“
Very slowly using two fingers, Annabeth drew her dagger. Instead of dropping it, she tossed it as far as she could into the water.
Octavian made a squeaking sound. "What was that for? I didn't say toss it! That could've been evidence. Or spoils of war!"
Annabeth tried for a dumb-blonde smile, like: Oh, silly me. Nobody who knew her would have been fooled. But Octavian seemed to buy it. He huffed in exasperation.
"You other two..." He pointed his blade a Hazel and Piper. "Put your weapons on the dock. No funny bus--"
All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth's dagger.
"You dropped this," he said, totally poker-faced.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
“
Mary took hold of the zipper. “Suck it in, miss.” I obeyed, and as the dress cinched me in again, I thought of a soldier going to war. Different armor but the same idea.
Tonight I was taking down a man.
”
”
Kiera Cass (The One (The Selection, #3))
“
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
”
”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“
Very slowly, using only two fingers, Annabeth drew her dagger. Instead of dropping it, she tossed it as far as she could into the water.
Octavian made a squeaking sound. “What was that for? I didn’t say toss it! That could’ve been evidence. Or spoils of war!”
Annabeth tried for a dumb-blonde smile, like: Oh, silly me. Nobody who knew her would have been fooled. But Octavian seemed to buy it. He huffed in exasperation.
“You other two…” He pointed his blade at Hazel and Piper. “Put your weapons on the dock. No funny bus—”
All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth’s dagger.
“You dropped this,” he said, totally poker-faced.
Annabeth threw her arms around him. “I love you!”
“Guys,” Hazel interrupted. She had a little smile on her face. “We need to hurry.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
“
The problem with that expression is that no woman should wish for a knight in shining armor. A knight with shining armor has probably never been to war. They’ve never fought or been hurt. If you want a strong man who can protect you, then you should hope for a knight in dented, scratched, rusted armor. That knight has fought and survived.
”
”
Victoria Aveline (Choosing Theo (Clecanian, #1))
“
if
love
is a
battlefield,
then i
must have
forgotten
all of
my armor
at home.
-a war i never agreed to fight
”
”
Amanda Lovelace (The Princess Saves Herself in This One (Women Are Some Kind of Magic, #1))
“
A real man doesn’t lie about how he feels. He tells the world he loves someone and dares his enemies to hurt the woman he adores. A brave man has holes in his armor but goes to war anyway. A fierce man isn’t afraid to love someone even though he knows there’s an ending down the road. That’s what it means to be a real man.
”
”
Penelope Sky (Buttons & Pain (Buttons, #3))
“
ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.
”
”
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
“
Men call him father, liberator, warlord, Slave King, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the war-torn planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy. It is the tenth year of war and the thirty-third of his life.
”
”
Pierce Brown (Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4))
“
Even poetry, which breaks language into meaning - poetry ossifies, in time, the way trees do. What’s supple, whipping, soft and fresh grows hard, grows armor. If I could touch you, put my finger into your temple and sink you into me the way Garden does - perhaps then. But I would never.
”
”
Amal El-Mohtar (This Is How You Lose the Time War)
“
Dear Fallen Warrior, you will not fall apart. Not all wars are meant to have weapons. Your armor is your mind, peace, happiness, drive–and your life. You are powerful! You are unique! You are a warrior because you are the chosen one!!
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
“
I stay here and drink spirits because the men here took my armor away, and without that, I can hunt seals but I can't go to war; and I am an armored bear; war is the sea I swim in and the air I breathe.
”
”
Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1))
“
Isla could feel Grim getting closer. When she opened her eyes, he was right in front of her.
“Heart,” he said steadily. The spikes on his shoulders made him look like a demon. His blood-slicked armor glimmered in the moonlight.
“If waging a war for one woman is a crime, then please do consider me a criminal.”
Closer.
“If killing thousands to keep you alive is wrong, then consider me a villain.”
She now had to tilt her head to see him clearly. He leaned down. His breath was hot against her mouth.
“If loving you this much is my downfall . . . then consider me already on my knees.
”
”
Alex Aster (Skyshade (Lightlark, #3))
“
Even poetry, which breaks language into meaning--poetry ossifies, in time, the way trees do. What's supple, whipping, soft, and fresh grows hard, grows armor.
”
”
Amal El-Mohtar (This Is How You Lose the Time War)
“
The perfect gentle knight. She had a strong urge to kick him in the shins. Which would do precisely nothing and he'd look confused at me. And then probably offer to take his shin armor off so I could try again without hurting my foot.
”
”
T. Kingfisher (The Wonder Engine (Clocktaur War, #2))
“
In her own uniquely spirited way, she had pierced his armor and burrowed unerringly into his heart
”
”
Nicole Jordan (To Tame a Dangerous Lord (Courtship Wars, #5))
“
Han: “Someone ought to make armor out of those bugs.”
