Quotes & Sayings About Siege

He'd only taken the black after he'd lost an arm at the siege of Storm's End. — George R R Martin

No one was expecting the six-man team of elite SAS officers to storm the prison, but that is exactly what they did do. Hurling stun grenade and tear gas canisters, they entered the jail through a skylight before freeing the terrified prison warder. — Stephen Richards

Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field. — Sun Tzu

One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph. — Virginia Woolf

Don't argue. Never deign to deny. Meet insults with laughter. — Leigh Bardugo

He was staring down another loss, and, though he had to be logical, though he knew her to be logical, he saw the stricken look of betrayal on her face, and all of those arguments threatened to fly away from him. What was history anyway but the lies of the winning few? Why was it worth protecting, when it forgot the starving child under siege, the slave woman on her deathbed, the man lost at sea? It was an imperfect record written by a biased hand, diluted to garner the most agreement from competing parties. He was tempted to see her point, to imagine that she could realign the past and present and future into something beautiful. God, if anyone was capable of it, it would be her. — Alexandra Bracken

We stand at a crossroads. Idolatry looms. Traditional values in jeopardy. Truth under siege and virtue abandoned. — Gregory Maguire

There are four great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ , the exile of Krishna in Brindaban and the colloquy on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindaban created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanized Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity. — Sri Aurobindo

Matthias," she murmured in Fjerdan, giving his arm what she hoped was a friendly, siblinglike nudge, "must you glower at everything?"
"I'm not glowering."
"We're Fjerdans in the Ravkan sector. We already stand out. Let's not give everyone another reason to think you're about to lay siege to the market. We need to get this task done without drawing unwanted attention. Think of yourself as a spy."
His frown deepened. "Such work is beneath an honest soldier."
"Then pretend to be an actor." He made a disgusted sound.
"Have you ever even been to the theater?"
"There are plays every season in Djerholm."
"Let me guess, sober affairs that last several hours and tell epic tales of the heroes of yore."
"They're actually very entertaining. But I've never seen an actor who knows how to properly hold his sword. — Leigh Bardugo

A year or so earlier I had been to the Sky River Rock Festival in rural Washington, where a dosen stone-broke freaks from Seattle Liberation Front had assembled a sound system that carried every small note of an acoustic guitar - even a cough or the sound of a boot drooping on the stage - to half-deaf acid victims huddled under bushes a half mile away.
But the best technicians available to the National DAs' convention in Vegas apparently couldn't handle it. Their sound system looked like something Ulysses S. Grant might have triggered up to addres his troops during the Siege of Vicksburg. The voices from up front crackled with a fuzzy, high-pitched urgency, and the delay was just enough to keep the words disconcertingly out of phaze with the speaker's gestures. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, p. 73) — Hunter S. Thompson

A world that becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else. First it's Jews, already abandoning France. Then it's homosexuals, already under siege from gay-bashing in Amsterdam, 'the most tolerant city in Europe'. Then it's uncovered women, targetted for rape in Oslo. And if you don't any longer have any Jews or (officially) any gays or (increasingly) uncovered women, there are always just Christians in general, from Nigeria to Egypt to Pakistan. More space for Islam means less space for everything else, and in the end for you. — Mark Steyn

The [Apache] tribe was under siege by government agents, who had jailed some of the medicine men for practicing their rituals. Freedom of religion was cherished as a sacrosanct American right -- everywhere, that is, but on the archipelago of Indian life. — Timothy Egan

Remember that you're far back in the procession; remember that a whole army corps has laid siege to her, that she's been laid waste, plundered and pillaged. — Henry Miller

I am the Penitent God. And tonight, I have begun my battle. My siege. The hundred-thousand Ink-borne arrows, flying forth from my flaming pen, to assault the walls of tyrannical Cold that hold this man in awful rapture. My campaign for my friend's very soul. My war of Ice, Ink, and Ember. — S.G. Night

