My Army Man Quotes & Sayings

He looked at the mud. "If I pull you free, will you promise to bed me for my pains?"

"Here's what I'll promise, Logan MacKenzie. If you don't get me free, I will come back from the grave and haunt you. Relentlessly."

"For a timid English bluestocking, you can be quite fierce when you choose to be. I rather like it."

She hugged herself to keep her hands out of the creeping mud. "Logan, please. I be you, stop teasing and get me out of this. I'm cold. And I'm frightened."

"Look at me."
She looked at him.
His gaze held hers, blue and unwavering.

All teasing went out his voice. "I'm not leaving. Ten years in the British Army, and I've never left a man behind. I'm not leaving you. I'll have you out of this. Understand? — Tessa Dare

We're glad you're here." Brastias stood beside her now, covered in blood, the majority of which she doubted belonged to him.
"Sorry I took so long, my friend." She tested the weight of her blades. As always they felt good in her hands. She was ready.
"Where is he, Brastias?"
"Up there." He pointed to a ridge where she could hear the war cries of men. But between her and her brother lay a battery of troops screaming for her blood.
One soldier ran for her, the blood lust having grabbed hold of his mind. She brought her two swords together, stepping aside as the man's head snapped off his body.
Annwyl smiled at Brastias. "Perhaps you should let me take this from here."
She wondered what he saw on her face when she looked at him, because he visibly blanched and backed away from her. "As always, Annwyl. They're all yours."
Annwyl smiled and charged in, killing all that stood in her way and did not wear the colors of her army. — G.A. Aiken

In the natural order men are all equal and their common calling is that of manhood, so that a well-educated man cannot fail to do well in that calling and those related to it. It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or the law. Before his parents chose a calling for him nature called him to be a man. Life is the trade I would teach him. When he leaves me, I grant you, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man. All that becomes a man he will learn as quickly as another. In vain will fate change his station, he will always be in his right place. "Occupavi te, fortuna, atque cepi; omnes-que aditus tuos interclusi, ut ad me aspirare non posses. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Mexicans had fired the first shot. But they had done what the American government wanted, according to Colonel Hitchcock, who wrote in his diary, even before those first incidents: I have said from the first that the United States are the aggressors. . . . We have not one particle of right to be here. . . . It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses, for, whatever becomes of this army, there is no doubt of a war between the United States and Mexico. . . . My heart is not in this business . . . but, as a military man, I am bound to execute orders. — Howard Zinn

"that moment ... that moment out there?" Blake pointed at the bed of army jacket, grass, and mint. "I've pictured it in my head for months. Months! I knew it would never really happen, but it kept me going. The beautiful, smiling girl would look at me like a man-a man worthy of her body, worthy of her kisses. Do you realize what a fool I am for hoping?" — Debra Anastasia

General Longstreet,when once in a fight, was a most brilliant soldier; but he was the hardest man to move I had in my army. — Robert E.Lee

I never did try to make my daddy understand why I left for the army the way I did. I just thought, because he loved me, he should let it go, and if he couldn't, well then he didn't love me like I thought. Young folks get love and understandin' backward, don't they? Love don't come galloping across fresh pastures like a fine white horse with understandin' riding soft and easy on its back. Understandin' plods in like an old plow mule, breaking sod. It shades the earth with its body, and waters it with sweat. Love grows up in the furrow that's left behind. It takes some patience. I was an impatient young man. ~Claude Fisher — Lisa Wingate

When I meet someone from the army background, there is an instant connection. We live in the best five-star hotels of the world, but outside my home I will be equally comfortable in any army cantonment or army guest house. Telling my friends that my father was in the army was like telling them that he is the second-richest man in the world. — Anushka Sharma

For when man is faced with a curse he answers, "I'll take care of my problems." And he puts everything to work to become powerful, to keep the curse from having its effects. He creates the arts and the sciences, he raises an army, he constructs chariots, he builds cities. The spirit of might is a response to the divine curse. — Jacques Ellul