Leia: “Han! They’re sentient beings!”
Han: “Fair is fair. If they get to wear it, so should we.”
- Han and Leia Solo
”
”
Troy Denning (The Swarm War (Star Wars: Dark Nest, #3))
“
This is how we prepare for war, I thought as a dark peace wove between the queen and me. This is how we face the unexpected—not by our swords and our shields and our armor. Not even by the woad we paint upon our skin. We are ready because of sisterhood, because our bonds go deeper than blood. We rise for the queens of our past, and for the queens to come.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (The Queen's Rising (The Queen’s Rising, #1))
“
The battle fever. He had never thought to experience it himself, though Jamie had told him of it often enough. How time seemed to blur and slow and evenstop, how the past and the future vanished until there was nothing but the instant, how fear fled, and thought fled, and even you body. "You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight , the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing." Battle fever. I am half a man and drunk with slaughter, let them kill me if they can!
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2))
“
Armor does not make a Mandalorian. The armor is simply a manifestation of an impenetrable, unassailable heart.
”
”
Karen Traviss (Triple Zero (Star Wars: Republic Commando, #2))
“
They are a testament not only to the Afghans' hunger for literacy, but also to their willingness to pour scarce resources into this effort, even during a time of war. I have seen children studying in classrooms set up inside animal sheds, windowless basements, garages, and even an abandoned public toilet. We ourselves have run schools out of refugee tents, shipping containers, and the shells of bombed-out Soviet armored personnel carriers. The thirst for education over there is limitless. The Afghans want their children to go to school because literacy represents what neither we not anyone else has so far managed to offer them: hope, progress, and the possibility of controlling their own destiny.
”
”
Greg Mortenson (Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan)
“
What you should do," she told Fat during one of his darker hours, "is get into studying the characteristics of the T-34." Fat asked what that was. It turned out that Sherri had read a book on Russion armor during World War Two. The T-34 tank had been the Soviet Union's salvation and thereby the salvation of all the Allied Powers- and, by extension, Horselover Fat's, since without the T-34 he would be speaking - not english or Latin or the koine - but German.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (VALIS)
“
Another part or piece,' said Diabolus, 'of mine excellent armour, is a dumb and prayerless spirit, a spirit that scorns to cry for mercy, let the danger be ever so great; therefore be you, my Mansoul, sure that you make use of this.
”
”
John Bunyan (The Holy War)
“
In their armor they were all the same, and that was the point, he understood. But he took pleasure in the moments when he could see their variety and diversity—those moments when he could glimpse the people beneath the armor and see them as more than just faceless, nameless soldiers identified by letters and numbers and nothing more.
”
”
Greg Rucka (Star Wars: Before the Awakening)
“
Most people, when directly confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to pierce the mental armor of self-justification. When we began working on this book, the poster boy for "tenacious clinging to a discredited belief" was George W. Bush. Bush was wrong in his claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he was wrong in claiming that Saddam was linked with Al Qaeda, he was wrong in predicting that Iraqis would be dancing joyfully in the streets to receive the American soldiers, he was wrong in predicting that the conflict would be over quickly, he was wrong in his gross underestimate of the financial cost of the war, and he was most famously wrong in his photo-op speech six weeks after the invasion began, when he announced (under a banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED) that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended.
”
”
Carol Tavris (Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts)
“
I rarely share this part of my life with others, but I want to tell it to you now. A piece of armor, because I trust you. A glint of falling steel, because I feel safe with you.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1))
“
Centaurs!” Annabeth yelled. The Party Pony army exploded into our midst in a riot of colors: tie-dyed shirts, rainbow Afro wigs, oversize sunglasses, and war-painted faces. Some had slogans scrawled across their flanks like HORSEZ PWN or KRONOS SUX. Hundreds of them filled the entire block. My brain couldn’t process everything I saw, but I knew if I were the enemy, I’d be running.
“Percy!” Chiron shouted across the sea of wild centaurs. He was dressed in armor from the waist up, his bow in his hand, and he was grinning in satisfaction. “Sorry we’re late!”
“DUDE!” Another centaur yelled. “Talk later. WASTE MONSTERS NOW!” He locked and loaded a double-barrel paint gun and blasted an enemy hellhound bright pink. The paint must’ve been mixed with Celestial bronze dust or something, because as soon as it splattered the hellhound, the monster yelped and dissolved into a pink-and-black puddle.
“PARTY PONIES!” a centaur yelled. “SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER!”
Somewhere across the battlefield, a twangy voice yelled back, “HEART OF TEXAS CHAPTER!”
