and training, and to serve as models and instructors for the millions of young citizens: then will the United States, by being always ready for war, insure to themselves all the blessings of peace, and this at a cost utterly insignificant in comparison with the cost of one great war. — John McAllister Schofield

Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the Professor's mysterious old house. At first, her brothers and sister don't believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch. When they meet the Great Lion, Aslan, they realize they've been called to a great adventure and bravely join the battle to free Narnia from the Witch's sinister spell. — C.S. Lewis

It is a balsam," answered Don Quixote, "the receipt of which I have in my memory, with which one need have no fear of death, or dread dying of any wound; and so when I make it and give it to thee thou hast nothing to do when in some battle thou seest they have cut me in half through the middle of the body - as is wont to happen frequently, - but neatly and with great nicety, ere the blood congeal, to place that portion of the body which shall have fallen to the ground upon the other half which remains in the saddle, taking care to fit it on evenly and exactly. Then thou shalt give me to drink but two drops of the balsam I have mentioned, and thou shalt see me become sounder than an apple. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I realized that healing begins with our taking our pain out of its diabolic isolation and seeing that whatever we suffer, we suffer it in communion with all of humanity, and yes, all of creation. In so doing, we become participants in the great battle against the powers of darkness. Our little lives participate in something larger. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I admire Tolkien greatly. His books had enormous influence on me. And the trope that he sort of established - the idea of the Dark Lord and his Evil Minions - in the hands of lesser writers over the years and decades has not served the genre well. It has been beaten to death. The battle of good and evil is a great subject for any book and certainly for a fantasy book, but I think ultimately the battle between good and evil is weighed within the individual human heart and not necessarily between an army of people dressed in white and an army of people dressed in black. When I look at the world, I see that most real living breathing human beings are grey. — George R R Martin

This is what it is to grow up. It is to live beyond the blind rush of passion, or hate, or green luxin, or battle juice. It is to see what must be done, and to do it, without feeling a great desire or a great hatred or a great love. It is to confront fear, naked. No armor of bombast or machismo. Just duty, and love for one's fellows. Not love felt, not the love that compelled action without thought, but love chosen deliberately. I am the best person to do this thing, it said, though I may die doing it. — Brent Weeks

Joseph Smith often referred to himself in his "revelations" as "Enoch,"' claiming that he had been given this name by God. The Enoch of the legend was chosen to recover and preserve for mankind the sacred name of God; and Joseph Smith was allegedly chosen to recover and "restore" the everlasting gospel of God to the earth. Enoch buried the sacred record to preserve it just before a great disaster (the Flood), foreseeing that after the deluge "an Israelitish descendant would discover anew the sacred buried treasure." Enoch "placed a stone lid, or slab, over the cavity into the hill," exactly as Moroni did in the Book of Mormon when he buried his record as the only survivor of the disaster (great battle) that destroyed his entire nation. Joseph Smith, who recovered this record, claimed to be an Israelite, fitting the vision of Enoch even in this regard. — Ed Decker

Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow. — Homer

What interested me in doing 'Dragonball' was that it's a huge comic book series that has built a great fan base, and it's a great action movie! — Texas Battle

There is great evil in the world, my sister, and much of it is directed at women. The source of that evil is not men, or women, but Satan. If you will accept this, you can not only make leaps forward in understanding your life, but you can find your way through the battle to the goodness God has for you and the goodness he wants to bring through you. — Stasi Eldredge

The gospel teaches us that though we may have lost a battle or two, the war is not yet over. With the Lord's help and the hope of the gospel, we can win out in the end. Truth ultimately triumphs over falsehood. Evil is overwhelmed by goodness. Sin, however extreme it may have been, can give way to cleansing and refreshing forgiveness. This is the great hope of the gospel, centered as it is in the life, mission and atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. — David S. Baxter

The Mahabharata might have been a great and heroic battle, but there are no winners. The losers, of course, lose. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus - the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others. — Simone Weil

When we're married and he looks at me sitting beside him at the table, he should feel as if he's fought a great battle and accomplished something - namely, winning me. He'll treasure me more. I like being treasured. — Linda Howard

