Alliance Guard Quotes

It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Govt. from interference in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others. [Letter to the Reverend Jasper Adams, January 1, 1832]

What an alliance, huh? A Dark-Hunter and a Spathi united to guard an Apollite. Who would have ever imagined? (Wulf) Love makes strange bedfellows. (Acheron) I thought that was politics. (Wulf) It’s both. (Acheron)

[T]here remains [in some parts of the country] a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Govt. & Religion neither can be duly supported. Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded agst.

The King of Cadare cannot have an alliance on an equal footing with a woman. Marriage ensures that Your Majesty is seen to submit her will to my master in all things.” Mace moved in sharply, blocking off Kelsea’s right side. She blinked in surprise, for she had sensed no threat from the ambassador or his guards. It took a few moments for her to see it: Mace had actually moved to protect the ambassador. Some of Kelsea’s anger ebbed away then; she smiled at Mace, and felt a rush of affection when he smiled back.

It was in America that horses first roamed. A million years before the birth of man, they grazed the vast plains of wiry grass and crossed to other continents over bridges of rock soon severed by retreating ice. They first knew man as the hunted knows the hunter, for long before he saw them as a means to killing other beasts, man killed them for their meat. Paintings on the walls of caves showed how. Lions and bears would turn and fight and that was the moment men speared them. But the horse was a creature of flight not fight and, with a simple deadly logic, the hunter used flight to destroy it. Whole herds were driven hurtling headlong to their deaths from the tops of cliffs. Deposits of their broken bones bore testimony. And though later he came pretending friendship, the alliance with man would ever be but fragile, for the fear he'd struck into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged. Since that neolithic moment when first a horse was haltered, there were those among men who understood this. They could see into the creature's soul and soothe the wounds they found there. Often they were seen as witches and perhaps they were. Some wrought their magic with the bleached bones of toads, plucked from moonlit streams. Others, it was said, could with but a glance root the hooves of a working team to the earth they plowed. There were gypsies and showmen, shamans and charlatans. And those who truly had the gift were wont to guard it wisely, for it was said that he who drove the devil out, might also drive him in. The owner of a horse you calmed might shake your hand then dance around the flames while they burned you in the village square. For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubles ears, these men were known as Whisperers.

One of the guards gave her a hard shove. Stumbling forward, she scowled and stopped short again. Hands curling into fists, she turned suddenly and punched the guard in the throat. Caught by surprise, the guard cupped his neck and began to wheeze. Ava spun and delivered a hard kick to his belly, driving him back a step.

—I’ve missed your company these long days.— What are you even doing here? You stayed away so long, I thought you weren’t coming. —You missed me, and now are piqued. Know that I was obtaining something that guarantees my success with you.— More coercion? —A gift for you. That’s why I’ve allowed the mortal leeway and refrained from a slaying. Because you’re about to be mine.— His confidence unsettled me. Good to know you were worried about your wife alone out on the road. You let me make the journey by myself. And face the twins! Though you knew how much they would hate me. —I felt confident that you and six other Arcana, one of the largest alliances yet, could take out a pair of insignificant carnates. To guard you on your way, I bade Lark to dispatch the wolf.—

Michael Freeman was thirty-five years old – a former Special Forces soldier turned policeman. He was a tall and slim black man, with grey-flecked hair and dark almond-shaped eyes. His smile was tight-lipped – half knowing and half strategic. It hid a mouthful of craggy teeth. A childhood in Detroit's East Side with an aggressive, alcoholic father had taught him to play things close to his chest, to look and listen. His colleagues knew him as a patient thinker, sedulous, missing nothing given time. Intellectually savvy and emotionally guarded, he exuded certitude. In Afghanistan, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he spent several weeks as a mounted outlier with the Northern Alliance in the Alma Tak Mountains, beyond the range of reinforcement or rescue – drinking filtered ditchwater and eating nuts scavenged from corpses – and calling down massive airstrikes on Taliban positions. He gained a certain reputation. Word spread the length of the Darya Suf River valley, through the Tiangi Gap to the stronghold at Mazar-i-Sharif that there was a monster loose in the mountains and the Taliban called him ‘bor-buka', which seemed to mean black or devil or whirlwind, and, at times, all of these things.