My grandmother's greatest gift was tolerance. Now, in the old days, Indians used to be forgiving of any kind of eccentricity. In fact, weird people were often celebrated. Epileptics were often shamans because people just assumed that God gave seizure-visions to the lucky ones. Gay people were seen as magical too. I mean, like in many cultures, men were viewed as warriors and women were viewed as caregivers. But gay people, being both male and female, were seen as both warriors and caregivers. Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss Army knives! My grandmother had no use for all the gay bashing and homophobia in the world, especially among other Indians. "Jeez," she said, Who cares if a man wants to marry another man? All I want to know is who's going to pick up all the dirty socks?" (155) — Sherman Alexie

One day, I was on the front lawn of the property and aimed the gun at a sparrow perched high in a tree. Hazel Goldreich, Arthur's wife, was watching me and jokingly remarked that I would never hit the target. But she had hardly finished the sentence when the sparrow fell to the ground. I turned to her and was about to boast, when the Goldreichs' son Paul, then about five years old, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, "David, why did you kill that bird? Its mother will be sad." My mood immediately shifted from one of pride to shame; I felt that this small boy had far more humanity than I did. It was an odd sensation for a man who was the leader of a nascent guerrilla army. — Nelson Mandela

Bram stared into a pair of wide, dark eyes. Eyes that reflected a surprising glimmer of intelligence. This might be the rare female a man could reason with.
"Now, then," he said. "We can do this the easy way, or we can make things difficult."
With a soft snort, she turned her head. It was as if he'd ceased to exist.
Bram shifted his weight to his good leg, feeling the stab to his pride. He was a lieutenant colonel in the British army, and at over six feet tall, he was said to cut an imposing figure. Typically, a pointed glance from his quarter would quell the slightest hint of disobedience. He was not accustomed to being ignored.
"Listen sharp, now." He gave her ear a rough tweak and sank his voice to a low threat. "If you know what's good for you, you'll do as I say."
Though she spoke not a word, her reply was clear: You can kiss my great wolly arse.
Confounded sheep. — Tessa Dare

You call me castoff," Mahlia said, "Chinese throwaway, whatever." Amaya was trying to look away, but Mahlia had her pinned, kept her eye to eye. "My old man might have been peacekeeper, but my mom was pure Drowned Cities. You want to war like that, I'm all in." Mahlia lifted the scarred stump of her right hand, shoved it up in Amaya's face. "Maybe I cut you the way the Army of God cut me. See how you do with just a lucky left. How'd you like that? — Paolo Bacigalupi

Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The revolution goes on; a man does not make the revolution, not a thousand men, not an army and not a party; the revolution comes from the people as they reach toward God, and a little of God is in each person and each will not forget it. This it is the revolution when slaves shake their chains and the revolution when a strong man bends toward a weaker and says, "Here, comrade, is my arm." The revolution goes on and nothing stops it; but because the people are seeking what is good, not what is wicked or powerful or cruel or rich or venal, but simply what is good
because of that the people flounder and feel along one dark road after another. The people no more all-seeing than their rulers once were; it is in intention that they differ. — Howard Fast

I became interested in librarians while researching my first book, about obituaries. With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former soldier in Hitler's army who had a sex change and took up professional whistling, the most engaging obit subjects were librarians. An obituary of a librarian could be about anything under the sun, a woman with a phenomenal memory, who recalled the books her aging patrons read as children - and was also, incidentally, the best sailor on her stretch of the Maine coast - or a man obsessed with maps, who helped automate the Library of Congress's map catalog and paved the way for wonders like Google Maps. — Marilyn Johnson

The man who had asked my name in Obersalzberg in the summer of 1934 had been a dominant personality excluding a spellbinding charisma to which few were not prey. The embodied sovereign power, total power. The man whom I burnt and interred under a hail of Red Army shells near the Reich Chancellery was a trembling old man, a spent force, feeble, a failure. Like the Reich which he had aimed to bring into an era of unparalleled brilliance and opulence and had become a heap of rubble, he was the disfigured embodiment of his earlier self. — Heinz Linge