Once upon a time, when I was a child reading fairy tales, I'd ached to have my own adventures. Not that I'd wanted to be some dippy heroine languishing in a tower, awaiting rescue. No, I'd wanted to be the knight, charging into battle against overwhelming odds, or the plucky country lass who gets taken on as an apprentice to a great wizard. As I got older, I'd found out the hard way that adventures are rarely anything like the books say. Half the time you are scared out of your mind, and the rest you're bored and your feet hurt. I was beginning to believe that maybe I wasn't the adventurous type. — Karen Chance

One battle in twelve might be won by a brilliant military stratagem. The rest stood or fell by somebody's blunders. Only rarely, there came the feel of a great campaign evolved by a stylist: imaginative, comprehensive, irresistible. — Dorothy Dunnett

Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle. - PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA — Rob Lilwall

You must have had such a great childhood with a man like that for your father. (Delphine)
Yeah. All puppy dogs and rainbows and those weird furry people with padded coat hangers on their heads that look like space aliens on acid. (Jericho)
You mean the Teletubbies? (Berith)
The fact that you know what they're called, Berith, truly scares me. (Jericho)
As a demon of torture, it behooves me to know all things that are deeply annoying. You'd be amazed how many people in the modern age no longer fear zombies as much as Teletubbies. (Berith)
Not really. I'd rather battle a brain-eating zombie any day than hear them sing. (Jericho) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Great battles are won with artillery. — Napoleon Bonaparte

The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure she was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart. — Zelda Fitzgerald

There is room in this great and growing city for a journal that is not only cheap but bright, not only bright but large, not only large but truly democratic-dedicated to the cause of the people rather than that of the purse potentates-devoted more to the news of the New than the Old World-that will expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses-that will sever and battle for the people with earnest sincerity. — Joseph Pulitzer

All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men
and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing. It's a tough battle. The toughest. It's simple enough to fight any enemy, so long as he's there to be fought. But when he isn't ... — Ayn Rand

It's a great battle, and it really is a battle, and there are people from all walks of life, you know, never judge anybody at the table: A man can be the greatest poker player and he might know all the numbers, but he might get beaten by a really savvy kid who works in a grocery store; and that's what's so great about this game. — James Woods

I care not for the body which may rot. Yet, for the transgression of the spirit, of moral ethics, of life, liberty and the soul itself, I must and shall cross the line of battle or lose the very reason not to. — The Great Pacifist

This [a surprise attack] is an operation by no means to be despised in war, although it is rare, and less brilliant than a great strategic combination which renders victory certain even before the battle is fought. — Antoine-Henri Jomini

The person who abides in solitude and quiet is delivered from fighting three battles: hearing, speech, and sight. Then there remains one battle to fight-the battle of the heart. — Anthony The Great

My dead and wounded were nearly as great in number as those still on duty. They literally covered the ground. The blood stood in puddles in some places on the rocks; the ground was soaked with the blood of as brave men as ever fell on the red field of battle. — William C. Oates

The Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific:
The ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, battle-falcons,
Are a mote of dust in the great scale-pan.
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like
dolphins through the grey sea-smoke
Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this
dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,
Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this
is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth, and what it watches is not our wars. — Robinson Jeffers

Throughout history, every great warrior-the Greeks, the Samurais, the American Indians, the Mongolians, you name it-had long hair and would dress it before battle. — Troy Polamalu

All that mattered was that he was Adrian, my Adrian. My match. My partner in crime, in the long battle I'd just signed on for to right the wrongs in the Alchemist and Moroi worlds. Maybe Marcus was right that I'd also signed myself up for disaster, but I didn't care. In that moment, it seemed that as long as Adrian and I were together, there was no challenge too great for us. — Richelle Mead

Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side ... — Italo Calvino

Weapons are the tools of violence;all decent men detest them.Weapons are the tools of fear;a decent man will avoid themexcept in the direst necessityand, if compelled, will use themonly with the utmost restraint.Peace is his highest value.If the peace has been shattered,how can he be content?His enemies are not demons,but human beings like himself.He doesn't wish them personal harm.Nor does he rejoice in victory.How could he rejoice in victoryand delight in the slaughter of men?He enters a battle gravely,with sorrow and with great compassion,as if he were attending a funeral — Laozi

Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began ... — Abraham Lincoln

As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given to us to guide our own steps. We are like the foot soldiers, who hear nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle they are in, but hear plainly enough the word of command that they must themselves obey. — George Eliot