Ah, whither shall a maiden flee, When a bold youth so swift pursues, And siege of tenderest courtesy, With hope perseverant, still renews! — Coventry Patmore

Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out. — Shan Sa

Violence has to end. And Israelis have a bright to defend themselves against any violence that is attacking innocent people with a knife in the old city in Jerusalem or elsewhere. No country should be under siege like that. — John F. Kerry

Actors want to impress at the beginning, so you take advantage of that by suddenly saying, 'Right, you're here for two weeks.' What you're doing is creating a siege mentality. — Danny Boyle

Wealth from trade was the mainspring of Western material advance; the visible agents of change were great guns. These came of age in Europe in the 15th century. On land their potency in reducing castle walls favoured central over local power, since in general only monarchs could afford siege-trains; so nation-states were consolidated and extended into great territorial empires. At sea, guns transformed sailing ships into mobile castles virtually impregnable to opponents who lacked equally powerful ordnance. With the ocean-going gunned warship, western Europe began to extend around the globe. — Peter Padfield

Museums are obliged to denature and make dreary the impulse which led to an object's original creation. Serried rows of coins are like Panini football stickers in a more ponderous form. But as objects to be handled they tell an extraordinary story, from the most over-the-top gold monster to a clipped, almost featureless little square of rough metal used as emergency currency in the Siege of Vienna. — Simon Winder

It's hard not to be a fighter when you're constantly under siege. — Cassandra Duffy

If love is under siege, it is because it threatens the very essence of commercial civilization. Everything is designed to make us forget that love is our most vivid manifestation and the most common power of life that is in us. Shouldn't we wonder how the lights that glimmer in the eye can blow a fuse for a time, even as barriers of oppression break and jam our passions? Yet despite a life stunted and distorted by mediated Spectacle, nothing has ever managed to strip love of its primal force. Although the heart's music fails to overwhelm the cacophony of profit efficiency, bit by bit it composes our destinies, according to tones, chords, and dissonances which render us happy if only we learn to harmonize the scattered notes that string emotions together. — Raoul Vaneigem

A thrum of excitement went through the siege lines when Belwas was seen plodding toward the city, and from the walls and towers of Meereen came shouts and jeers. Oznak zo Pahl mounted up again, and waited, his striped lance held upright. The charger tossed his head impatiently and pawed the sandy earth. As massive as he was, the eunuch looked small beside the hero on his horse. — George R R Martin

The Exile In July 587 BCE, Babylonian soldiers broke through Jerusalem's walls, ending a starvation siege that had lasted well over a year. They burned the city and Solomon's temple and took its king and many other leaders to Babylon as captives, leaving others to fend for themselves in the destroyed land. Many surrounding countries disappeared altogether when similar disasters befell them. But Judah did not. Instead, the period scholars most often call the "Babylonian exile" inspired religious leaders to revise parts of Scripture that had been passed down to them. It also sparked the writing of entirely new Scriptures and the revision of ideas about God, creation, and history. Much of what is called the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament was written, edited, and compiled during and after this national tragedy. — Walter Brueggemann

Passion, Baird reckoned, was what would take men across the river and up the breach. Damn scientific soldiering now. The science of siege warfare had opened the city, but only a screaming and insane passion would take men inside. — Bernard Cornwell

The newly created Darth Vader flexes his Force-muscle as the Emperor's enforcer to maintain order and obedience in a galaxy reeling from civil war and the destruction of the Jedi Order. To the galaxy at large, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker - the Chosen One - died on Coruscant during the siege of the Jedi Temple. And, to some extent, the was true - Anakin was dead. But from the site of Anakin Skywalker's last stand - on the molten surface of the planet Mustafa, where he sought to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kanobi - a fearsome spectre in black has risen. Once the most powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi order he is not a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith, and the avenging right hand of the galaxy's ruthless new Emperor. Seduced, deranged and destroyed by the machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker is dead ... and Darth Vader lives ... — James Luceno