And that's the last oath I shall ever be able to swear," she thought; "once I set foot on English soil. And I shall never be able to crack a man over the head, or tell him he lies in his teeth, or draw my sword and run him through the body, or sit among my peers, or wear a coronet, or walk in procession, or sentence a man to death, or lead an army, or prance down Whitehall on a charger, or wear seventy-two different medals on my breast. All I can do, once I set foot on English soil, is to pour out tea and ask my lords how they like it. D'you take sugar? D'you take cream?" And mincing out the words, she was horrified to perceive how low an opinion she was forming of the other sex, the manly, to which it had once been her pride to belong. — Virginia Woolf

The military is sort of the ultimate test of proving that you're a man, and certainly that whole idea was very much uppermost in my mind when I joined the Army. — Peter P. Mahoney

Nearby sat a veteran in a wheelchair. He was young, handsome, and athletic, through missing a leg.

My daughter went to him and asked, "You're army - right?"

He said, "Yes, I am."

My daughter hugged him. "Thank you," she said. Tears welled in the man's eyes.

"Did you get my card?" she asked. "My school sent you a card. It said, 'Thank you for saving our Earth.'"

The guy just about lost it. He said, "You're welcome. Yes, we did get your card. Thank you for doing that."

- Michael Sobel, son of Herbert Sobel. Michael talking about his 6 year old daughter meeting veterans. — Marcus Brotherton

I joined the army to learn how to kill my father. An irony; the only time the old man ever showed a glimmer of satisfaction with me was when I announced I was dropping out of college and enlisting. He thought I wanted to make the world safe for democracy, when in fact I wanted to make it safe from him. I intended to sign up under a false name. Become competent with a rifle. Then one night, while my father slept, I would sneak away from basic training, press the muzzle to his head - Harry Hines the failed and violent Pennsylvania farmer, Harry Hines the wife abuser and son beater, laying into me with his divining rods till my back was freckled with slivers of hazelwood - and blast him to Satan's backyard while he dreamed whatever dreams go through such a man's mind. — James K. Morrow

The dual substance of Christ- the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God ... has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh ... and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met. — Nikos Kazantzakis

My friendship you shall have, leanred Man," piped Reepicheep. "And any Dwarf
or Giant
in the army who does not give you good language shall have my sword to reckon with. — C.S. Lewis

We are legion, an army of millions. Though most of us will go to any length to hide our compulsions, we recognize one another. The guy using a paper towel to turn the restroom doorknob, the child counting his eyelashes, the old man wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes - these are my brothers. We are a secret tribe. We're like Freemasons, except that our secret handshake is followed by a vigorous washing session. — Jennifer Traig

I'm not one to insist that a man can't possibly make it without a lot of formal education, since my own formal education pretty much stopped when I graduated from Independence High School in 1901. And then there was a twenty-two-year gap, while I worked on a farm and as a railroad timekeeper and served in the Army and did a lot of other things, before I started to attend night classes at Kansas City Law School - and I left there in 1925 and never got a degree. But I've tried to increase my knowledge all my life by reading and reading and reading, — Harry Truman

I had a mixture, my father was a career army man and my mother was a writer. — Bill Griffith

O man, whoever you are and wherever you come from, for I know you will come, I am Cyrus who won the Persians their empire. Do not therefore begrudge me this bit of earth that covers my bones. — Cyrus The Great

What do you want, Mal?" The room seemed very quiet.
"Don't ask me that."
"Why not?"
"Because it can't be."
"I want to hear it anyway."
He blew out a long breath. "Say goodnight. Tell me to leave, Alina."
"No."
"You need an army. You need a crown."
"I do."
He laughed then. "I know I'm supposed to say something noble
I want a united Ravka free from the Fold. I want the Darkling in the ground, where he can never hurt you or anyone else again." He gave a rueful shake of his head. "But I guess I'm the same selfish ass I've always been. For all my talk of vows and honor, what I really want is to put you up against that wall and kiss you until you forget you ever knew another man's name. So tell me to go, Alina. Because I can't give you a title or an army or any of the things you need. — Leigh Bardugo

