Winters, Matheson, Nixon, and the others existed,” Private Rader remembered. “These were first-class people, and to think these men would care and share their time and efforts with us seemed a miracle. They.
They were returning to Mourmelon, but not to the barracks. This time they were billeted in large green twelve-man wall tents, about a mile outside what Webster called “the pathetically shabby garrison village of Mourmelon, abused by soldiers since Caesar’s day, consisting of six bars, two whorehouses, and a small Red Cross club.” In Webster’s scathing judgment, “Mourmelon was worse than Fayetteville, North Carolina.
If you want to be a hero, the Germans will make one out of you real quick – dead!
When the shooting started, they wanted to look up to the guy beside them, not down.
The replacements, eighteen-and nineteen-year-olds fresh from the States, were wide-eyed. Although the veterans were only a year or two older, they looked terrifying to the recruits.
You lead by fear or you lead by example. We were being led by fear.
We can’t make you do anything, but we can make you wish you had.
He generated maximum anxiety over matters of minimum significance.
In a foxhole, the past and, more important, the future do not exist. The only thing in the world that matters is the moment.
Comrades are closer than friends, closer than brothers. Their relationship is different from that of lovers.
Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life was condemned because of sin to unremitting labour and unbearable sorrow and so began to experience the burden of wretchedness. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing.
He who reads much and understands much, receives his fill.
He sheds incorporeal grace on corporeal things;.
He waits for our tears, that He may pour forth His goodness.
He had power only to feel, and feeling was torment.
Reality, n. The dream of a mad philosopher.
On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us for ever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in that other life.
DAWN, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
You scoundrel, you have wronged me,” hissed the philosopher, “May you live forever!
I can give you my word of honor.” “And pray what may be the value of that?” inquired the amused Regent. “Monsieur, it is worth its weight in gold.