Because we live in a world under siege," I say. "Life sucks for mages and magicians- you taught me that. Bad things happen to those of us who get involved, but if we didn't fight, we'd be in an even worse state. None of it it's your fault, any more than it's the fault of the moon or the stars."
Dervish nods slowly, then arches an eyebrow "The moon or the stars?"
"I always get poetic when I'm dealing with self-pitying simpletons. — Darren Shan

Out on the street I start to run; I need to breathe in this life, the trees, the warmth of my town. I will be able to control my own fate and I will know how to be happy. Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle ... — Shan Sa

Reflections of the battlements shimmered in the deep green moat, casting an image of enduring strength, an image that defied the very siege of time. — Karen Azinger

Siege

This I do, being mad:
Gather baubles about me,
Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time
Death beating the door in.

White jade and an orange pitcher,
Hindu idol, Chinese god, -
Maybe next year, when I'm richer -
Carved beads and a lotus pod...

And all this time
Death beating the door in. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

For centuries, pilgrims have travelled to Ayodhya identifying it as a birthplace of Ram. But the exact location is a subject of dispute and political turmoil. Ever since colonial times, Hinduism has felt under siege, forced to explain itself using European templates, make itself more tangible, more structured, more homogenous, more historical, more geographical, less psychological, less emotional, to render itself as valid as the major religions of the world like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The fallout of this pressure is the need to locate matters of faith in a particular spot. What used to be once a matter of faith becomes a territorial war zone where courts have to intervene — Devdutt Pattanaik

This would have been the perfect time to continue with his ravishment scheme. He could lay siege to her virginal clothing. Ruthlessly dismantle her inhibitions. Steal an hour or two of fleeting pleasure before proving beyond a shadow of doubt: Romance is an exercise in willful delusion and nothing - nothing - ends happily. At least, not in this castle, and not with a man like him.
There was only one wrinkle in that scheme.
He liked her too much to go through with it. — Tessa Dare

No matter what I said, we both knew the hard truth. We do our best. We try. And usually, it makes no difference at all. — Leigh Bardugo

Cultural America is under siege. And as the Soviet experience illustrates, ideology is a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking racial, ethnic, and cultural sources of community. — Samuel P. Huntington

As a champion of the Church Militant in a hostile secular society, Belloc would sometimes exhibit a siege mentality akin to the defiance of Pius IX. — Joseph Pearce

Laying siege to enemy-controlled cities allows attacking armies to keep their own casualties low by avoiding urban combat. — Walid Muallem

Now Elric was caught up in a kind of intradimensional hurricane, in which a thousand reverses ocurred within his brain at once and he became a thousand other creatures for an instant, and where he lived through more than ten other lives; a fate only minimally different from the one that was familiar to him; and so vast did the multiverse become, so unthinkable, that he began to go mad as he attempted to make sense of just a fraction of what laid siege to his sanity. — Michael Moorcock

Love is like a reservoir of kindness and pleasure, like silos and pools during a siege. — Yehuda Amichai

Jock put his shoulder to the framework and the whole thing crumbled inward with a crash of glass.
"Rotten as touch-wood," he said. "This place would never stand a siege. — John Buchan

Childhood was not a time in a person's life, but a country, a country under siege, from which certain individuals were taken too soon and never allowed to return. All people were exiled eventually, but whatever happened to them there marked them all their days. — Kate Green

The passageway smelled of smoke: burning wood, a torch, acrid. His head ached. Blood was wet and sticky upon his arm and on his fingers, and the orange glow of torchlight played from behind his back and over the corridor walls, leaping like a bonfire. There was a strange familiarity to it: the narrow walls in around him. And when he came to a wooden door set in the wall, he put his hand upon it and pushed it open.
There was a room, and a pallet inside it; a small torch burned low in a socket upon the wall. A man lay upon the cot, his face bruised and battered, his hands curled against his chest bloody: and Laurence knew him; knew him and knew himself. He remembered another door opening, in Bristol, three years before, and a voice asking him to come outside his prison, in a Britain under siege.
"Tenzing," Laurence said, and, as Tharkay opened feverish eyes, went to help him stand. — Naomi Novik