“HAWAII OWNS YOUR FACES!” a third one shouted.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The entire Titan army turned and fled, pushed back by a flood of paintballs, arrows, swords, and NERF baseball bats. The centaurs trampled everything in their path.
“Stop running, you fools!” Kronos yelled. “Stand and ACKK!”
That last part was because a panicked Hyperborean giant stumbled backward and sat on top of him.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
“
Mother Nature is a serial killer.No ones better. More creative. Like all serial killers, she can't help but the urge to get caught. What good are all those brilliant crimes if nobody takes the credit? So she leaves crumbs. Now, the hard part is, and why you spend decades in school, is seeing the crumbs for the clues they are. Sometimes the thing you thought to be the most brutal aspect of the virus, actually turns out to be the chink in its armor. She loves disguising her weaknesses as strengths. She's a b*tch.
”
”
Character from World War Z Andrew Fassbauch
“
If love is a battlefield, then I must have forgotten all of my armor at home.
- a war I never agreed to fight.
”
”
Amanda Lovelace (The Princess Saves Herself in This One (Women Are Some Kind of Magic, #1))
“
The reason we must put on the whole armor of God is to withstand evil. We don’t war against people, but against a spiritual hierarchy of invisible power.
”
”
Stormie Omartian (The 7-Day Prayer Warrior Experience)
“
This was where Zoya had been seen sneaking off to all those nights—not to a lover, but to this monument to grief. This was where she had shed her tears, away from curious eyes, where no one could see her armor fall. And here, the Grisha might live forever, every friend lost, every soldier gone.
“I know what I did is unforgivable,” she said. Nikolai blinked, confused.
“No doubt you deserve to be punished for your crimes … but for what precisely?”
She cast him a baleful look. “I lost our most valuable prisoner. I’ve allowed our most deadly enemy to regain his powers and … run amok.”
“‘Amok’ seems an overstatement. Wild, perhaps.”
“Don’t pretend to shrug this off. You’ve barely looked at me since I returned.”
Because I am greedy for the sight of you. Because the prospect of facing this war, this loss, without you fills me with fear. Because I find I don’t want to fight for a future if I can’t find a way to make a future with you.
But he was a king and she was his general and he could say none of those things.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Rule of Wolves (King of Scars, #2))
“
I liked to think I had a tough everything, but I did have one weakness. One. In my entire child/woman body, and we both knew it. Dante. He was the chink in my armor. My soft underbelly.
”
”
R.K. Lilley (Breaking Him (Love is War, #1))
“
It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction. If this should happen to be true, nothing stemming from thought can interfere with it or bend it. Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species.
”
”
John Steinbeck (The Log from the Sea of Cortez)
“
You perceive," he said, "that you have made continual progress. Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time.
”
”
Mark Twain (The Mysterious Stranger)
“
Srinagar is a medieval city dying in a modern war. It is empty streets, locked shops, angry soldiers and boys with stones. It is several thousand military bunkers, four golf courses, and three book-shops. It is wily politicians repeating their lies about war and peace to television cameras and small crowds gathered by the promise of an elusive job or a daily fee of a few hundred rupees. It is stopping at sidewalks and traffic lights when the convoys of rulers and their patrons in armored cars, secured by machine guns, rumble on broken roads. It is staring back or looking away, resigned. Srinagar is never winning and never being defeated.
”
”
Basharat Peer (Curfewed Night)
“
Even poetry, which breaks language into meaning—poetry ossifies, in time, the way trees do. What’s supple, whipping, soft, and fresh grows hard, grows armor.
”
”
Amal El-Mohtar (This Is How You Lose the Time War)
“
what does being a dragonheart mean to you? surviving / having flames in your veins / never-ending loyalty / powerful alone & with like-hearted people / loving fiercely / strong-spined / dangerous / celebrating yourself / celebrating others / magic even without spells / protective / gentle but armored / light-giver / reigning supremely / what fairy tales are made of / queen of your own life / no doubts about your own worth / forever valiant / tower-breaker / kingdom-shaker / standing up for others / resisting over & over / taking charge of your narrative / bravery beyond measure / not giving negativity a seat at your table / facing the fire head-on / prioritizing yourself / story-hungry / made of gold / dream-chaser / sea storm courage / voice-reclaimer / war-hearted / flower-hearted / RELENTLESS
”
”
Nikita Gill (Dragonhearts)
“
What entity aboard this ship exhibits all the personality traits of a cold-blooded killing machine, combined with the monstrous, overweening vanity and laziness of a convalescent war god lounging in their personal Valhalla while their minions prepare their armor? There's only one answer.
The Persian tomcat sits underneath the alien horror, washing itself without concern.