On the whole, I wonder'd much how such a man came to be intrusted with so important a business as the conduct of a great army; but, having since seen more of the great world, and the means of obtaining, and motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished. — Benjamin Franklin

The Army had your soul, once you'd been in it all those years - there were things you couldn't shake off so easy, because they'd gone deep into you, and it was painful when they came out, because of the roots they'd grown, right deep down in your guts.
Name and number? Watson, 606. Smarten up there, Private Watson! You're a soldier now, you know, not a bloody jelly fish! Get that salute right, private! Sir! Sir! Sir! Corporal, what's your unit? Corporal Watson, dress that man! You are in charge of this rabble, Corp'l Watson? Sir! Report to my quarters, Sarnt Watson, oh six hundred hours! You should know better than that, Sergeant - now get those men in order! Sir! Sir! Sir!
Hold, Watty. — Elleston Trevor

It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end ... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him. — Henry Adams

So it must be!" thought Prince Andrei as he was driving out of the avenue of the house at Bald Hills. "She, a pathetic, innocent being, stays to be devoured by a senile old man. The old man feels he's to blame, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up and rejoices at life, in which he will be the same as everybody else, the deceived or the deceiver. I'm going to the army - why? I don't know myself, and I wish to meet a man whom I despise, in order to give him an occasion to kill me and laugh at me! — Leo Tolstoy

And what can a simple girl do? (Henry)
I was told, by my father, of St. Mary of Aragon who single-handedly brought down an entire Saracen army with nothing more than her faith in God. He also spoke of an ancient Celtic queen named Boudicca who brought Rome to her knees and burned London to the ground. He oft said that a woman was far more deadly as an enemy than a man, because men lead with their heads and women with their hearts. You can argue and win against another's head, but never against her heart. (Callie) — Kinley MacGregor

When I was a kid I got mad enough to want to kill somebody but as you travel the world and I'm struggling with a freedom fight against nations, you can't get enough hate in you to be mad at one man just because it's a boxing match.Never. Even Floyd Paterson, who condemned my Islamic religion and didn't want to call me Muhammad Ali and said I should've gone to the army and I should be in jail. — Muhammad Ali

Malcolm stood at the microphone. 'Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else's freedom.' His voice, deep and textured, reached through the crowd, across the street to the tenement windows where listeners leaned half their bodies out into the spring air. 'The black man has been programmed to die. To die either by his own hand, the hand of his brother or at the hand of a blue-eyed devil trained to do one thing: take the black man's life.' The — Maya Angelou

I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore. — Edward Abbey

And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?" he says, reading my Noise. "What other kind of man is suitable for war?"
A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men.
"Wrong," says the Mayor. "It's war that makes us men in the first place. Until there's war, we are only children."
Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two.
We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us.
"Ready to grow up, Todd?" the Mayor asks. — Patrick Ness

I would rather win souls than be the greatest king or emperor on earth; I would rather win souls than be the greatest general that ever commanded an army; I would rather win souls than be the greatest poet, or novelist, or literary man who ever walked the earth. My one ambition in life is to win as many as possible. — R.A. Torrey

My grandfather had come over as a member of the czarist army, to make an arms deal with the British government. Being a blinkered military man, he was unaware that the Russian Revolution was about to take place. — Helen Mirren

These scars on my body," Alexander declared, "were got for you, my brothers. Every wound, as you see, is in the front. Let that man stand forth from your ranks who has bled more than I, or endured more than I for your sake. Show him to me, and I will yield to your weariness and go home." Not a man came forward. Instead, a great cheer arose from the army. The men begged their king to forgive them for their want of spirit and pleaded with him only to lead them forward. — Steven Pressfield

But I'm not fighting as the man he knew today, as a Gold. I'm a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly psychotic women behind me and a fleet of state-of-the-art warships crewed by pissed-off pirates, engineers, techs, and former slaves. And he thinks he knows how to fight me? I laugh as the clawDrill shakes my seat. — Pierce Brown

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd — William Shakespeare