The homemade pie has been under siege for a century, and surely its survival is endangered. — Janet Clarkson

Under orders from Kitchener himself, an attempt was to be made to bribe the Turkish commander of the Kut siege into letting Townshend's army go in return for one million English pounds' worth of gold. If Lawrence resented being the bearer of this shameful instruction, almost without precedent in British military history, he never let on. Then again, he'd very recently been given two reminders of the puffery and hypocrisy of military culture. — Scott Anderson

How can you lay siege to a whole country? Who is really under siege now? Baghdad cannot be besieged. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

Now that music is faithfully reproducible, musicians are not needed as once they were. And music itself has changed. Though small cadres of classicists keep the sacred and ineffable alive, they are under siege by coarse generations whose music is hardly as musical as a bus engine or a chain saw. Something must have occurred during their mothers' pregnancies. How else is it possible to explain that playing Bach keeps them away from public spaces the way iron spikes drive pigeons from cathedral ledges? — Mark Helprin

Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard and warder. — Christopher Hitchens

Not far away lay the big cannons that had held Ulysses Grant at bay for fifty siege days while the citizens of the town ate rat flesh and clung to their long-cherished beliefs. How many had died in that lost cause? Dr. Tarver wondered. Fifty thousand casualties at Gettysburg alone, and for what? To free the slaves who built this house? To preserve the Union? Had Stonewall Jackson died to create a nation of couch potatoes ignorant of their own history and incapable of simple mathematics? If those brave soldiers in blue and gray had seen what lay in the future, they would have laid down their muskets and walked home to their farms. — Greg Iles

We have a saying that time has no single measure, that time can be like frost or lightning or a tear or siege or storm or sunset, or even like a rock. — James Clavell

For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines
some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege
I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words ... — Umberto Eco

Another visitor described them as "midget hells, where one lies awake and sweats the first half of the night, and frequently between midnight and dawn undergoes a fierce siege of heat-provoking nightmares." They seemed to be "designed by Detroit architects who probably couldn't envision a land without snow."19 Ford managers, said the priest, "never really figured out what country they were in. — Greg Grandin

The West-march of the Walmart Held all the food in the world, Bottled beer by the boatload, Frost-kept food, milk and meat. Setting up for a siege behind barricades The Norsemen fetched food, collected clothing, Turkish trousers with flies in the front Kept closed with clever contraptions, Tiny — Neal Stephenson

By contrast, the late-modern and post-modern self has in essence no essence. To this fragmented, fluid and compartmentalized self, denial, far from being an aberration, is only to be expected. This, however, is not just a change in world-views. Freud himself was quite clear that the unitary self of even the healthiest, 'integrated' person was permanently under siege. The self could never be fully socialized; denial and self-deception are part of being human. — Stanley Cohen

And we are made different. On the instant. What we know, what we were, is banished by that instant, razed like a castle under siege, and nothing is recognizable is left. The world is unmade. — Jennifer Roberson

In some strata of Greek and Roman society the engineer was actually denigrated, higher esteem being accorded to poets, playwrights and sculptors. According to Plutarch, Archimedes was praised for refusing to contaminate his theoretical and mathematical science with practical applications, although under extreme pressure at the siege of Syracuse in Sicily he did design practical machinery. — Stephanie Dalley

A siege is an act of war. — Noam Chomsky

Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone 'stole' an idea: no, no, a thousand times no. The point is the volley, and how it's carried, and what statement is made by the answering 'statement.' In other words - if Burroughs initiates a time-gate and says it works randomly, and then Norton has time gates confounded with the Perilous Seat, the Siege Perilous of the Round Table, and locates it in a bar on a rainy night - do you see both the humor and the volley in the tennis match? — C.J. Cherryh