”
”
Charles Stross (The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files, #2))
“
through a scenario where he fails, and then you put him through it again and he succeeds. First you revealed a flaw in his armor and then you taught him how to shore up that weakness. In so doing, you brought him out the other end of the exercise as a superior warrior.
”
”
Dave Grossman (On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace)
“
To My Children,
I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably.
But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the War that came before.
[excerpt from a dedication to an unpublished short story, "First Squad, First Platoon"; from Serling to his as yet unborn children]
”
”
Rod Serling
“
We go to partake of death. And it is in these moments, before the blades are unsheated, before blood wets the ground and screams fill the air, that the futility descends upon us all. Without our armor, we would all weep.
”
”
Steven Erikson (Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2))
“
My conception of freedom. -- The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it -- what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic -- every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.
These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free -- and how much more the spirit who has become free -- spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, who attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong -- otherwise one will never become strong.
Those large hothouses for the strong -- for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known -- the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
My parents were protection, confidence, warmth. When I think of my childhood I still feel the sense of warmth above me, behind and around me, that marvelous sense of living not yet on one’s own, but leaning body and soul on others who accept the charge. My parents carried me along and that, I am sure, is the reason why through all my childhood I never touched ground. I could go away and come back. Objects had no weight and I never became entangled in the web of things. I passed between dangers and fears as light passes through a mirror. That was the joy of my childhood, the magic armor which, once put on, protects for a lifetime.
”
”
Jacques Lusseyran (And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II)
“
seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
”
”
Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6))
“
With a shock, the trooper who had arrived to render aid to his fallen comrade recognized the one whose life was now bleeding out inside his armor. They had trained together. Shared meals, stories, experiences together. Now they were sharing death together.
”
”
Alan Dean Foster (The Force Awakens (Star Wars: Novelizations #7))
“
With that he hurled and Athena drove the shaft
and it split the archer's nose between the eyes—
it cracked his glistening teeth, the tough bronze
cut off his tongue at the roots, smashed his jaw
and the point came ripping out beneath his chin.
He pitched from his car, armor clanged against him,
a glimmering blaze of metal dazzling round his back—
”
”
Homer (The Iliad)
“
I’m afraid he’s going to hurt me. I’m afraid to lose someone I love again. I’m afraid to let go. To acknowledge what I feel for him. And yet he has proven himself to me. Over and over. He found me on my darkest day. He followed me to war, to the front lines. He came between me and Death, taking wounds that were supposed to be mine. There is something electric within me. Something that is begging me to remove the last of my armor and let him see me as I am. To choose him. And yet here I sit, alone, typing word after word as I seek to make sense of myself. I watch the candlelight flicker and all I can think is … I am so afraid. And yet how I long to be vulnerable and brave when it comes to my own heart.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1))
“
There is no shame in wearing beautiful things. They are simply another version of armor.
”
”
Frost Kay (Court of Dragons (Dragon Isle Wars #1))
“
... experience has taught me that even the strongest armor can be pierced through with the sharpest blade.
”
”
Varun Sayal (Demons of Time: Race to the 7th Sunset (Time Travelers #1))
“
I obeyed, and as the dress cinched me in again, I thought of a soldier going to war. Different armor but the same idea. Tonight I was taking down a man.
”
”
Kiera Cass (The One (The Selection, #3))
“
They had powered armor and heavy caliber rifles. We had bio-suits and pure hearts, oh yeah.
”
”
Vaughn Heppner (Assault Troopers (Extinction Wars, #1))
“
Paradoxically, the timid rumors circulating in Washington in favor of arming Ukraine are creating an incentive for Moscow to escalate the war now, to attain the desired territorial gains before it becomes too costly. Once Ukrainian forces possess, for instance, anti-armor weapons, Russia’s advantages decrease and the costs of its intervention increase dramatically.
”
”
Anonymous
“
THE FIRST BOY I fell in love with used to regale me with stories about kings and queens and war and peace, and how he hoped to one day be somebody’s knight in shining armor. I lived vicariously through his late night adventures, watching the way he swung his hands animatedly as he told his stories, and loving the way his green eyes twinkled when I laughed at his jokes. He taught me what it feels like to be touched and thoroughly kissed. Later, he taught me the pain one feels at the loss of someone that you’ve grown attached to. The one thing he forgot to teach me was how to deal with the way my chest squeezed after he broke the ghost of what heart I had left. I’d always wondered if it had been a missed lesson. Now I wonder if maybe he’d been trying to figure it out for himself, or if he just never felt anything at all.
”
”
Claire Contreras (Kaleidoscope Hearts (Hearts, #1))
“
Fred’s vacuum-rated armor protected him from the smell of viscera, but it reported it to him as a slight increase in atmospheric methane levels. The stench of death reduced to a data point.
