Battle Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

I knew that if the feat was accomplished it must be at a most fearful sacrifice of as brave and gallant soldiers as ever engaged in battle.

Marriage, in life, is like a duel in the midst of a battle.

Edmond François Valentin About

But to the fighting soldier that phase of the war is behind. It was left behind after his first battle. His blood is up. He is fighting for his life, and killing now for him is as much a profession as writing is for me.

Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.

John Greenleaf Whittier

It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.

Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain [and] the noise of battle. [It] has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

And Tempus thought then that nothing was more worthwhile than what was growing in this whitewashed barracks, where he has come to build a force such as men or gods have never seen - a force worth reckoning with, if you were of a mind. And something was of that mind. And something else opposed it. He should have expected that. Battle in the heavens, battle on the earth.

My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that's where it's at.

Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses. It is time for our better angels to prevail.

In the dark days and darker nights when England stood alone-and most men save Englishmen despaired of England's life-he [Churchill] mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

John F. Kennedy

My brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary, however, is the evil; necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-biting among the virtues.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between tendencies within an individual; deep character analysis leads, if successful, to the progressive solution.

And therefore those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue.

It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.

"You know," he added very gravely, "it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle — to get one's head cut off."

Narrated 'Abdullah bin Abi Aufa: Allah's Apostle invoked evil upon the pagans on the ay (of the battle) of Al-Ahzab, saying, "O Allah! The Revealer of the Holy Book, the Swift-Taker of Accounts, O Allah, defeat Al-Ahzab (i. e. the clans), O Allah, defeat them and shake them."

Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

This battle fares like to the morning's war,
When dying clouds contend with growing light,
What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,
Can neither call it perfect day nor night.

William Shakespeare

May men say, "He is far greater than his father," when he returns from battle.

William now directed his archers to shoot high into the air, so that the arrows would fall behind the shield-wall, and one of these pierced Harold in the right-eye, inflicting a mortal wound. He fell at the foot of the royal standard, unconquerable except by death, which does not count in honour. The hard-fought battle was now decided.

Winston Churchill

The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.

She had an air of seeming to wait, as if for a man to get through with something more important than herself, a battle or an operation, during which he must not be hurried or interfered with. When the man had finished she would be waiting, without fret or impatience, somewhere on a highstool, turning the pages of a newspaper.

F. Scott Fitzgerald