It is impossible to make predictions—to say if the Islamic Republic will collapse or if it will survive in its current form. Certainly its current form isn’t the one it took in the immediate wake of the revolution. Although Khamenei has been committed to safeguarding the revolution, he has also created a new theocracy—one that relies on the greed of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij instead of the loyalty of its founding fathers. Khamenei has banished nearly all the clerics who held power when Ayatollah Khomeini was alive. Despite falling oil prices and economic sanctions, Khamenei had enough petro-dollar to satisfy his military base of support: the Guards and the Basij. The oil revenue has been the biggest deterrent to democracy in Iran, even though the windfall has transformed the fabric of Iranian society. The Iranian middle class, more than two-thirds of the population, relies on the revenue instead of contributing to economic growth, and thus has been less likely to fulfill a historic mission to create institutional reform. It has been incapable of placing “demands on Iranian leadership for political reform because of its small role in producing wealth, as in other developing countries. The regime is still an autocracy, to be sure, but democracy has been spreading at the grassroots level, even among members of the Basij and the children of Iran’s rulers. The desire for moderation goes beyond a special class. As I am writing these lines, Khamenei’s followers are shifting alliances and building new coalitions. Civil society, despite the repression it has long endured, has turned into a dynamic force. Khamenei still has the final word in Iranian politics, but the country’s political culture is not monolithic. Like Ayatollah Khomeini, who claimed he had to drink the cup of poison in order to end the war with Iraq, Khamenei has been forced to compromise. The fact that he signed off on Rohani’s historic effort to improve ties with the United States signals that the regime is moving in a different direction, and that further compromises are possible.

Up to this point, midway through the Henry VI trilogy, there have been very few glimpses of those at the bottom. Politics has been almost entirely the affair of the elites, who maneuver against one another, while the anonymous masses of messengers, servants, soldiers, guards, artisans, and peasants remain in the shadows. Now, suddenly and unexpectedly, the cast of characters changes: York sees an opportunity to forge an alliance with the miserable, overlooked, and ignorant lower classes, and he seizes upon it. And we learn that the hitherto invisible and silent poor are seething with anger. Party warfare cynically makes use of class warfare. The goal is to create chaos, which will set the stage for the tyrant’s seizure of power.

The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern times: it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the tranquillity and security of all; it was purely pacific and conservative. It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening out, full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system was already founded; all that remained was to organize it. Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I too should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account to the peoples as clerk to master. Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people, and anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in the common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all navigable rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and that the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to mere guards for the sovereigns. On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong, magnificent, peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have proclaimed her frontiers immutable; all future wars purely defensive, all aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated my son in the Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and his constitutional reign would have begun. Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the envy of the nations! My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country couple, every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all sides and everywhere. Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his actions had been the peoples’ welfare and that he could control the fate of millions and by the employment of power confer benefactions.

When a man and a woman come to an alliance with honour, the knowledge that their future has been written for the benefit of family and state, love and duty are one.

I’m glad to see you well.” Klaythron moved to stand slightly behind Elyria and to her right. The guard’s body language practically screamed, Fuck with her again and I will end you, Terran

The Iranians were also novices in modern torture techniques, and so, as we shall soon see, after the coup against Mossadegh, the CIA helped train the Iranian security services in torture techniques—techniques borrowed, as in the case of Pinochet’s Chile, from the experts on such subjects -- the Nazis. And again, this type of alliance is not a thing of the past. The best example of this today is in Ukraine where, as Max Blumenthal writes, “Massive torchlit rallies pour out into the streets of Kiev on regular occasions, showcasing columns of Azov members rallying beneath the Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel banner that serves as the militia’s symbol.”53 As Blumenthal explains, Azov is a militia now incorporated into the Ukranian National Guard, and, despite its openly pro-Nazi ideology, including violent anti-Semitism, this militia has obtained heavy US weaponry transfers “right under the nose of the US State Department,” while “U.S. trainers and U.S. volunteers have been working closely with this battalion.