”
”
James S.A. Corey (The Butcher of Anderson Station (The Expanse, #1.5))
“
Sergeant,” Socket said and pointed to an armed drone crawling along the seam of the breach. “Down!” he called, but not before the flechette pierced her leg armor and sliced through her femoral artery.
”
”
Ray Strong (Pandora's Razor: Hope's War - Book 2)
“
Two overfed world powers have converted stupidity into armored divisions and atomic warheads. And we sit in between. . . . At last we have understood the lesson of Prague. —Günter Grass, Die Zeit, October 4, 1968
”
”
Carole K. Fink (Cold War: An International History)
“
Every now and then a green dot shifted to yellow. A soldier down, their armored suits detecting the injuries or death that rendered them combat ineffective. Combat ineffective. Such a nice euphemism for one of his kids bleeding out.
”
”
James S.A. Corey (The Butcher of Anderson Station (The Expanse, #1.5))
“
It was a good thing she was wearing her mother's pearls. With those clasping her neck, she felt as if she could conquer anything. Harcroft would mock her, no doubt, if he knew her thoughts. He'd dismiss her attire as frills and furbelows-a women's only armor. Idiocy on his part.
There were a great many problems that could be solved with a visit to the mantua-maker. and fine gowns or no, this meeting promised to be a war, however politely and subtly it was joined.
”
”
Courtney Milan (Trial by Desire (Carhart, #2))
“
She cleared her throat. “He’s not wearing much armor.” The warrior, in fact, wore more war paint and feathers than clothes from the waist up. “Oh, good. I would hate to cause him a laundry bill when I inconsiderately die all over him.
”
”
A.J. Hackwith (The Library of the Unwritten (Hell's Library #1))
“
We Sith are an unseen opposition, Tenebrous had told his young apprentice. A phantom menace. Where the Sith once wore armor, we now wear cloaks. But the Force works through us all the more powerfully in our invisibility. For the present, the more covert we remain, the more influence we can have. Our revenge will be achieved not through subjugation but by contagion.
”
”
James Luceno (Star Wars: Darth Plagueis)
“
During a chance meeting, the naturalist E.O. Wilson advised me to give up thinking we are doomed. "It's our chance to practice altruism," he said. I looked doubtful, but he continued. "We have to wear suits of armor like World War II soldiers and just keep going. We have to get used to the changes in the landscape and step over the dead bodies. We have to discipline our behavior and not get stuck in tribal and religious restrictions. We have to work altruistically and cooperatively and make a new world.
”
”
Gretel Ehrlich (Unsolaced: Along the Way to All That Is)
“
Most of the ones who come when the call goes out won't have ever fought a war before. They'll come because they think it's honorable, or because they want to be heroes. They'll show up in their pretty armor, and they'll litter the battlefield like leaves.
”
”
Seanan McGuire (One Salt Sea (October Daye, #5))
“
Its back was to him, showing broad shoulders armored in bark and stone, black as night, and a thick mane cascading down its spine to a short deer-tail.
For a moment all he could do was stare at the tail and think, Nothing on a Great Spirit should be that cute.
”
”
H. Anthe Davis (The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle #1))
“
As the door closes behind him, I think on the stupidity of war. How ridiculous we must be to wage it when emotions like love run so much deeper in us than hate. By the time Kavax makes it back to me, I am ready for the enemy to come. I have more reasons to fight than they do. My armor is my love.
”
”
Pierce Brown (Light Bringer (Red Rising Saga, #6))
“
this German officer produced a cigar before Mannerheim had finished eating and asked if it would bother the Marshal if he smoked it. Mannerheim fixed the Wehrmacht officer with a gaze that would penetrate armor plate and cut him dead by replying evenly: 'I don't know. No one has ever tried it.' ',
”
”
William R. Trotter (A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940)
“
The Afghan sky, under which the most beautiful idylls on earth were woven, grew suddenly dark with armored predators; its azure limpidity was streaked with powder trails, and the terrified swallows dispersed under a barrage of missiles. War had arrived. In fact, it had just found itself a homeland...
”
”
Yasmina Khadra
“
Primitive (and guerrilla) warfare consists of war stripped to its essentials: the murder of enemies; the theft or destruction of their sustenance, wealth, and essential resources; and the inducement in them of insecurity and terror. It conducts the basic business of war without recourse to ponderous formations or equipment, complicated maneuvers, strict chains of command, calculated strategies, time tables, or other civilized embellishments. When civilized soldiers meet adversaries so unencumbered, they too must shed a considerable weight of intellectual baggage and physical armor just to even the odds.