Even the great walls of Tar Valon, beyond the range of any siege catapult not on a barge, and worked with the Power till the largest catapult could not mark them in any case, might as well be made of paper against an army that could Travel. But whether Gareth Bryne had learned or not, other men would seize on that idea. The Asha'man already had, it seemed. War had always been ugly, yet it was going to grow uglier. — Robert Jordan

I say no wealth is worth my life! Not all they claim
was stored in the depths of Troy, that city built on riches,
in the old days of peace before the sons of Achaea came-
not all the gold held fast in the Archer's rocky vaults,
in Phoebus Apollo's house on Pytho's sheer cliffs!
Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding,
tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions.
But a man's life breath cannot come back again-
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.
Mother tells me,
the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet,
that two fates bear me on to the day of death.
If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,
my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.
If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,
my pride, my glory dies ...
true, but the life that's left me will be long,
the stroke of death will not come on me quickly. — Homer

Now that was a good pussy. — Carlos Malvar

I love the combination of smartness, pain, and what one might call conscious postmodern trashiness in this book: a version of the erotic full of nervous tension which animates the sensuality, and also Zimroth's feeling for words, compressed, ironic, withholding, but also 'asking for it ... the siege, the thrill, the battle fatigue.' A profoundly urban book, of harsh memory and fantasy, set in harsher reality. — Alicia Ostriker

Many people in Europe and the U.S. dispute the thesis that we are living through a clash of civilisations between Islam and the west. But a radical minority of Muslims firmly believes that Islam is under siege, and is committed to winning the holy war it has declared against the West. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The liberals and free people of the world will not like to see the Palestinian people living under siege. We have received indications from the international community that they will not stop their aid. — Ismail Haniyeh

It's a lovely day and we're under siege. People are trying to murder us." Her eyes shone with excitement. "Isn't it marvelous? — Ilona Andrews

Voltaire was also there, fleeing a royal arrest warrant, and working as a kind of one-man eighteenth-century USO show during the siege, offering bons mots and brandy between bouts of battle and composing odes to the military men. The — Tom Reiss

Peggy snorted. Zombies rise and we're still doing paperwork. — Rhiannon Frater

I'm usually the guy who says, 'Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington in the Siege'! — Jim Cummings

Although the defects of the Russian Army were notorious, although the Russian winter, not the Russian Army, had turned Napoleon back from Moscow, although it had been defeated on its own soil by the French and British in the Crimea, although the Turks in 1877 had outfought it at the siege of Plevna and only succumbed later to overwhelming numbers, although the Japanese had outfought it in Manchuria, a myth of its invincibility prevailed. — Barbara W. Tuchman

My weaknesses are women in high heels, freedom under siege, and ebay. (Steele) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Well, well, well. The mighty Uthman-ul-Dosht comes with mercy, and offers peace. These are strange times we live in, eh, Tulkis? Have the Gurkish learned to love their enemies? Or simply fear them?'
'One need not love one's enemy, or even fear him, to desire peace. One need only love oneself.'
'Is that so?'
'It is. I lost two sons in the wars between our peoples. One at Ulrioch in the last war. He was a priest, and burned in the temple there. The other died not long ago, at the siege of Dagoska. He led the charge when the first breach was made.'
Glokta frowned and stretched out his neck. A hail of flatbow bolts. Tiny figures, falling in the rubble. 'That was a brave charge.'
'War is harshest on the brave. — Joe Abercrombie

The interesting thing about cities isn't what they do when people are looking," Ben says. "It's what they do when they think nobody's looking. Like, the shit the city is proud of? The shining skyscrapers downtown, the sports stadiums, the public art? You can't judge a city by that. That only tells you what the rich people are doing on a good day. It's what people do on a bad day - a bad day when there are no security cameras watching - that tells you what you really want to know. It's how people act during a blackout, a hurricane, or a siege that tells you the truth about a city. — Scott Kenemore

This boa, the American columns, are being besieged between Basra and other towns north, west, south and west of Basra. The Americans are the people who are under siege. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

