1,797 Quotes About Battle

The war had been a daily thought, a continual consciousness in her life for two years, but never a real presence. Battles were things that were fought somewhere else, won somehow, by someone, and lost by someone else. Now as she stood by her own door and listened to the cannons, it was with a chilling, dreadfully full and clear realization that men were out on the field beneath that gray cloud taking each other’s lives.

...the experience of battle forever divides those who talk of nothing else but its prospect from those who talk of everything else but its memory.

fue una de las raras batallas en que los muertos victoriosos tienen peor entierro que los vencidos

An agile, well-trained, brave elephant, ridden by a good mahout, its trunk armed with the kind of sabre known as a qartal and covered with chain mail, while the rest of its body is protected by sheets of bark and iron, surrounded by 500 men to defend it and protect it to the rear, can fight against 6000 men on horseback.

We were not born to fight, but our cradles were built from struggles and hardship. Pens, swords, sticks—weapons shoved into our fists as soon as we’re old enough to grasp them. So we fight because the world will cut our throats otherwise. We fight, because we won’t go down without one.

Those of us who where there would not have survived without those of you who remained here. Because the man fights and the woman feeds, the man hates the enemy and the woman a thousand miles away softens his heart with herself and the children so that his heart won't turn to stone.

I killed him because I am Turkish and he was Greek. But when I looked at his face, as he looked up at me blindly, I couldn't see what separated us.

The most opportune battle is one not fought at all.

- as battle stations wilt like flowers tossed into flame, as radio bands crackle triumph and swiftskimmers swoop after fleeting void tails, as guns speak their last arguments into mute space, she slips away.