”
”
Lawrence H. Keeley (War before Civilization)
“
You're the last line of defense. When you're dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?'
'That's not fair. The French didn't fight,' Tatiana said, wanting to be anywhere right now but standing in front of men loading artwork from the Hermitage onto armored trucks.
'They didn't fight, Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose--'
'The art will be saved.'
'Yes! The art will be saved,' Alexander said emotionally. 'And another artist will paint a glorious picture, immortalizing you, with a club in your raised hand, swinging to hit the German tank as it's about to crush you, all against the backdrop of the statue of Peter the Great atop his bronze horse. And that picture will hang in the Hermitage, and at the start of the next war the curator will once again stand on the street, crying over his vanishing crates.
”
”
Paullina Simons
“
My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.
These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free — and how much more the spirit who has become free — spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.
How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong.
Those large hothouses for the strong — for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known — the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has or does not have, something one wants, something one conquers.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
“
Prayer warriors need to put on the armor of God every day because the war is always going on. New battles continually need to be fought so that evil will be driven back, the kingdom of God advanced, and the will of God be done. Our spiritual armor not only protects us from the enemy, it also gives us what we need in order to push against him. In
”
”
Stormie Omartian (The 7-Day Prayer Warrior Experience)
“
From the box, he withdraws a helmet. Pitted and pocked, as if with some kind of acid. But still—he raps his knuckles on it. The Mandalorians knew how to make armor, didn’t they? “Look at this,” he says, holding it up. “Mandalorian battle armor. Whole box. Complete set, by the looks of it. Been through hell and back. I think my boss will appreciate this.
”
”
Chuck Wendig (Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath, #1))
“
Do not listen to your enemy, Odysseus had once told me. Look at them. It will tell you everything.
I looked. Armed and armored, she was (Athena), from head to foot, helmet, spear, aegis, greaves. A terrifying vision: the goddess of war, ready for battle. But why had she assembled such a panoply against me, who knew nothing of combat? Unless there was something else she feared, something that made her feel somehow stripped and weak.
Instinct carried me forward, the thousand hours I had spent in my father’s halls, and with Odysseus polymetis, man of so many wiles.
”
”
Madeline Miller (Circe)
“
But I would not say a word until I could set aside all I know or believe about nations, war, leaders, the governed and the ungovernable; all I suspect about armor and entrails. First I would freshen my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil--wanton or studied; explosive or quietly sinister; whether born of a sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple compulsion to stand up before falling down. I would purge my language of hyperbole, of its eagerness to analyze the levels of wickedness; ranking them, calculating their higher or lower status among others of its kind.
Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for a mouth full of blood. Too holy an act for impure thoughts. ... I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say--no words stronger than steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become.
And I have nothing to give either--except this gesture, this thread thrown between your humanity and mine: I want to hold you in my arms and as your soul got shot out of its box of flesh to understand as you have done, the wit of eternity; it's gift of unhinged release through the darkness of its knell.
”
”
Toni Morrison (The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations)
“
We all suffer wounds in our childhoods. We do what we have to do to protect ourselves, but we forget when we become adults that the armor made to survive our youth no longer serves us. It's for use in the last war, the struggles of childhood, not the war or the peace of the present and the future. Keeping that armor keeps us immature. We can't grow with it on. Yet removing it is painful. Taking it off means our true selves will be revealed.
”
”
Scott Berkun (The Ghost of My Father)
“
But history always taught children at an early age to seek power and to do whatever means necessary to hold on to it. While the libraries were often filled with endless books dedicated to the strategies on the art of war and the detailed instructions on how to defeat one’s adversaries out on the gruesome battlefields; however, there were seldom any books written discussing on how to cope afterwards. How it felt emotionally to live after the war. Once the battle was fought and won.
”
”
Kristina Stangl (The Sleeping Knight (The Enchanted Forest Saga, #2))
“
For a long time, she has known there are two different kinds of war. There are the battles where heroes dance and fight, with their glistening armor and precious swords, and there are those fought between walls, which are made of stabs and whispers. There is nothing dishonorable about that, nothing so different from the field. Either way, it is always what she has been taught in the gymnasium: take down your enemies and make them bleed. After all, what is a field after battle if not a stinking lake of corpses?
”
”
Costanza Casati (Clytemnestra)
“
Very slowly using two fingers, Annabeth drew her dagger. Instead of dropping it, she tossed it as far as she could into the water.
Octavian made a squeaking sound. "What was that for? I didn't say toss it! That could've been evidence. Or spoils of war!"
Annabeth tried for a dumb-blonde smile, like: Oh, silly me. Nobody who knew her would have been fooled. But Octavian seemed to buy it. He huffed in exasperation.