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

The great Chinese classics have always said that it's better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence; that a battle delayed is better than a battle fought. — John Keegan

Twenty-one years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn't give it a second thought. We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn't even hire a lawyer to defend myself. It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer. — Woody Allen

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. — Philo Of Alexandria

People are complicated creatures. On the one hand, capable of great acts of charity, and on the other, capable of the most underhanded forms of betrayal. It's a constant battle that rages within all of us, between the better angels of our nature and the temptations of our inner demons. And sometimes, the only way to ward off the darkness is to shine the light of compassion. — Mary Alice

Great men like Wilberforce and Wesley had the humility and the wisdom to know that whatever strengths they had - and they had many - they could not win without a total reliance on God. At its core, every battle worth fighting is a spiritual battle. Those men were able to succeed only because they humbled themselves and entrusted the battle to God. — Eric Metaxas

For some time she observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing its wings very slowly on a little flat stone.
"What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence; each word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknown sea. Hypnotized by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the discovery of a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time longer. When the butterfly flew away, she rose, and within, her two books beneath her arm returned again, much as a soldier prepares for battle. — Virginia Woolf

For a generous deed lives longer than a great battle or a king's decree of a scholar's essay, because it spreads and leaves its mark on all nature and endures through many generations. — L. Frank Baum

The casting is the most important thing. If you cast a picture really well a lot of things take care of themselves. You get actors that like to give a lot to the role and who appreciate the role on the same level that you do. If you miscast it, you're working an uphill battle a little bit and maybe you can come out okay but you can't always come out great. — Clint Eastwood

It seems the older we get, the tighter our inner circle becomes. When life has you down, some of those you thought had your back run, others ... sometimes strangers surprise you and fill that empty space up. Oh, but life has a great balancing act and when that axle turns and you are right side up again ... you will definitely not be looking for any long, lost "friends" because your inner circle is battle-tested to win! — Sanjo Jendayi

Two spacemen touching in anti-gravity is like a kiss. But then, there is nothing like a kiss. A kiss is a rare bird. The first sip of champagne. The fleeting glimpse of a shooting star. The kiss is uniquely human. We exchange bodily fluids with a kiss. A great kiss is like eating melon on a picnic. Like diving into a warm sea. A French kiss is a battle of tongues where everyone wins. — Chloe Thurlow

All of us have read of what occured during that interval. The tale is in every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children when the great battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing and recounting the history of that famous action. Its rememberance rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men who lost the day. They pant for an opportunity of revenging that humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part, should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so-called glory and shame, and to the alterations of successful and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage. Centuries hence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each other still, carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honor. — William Makepeace Thackeray

It must be splendid to command millions of people in great national ventures, to lead a hundred thousand to victory in battle. But it seems to me greater still to discover fundamental truths in a very modest room with very modest means - truths that will still be foundations of human knowledge when the memory of these battles is painstakingly preserved only in the archives of the historian. — Ludwig Boltzmann

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. — Henry James

But the western mind can't bear an opt- out option. we're going to have to re-fight the Battle of the Little Bighorn to preserve the right to opt-out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, bar-coded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate. Joel Salatin — Michael Pollan

She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life - those moments when a man shows once and for all what he is worth, that his past was not lived in vain but was a preparation for these moments. — Leo Tolstoy

And so the great battle begins in earnest: the battle for your heart, the battle to find a life worth living, the battle not to lose heart as you find a life worth living. — John Eldredge

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. — Samuel P. Huntington

In running over the pages of our history for seven hundred years, we shall scarcely find a single great event which has not promoted equality of condition. The Crusades and the English wars decimated the nobles and divided their possessions: the municipal corporations introduced democratic liberty into the bosom of feudal monarchy; the invention of fire-arms equalized the vassal and the noble on the field of battle; the art of printing opened the same resources to the minds of all classes; the post-office brought knowledge alike to the door of the cottage and to the gate of the palace; and Protestantism proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to heaven. The discovery of America opened a thousand new paths to fortune, and led obscure adventurers to wealth and power. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Only great and general battles can produce great results — Carl Von Clausewitz

When our characters show us the full fire of that inner battle, we have the makings of great fiction. For whether the choice is ultimately for honor or dishonor, we will see the consequences and the reader will be instructed without being taught. — James Scott Bell