Michael Shaara Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

Pickett excused himself, watchful of Longstreet. Pickett was always saying something to irritate somebody, and he rarely knew why, so his method was simply to apologize in general from time to time and let people know he meant well and then to shove off and hope for the best. He apologized and departed, curls ajiggle.

Michael Shaara
It rained all that night. The next day was Saturday, the Fourth of July.

Michael Shaara
One thing I'm very glad to see. Your General Lee is a moralist, as are all true gentlemen, of course, but he respects minor vice, harmless vice, when he finds it in others. Now that's the mark of a true gentlemen. That is what distinguishes the man so to me, aside from his military prowess, of course. The true gentlemen has no vices, but he allows you your own.

Michael Shaara
Some of us volunteered to fight for Union. Some came mainly because we were bored at home and this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many of us came... because it was the right thing to do.

Michael Shaara
The thing about the heart was that you could not coax it or force it, as you could any other disease. Will power meant nothing.

Michael Shaara
They are volunteers: last of the great volunteer armies, for the draft is beginning that summer in the North. They have lost faith in their leaders but not in themselves.

Michael Shaara
Perhaps it was only that when you try to put it into words you cannot express it truly, it never sounds as you dream it.

Michael Shaara
A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals?

Michael Shaara
But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and lacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

Michael Shaara
He moved closer to the wall up there, past mounds of bodies, no line any more, just men moving forward at different speeds, stopping to fire, stopping to die, drifting back like leaves blown from the fire ahead.

Michael Shaara
Oh, by the way, there's a story going around, do you know? They say that General Lee was asleep, and the army was marchingby, and fifteen thousand men went by on tiptoe so as not to wake him.

Michael Shaara
Why do there have to be men like that, men who enjoy another man's dying?

Michael Shaara
The man was looking his way, with glasses. Buford waved. You never knew what old friend was out there. The Reb officer took off his hat, bowed formally.

Michael Shaara