"You other two..." He pointed his blade a Hazel and Piper. "Put your weapons on the dock. No funny bus--"
All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth's dagger.
"You dropped this," he said, totally poker-faced.
-Heroes of Olympus
”
”
Rick Riordan
“
Chaos awaited him on the beaches near Arzew. An unanticipated westerly set had pushed the transports and landing craft off course. Dozens of confused coxswains tacked up and down the coast in the dark, looking for the right beaches. Most of the soldiers carried more than 100 pounds of equipment; one likened himself to a medieval knight in armor who had to be winched into the saddle. Once ashore, feeling the effect of weeks aboard ship with a poor diet and little exercise, they staggered into the dunes, shedding gas capes, goggles, wool undershirts, and grenades. Landing craft stranded by an ebb tide so jammed the beaches that bulldozers had to push them off, ruining their propellers and rudders. The
”
”
Rick Atkinson (An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943)
“
All musical instruments are useful for love and exhortation. Only one is essential for war. The drums. The drums are thin skin stretched tightly over hollow volumes, mostly of wood, which gives them their earthiness, their sexiness. Slapping without the tickling. The hand or the stick bounces across the skin of the drums, throwing the listener forward into a dance, into a physical response. For war, and in particular marching to war, wood was replaced by metal. The snare, as it’s known for good reason, supplies body armor to the already athletic muscular choices available. There is a particular violence built into the snare drum, and the rat-a-tat of a military tattoo was exactly what we were looking for with the opening of “Sunday Bloody Sunday.
”
”
Bono (Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story)
“
There arose in the aftermath of this battle the strangest and most beautiful legend of the war. It was said that, when the British peril was at its height, a majestic figure had appeared high in the sky with arm upraised. Some said it had been pointing to victory, others that it held back the Germans as the Tommies got away. It came to be known as the Angel of Mons. Even more colorful was the simultaneous legend of the Archers of Agincourt. In the late Middle Ages at Agincourt—not a great distance from Mons—English yeomen armed with longbows had won a great victory over a much bigger force of mounted and armored French knights. Four hundred and ninety-nine years later there were stories of German soldiers found dead at Mons with arrows through their bodies.
”
”
G.J. Meyer (A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918)
“
I carried 12 magazines for my AK. Eight of these I carried in a four-pocket combat vest. I put two magazines in each pocket. That was my body armor. I carried an additional magazine on my back, directly covering my heart and another on my side protecting my kidney. I carried six hand grenades strapped across my stomach. So my arsenal was also my flak vest. It wasn’t perfect, but good enough.
”
”
Dodge Billingsley (Fangs of the Lone Wolf: Chechen Tactics in the Russian-Chechen War 1994–2009)
“
The autumn months are my domain:
Mirrored in pools my castles dream
Of wars long past and out of mind
From towers with ivy garlands twined
Weak and with regret the sun
Drowns itself in the sluggish green
Water that marble fountains weep;
Trees open their nests to the wings of sleep.
The wind like a phantom seems to roar,
Returned to die of love once more
At the false meeting of the ways
Where a temple rounds its dome in the haze.
Sometimes a child is heard to laugh
In the house of the priest, far off;
His lamp on the ledge of the window gleams
Much as the Holy Spirit flames.
Then nothing. Only a plane tree sways
Its crown of leaves in the dark that graze
Slowly and with a sound so alight
They barely ripple the silent night.
I am the lord of this domain.
Through halls of hollow, echoing
Armor, I haul the heavy shame
Of not being able to be king.
”
”
Stuart Merrill (THE WHITE TOMB: SELECTED WRITINGS (Talisman Classic American Poets))
“
Police departments—including on college and university campuses—have acquired military surplus from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the Department of Defense Excess Property Program. Thus, in response to the recent police killing of Michael Brown, demonstrators challenging racist police violence were confronted by police officers dressed in camouflage uniforms, armed with military weapons, and driving armored vehicles.
”
”
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
“
All our lives, men tell us how we should be. Women should be small and delicate, submissive and silent. We’re supposed to be well-behaved and obedient. Don’t take up too much space. Smile, blush, walk this way, dance like that, conduct yourself with poise and grace. Well, piss on that, honey. This makeup is your war paint. These fine silk clothes are your armor. You are beautiful and fierce, because those two things? They aren’t mutually exclusive , Rixxis.