"Bolshoi Babylon" is the work of filmmakers Mark Franchetti and Nicholas Read. Franchetti has been a Moscow-based journalist for 18 years. He won a British Press Award for his coverage of the 2002 Moscow theater siege in which 130 hostages were killed. He's covered Russian politics and the war in Ukraine. — Elizabeth Blair Lee

Ten years ago I saw a documentary on the siege of that Moscow theater. After just forty-eight hours of the terrorists confining the hostages to their seats with no sleep, the lights blazing and being forced to pee their pants-although if the had to shit, they could do so in the orchestra pit-well,more than a few hostages just stood up and walked to the exit knowing they'd get shot in the back. Because the were DONE. — Maria Semple

The home is under siege. So many families are being destroyed ... If anyone can change the dismal situation into which we are sliding, it is you. Rise up, oh women of Zion, rise up to the great challenge which faces you. My message to you, my challenge to you, my prayer is that you will rededicate yourselves to the strengthening of your homes. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Laying aside also all considerations of works and engines of war, the invention of which has long since reached its limit, and for the improvement of which I see no further hope in the applied arts, I shall recognize the following types of stratagems connected with siege operations ... — Frontinus

He had given each a code and procedure to follow should any kind of disaster arise, be it a siege of the city or a revolt from within. This revolt fulfilled the second contingency. He would not have to gather everyone himself. He need only contact a couple of them and they would pass along the information through their prescribed channels. All of them would follow various prepared routes to meet in the secret passageways below the palace, created for this very purpose. Down there, they could weather the danger in the city above. They even had food stores which stayed well-preserved in the cool and dry environment. — Brian Godawa

These are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest. — Samuel Johnson

War does that, nothing for it. Reality lays siege. Your framed portrait of life is smashed, and a new one thrust upon you. It's ugly, and you don't even want to look at it let alone hang it on the wall, but you have no choice, once you know. Once you really know. — Laini Taylor

And then God, in his benevolence, tasked Adam with the nasty business of nomenclature, calling beasts of land and water and air for what he saw fit, giving them names, calling them names, pegging down their potentials to classifications, to genus, to species. — Carlos Malvar

-the apartment had been directly in the sight line of a Serb sniper across the river. Teta-Jozefina was a devout Catholic, but she somehow managed to believe in essential human goodness, despite all the abundant evidence to the contrary surrounding her. She felt that the sniper was essentially a good man because during the siege, she said, he had often shot over her and her husband's heads to warn them that he was watching and that they shouldn't move so carelessly in their own apartment. — Aleksandar Hemon

Lacking an articulable defense of the cultural values under siege, he became a vessel of smoldering animosities. — George F. Will

the Temple was rebuilt, but by then the religion of Israel had been marked forever by the piety of the exile. Alongside the single Temple, where blood sacrifice was celebrated, arose numerous synagogues, places for meeting and for prayer, and the dominium of the priests yielded to the growing influence of the Pharisees and Scribes, men of the book and of study. In 70 A.D., the Roman legions again destroyed the Temple. But the learned rabbi Joahannah ben-Zakkaj, slipped covertly out of Jerusalem through the siege and obtained permission from Vespasian to continue the teaching of the Torah in the city of Jamnia. The temple has never been rebuilt since, and study, the Talmud, has become the real temple of Israel.24 This complex relationship to the Talmud is in fact a key to understanding the life and work of Mark Rothko. — Annie Cohen-Solal

When you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, you possess a resource that can give you abundant life through the longest siege of the enemy. The enemy can camp at your doorstep for an indefinite period of time and it won't matter to you. The Holy Spirit is your indwelling source of — David Jeremiah

Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some though that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. — Oscar Wilde

Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul. — Richard J. Foster

In the past, I used to think real love was anti-capitalistic.
I believed love, as the modern world understood it, was an endless siege fueled by the impossibility of healthy co-dependence.
One person always gave. One person always took.
Selflessness and selfishness.
I was wrong.
Real love is unto itself. For every person, it's different, and no one can presume to explain its complexity using mere words.
For me, love comes down to the moments of pure, unadulterated happiness in your life. — Renee Ahdieh

Anagram of Seeking by Susan Laughter Meyers
Sit, unplanted, with your back to a tree, or sink
to your knees.
If sorrow drowns the hour, let yourself keen,
each hurt recalled, the heart a siege
of old wounds. If startled by joy, let yourself sing.
Light dims, the air cools your skin.
Unclear , what it is you're seeing-
each monotone hoot of the owl, a sign-
less clear what can't be seen:
the soul, a spirit, the king of kings?
This density of leaves and skein
of tenuous moss, yours. here and now, seine
life's good fish. Child, singe
the night, boldly. O lost see, catch fire and seek. — Susan Laughter Meyers

Dune was a world of paradox now - a world under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power. — Frank Herbert

What made al Qaeda retrieve the doctrine of militant jihad, and Breivik the ideas of crusade and reconquest, is a sense of siege. So, we should help both Westerners and Muslims get rid of that sense by easing their political tensions and by fostering dialogue between them. — Mustafa Akyol

I am well aware of the facts presented by numerous security experts on the many ways in which the United States' digital networks have come under siege by cybercriminals and under daily assault by hackers in league with various foreign governments. — Rebecca MacKinnon

... what makes us monsters is our need to be saints — Carlos Malvar

Why won't you leave me alone?" I whispered one night as he hovered behind me while I tried to work at my desk.
Long minutes passed. I didn't think he would answer. I even had time to hope he might have gone, until I felt his hand on my shoulder.
"Then I'd be alone, too," he said, and he stayed the whole night through, till the lamps burned down to nothing. — Leigh Bardugo

The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege. — Sun Tzu

Now even the American command is under siege. We are hitting it from the north, east, south and west. We chase them here and they chase us there. But at the end we are the people who are laying siege to them. And it is not them who are besieging us. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

Shall I show you the half-dozen other rooms in this hospital where these scenes are repeated? And what of the other hospitals? Printing House Square is small and tame. Even in the private institutions uptown you can see a show just like this: there is nothing as disgusting as an obese cadaver in which all the futile pleasures of many years finally arise to fill it full-blown with stinking rotten gases. The city is burning and under siege. And we are in a war in which everyone is killed and no one is remembered."
"What am I supposed to do, then," Peter Lake asked, "if it's like you say?"
"Is there someone you love?"
"Yes."
"A woman?"
"Yes."
"Then go home to her."
"And who will remember her?"
"No one. That's just the point. You must take care of all that now. — Mark Helprin

One of the comforts of firing a big gun during a siege must be the satisfaction of watching the results at long range. Inside a tank or behind an M107, a smudge of smoke against a building can be marked off against a map coordinate. The blood and shattered bones at the other end of the trajectory have no physical contact with the gun. But Randal and I were driving towards the other end of the trajectory, back to west Beirut, where the casualty statistics marked the other side of the concave mirror through which armies fight their wars. — Robert Fisk

I'm eating breakfast with half the royal family, Golden Guard, and a Western noble, at the siege of Soricium," Vhalla wheezed. "And it feels perfectly normal. — Elise Kova

Once, during the Siege of Boston, when almost nothing was going right and General Schuyler had written from Albany to bemoan his troubles, Washington had replied that he understood but that "we must bear up against them, and make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish." It was such resolve and an acceptance of mankind and circumstances as they were, not as he wished them to be, that continued to carry Washington through. "I will not however despair," he now wrote to Governor William Livingston. — David McCullough

O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out, / Against the wrackful siege of battering days? — William Shakespeare

Unity of command is essential to the economy of time. Warfare in the field was like a siege: by directing all one's force to a single point a breach might be made, and the equilibrium of opposition destroyed. — Napoleon Bonaparte