”
”
Eliza Eveland (A Thread of Gold (Talons and Tethers, #3))
“
From around the periphery of the city the Marine battalion staffs arrived in small clusters of Humvees and LAVs, dismounting outside the walls of the MEF, striding in tight groups through the makeshift plywood door into the alcove of the stone mansion that served as the regi-mental HQ, draping their ceramic armor vests and Kevlar helmets over the wooden racks that lined the wall outside the conference room. Several carried M4 carbines or M16s, while others wore pistols on their hips or in shoulder holsters. It was like a meeting of knights in the fifteenth century—large, purposeful men neatly arraying their armor before sitting down at the banquet table to discuss the business of making war. The mood was upbeat, with many smiles exchanged. The dickering was over. It was time to finish the task. They stood talking until Col Toolan strode in; then they took seats around a long, square table with a huge photomap of Fallujah on the wall.
”
”
Bing West (No True Glory: Fallujah and the Struggle in Iraq: A Frontline Account)
“
The same grant programs that paid for local law enforcement agencies across the country to buy armored personnel carriers and drones have paid for Stingrays," said the ALCU's Soghoian. "Like drones, license plate readers, and biometric scanners, the Stingrays are yet another surveillance technology created by defense contractors for the military, and after years of use in war zones, it eventually trickles down to local and state agencies, paid for with DOJ and DHS money.
”
”
Jeremy Scahill (The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program)
“
Words are abstraction, break off from the green;
words are patterns in the way fences and trenches are. Words hurt. I can
hide in words so long as I scatter them through my body; to read your
letters is to gather flowers from within myself, pluck a blossom here, a fern
there, arrange and rearrange them in ways to suit a sunny room.
Even poetry, which breaks language into meaning—poetry ossifies, in
time, the way trees do. What’s supple, whipping, soft, and fresh grows
hard, grows armor.
”
”
Amal El-Mohtar (This Is How You Lose the Time War)
“
CUSINS. No: the price is settled: that is all. The real tug of war is still to come. What about the moral question? LADY BRITOMART. There is no moral question in the matter at all, Adolphus. You must simply sell cannons and weapons to people whose cause is right and just, and refuse them to foreigners and criminals. UNDERSHAFT [determinedly] No: none of that. You must keep the true faith of an Armorer, or you don't come in here. CUSINS. What on earth is the true faith of an Armorer? UNDERSHAFT. To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes. The first Undershaft wrote up in his shop IF GOD GAVE THE HAND, LET NOT MAN WITHHOLD THE SWORD. The second wrote up ALL HAVE THE RIGHT TO FIGHT: NONE HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE. The third wrote up TO MAN THE WEAPON: TO HEAVEN THE VICTORY. The fourth had no literary turn; so he did not write up anything; but he sold cannons to Napoleon under the nose of George the Third. The fifth wrote up PEACE SHALL NOT PREVAIL SAVE WITH A SWORD IN HER HAND. The sixth, my master, was the best of all. He wrote up NOTHING IS EVER DONE IN THIS WORLD UNTIL MEN ARE PREPARED TO KILL ONE ANOTHER IF IT IS NOT DONE. After that, there was nothing left for the seventh to say. So he wrote up, simply, UNASHAMED. CUSINS.
”
”
George Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara)
“
I keep turning away from speaking of your letter. I feel — to speak of it would be to contain what it did to me, to make it small. I don't want to do that. I suppose in some ways she I 'm more Garden' s child than she knows. Even poetry, which breaks language into meaning — poetry ossifies time, the way trees do. What’s supple, whipping, soft, and fresh grows hard, grows armor. If I could touch you, put my in finger to your temple and sink you into me the way Garden does — perhaps then. But I would never.
So this letter instead.
”
”
Amal El-Mohtar (This Is How You Lose the Time War)
“
When I was a squire young as you, I had a friend who was strong and quick and agile, a champion in the yard. We all knew that one day he would be a splendid knight. Then war came to the Stepstones. I saw my friend drive his foeman to his knees and knock the axe from his hand, but when he might have finished he held back for half a heartbeat. In battle half a heartbeat is a lifetime. The man slipped out his dirk and found a chink in my friend’s armor. His strength, his speed, his valor, all his hard-won skill … it was worth less than a mummer’s fart, because he flinched from killing.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4))
“
How long were you standing there?"
"Long enough to know you will be leaving soon. I thought I should speak to you. I didn't think you would come to tell me. Would you have?"
"No. I wouldn't have expected you to care. You followed me?"
"Like a lovesick swain. Wherever you go, there am I. Haven't you noticed these past weeks?"
"I have seen you drinking and mocking with your jaded friends and your latest paramour on your arms. Or is it still Castlemaine? Have you no self-respect?"
"No. None." He shrugged. "Love is war, and feigned disinterest my armor. You wear yours too, love. It is sad I know.
”
”
Judith James (Libertine's Kiss (Rakes and Rogues of the Restoration, #1))
“
From A Deadly Shade of Gold, a Travis McGee title: “The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.” From the stand-alone thriller Where Is Janice Gantry?: “Somebody has to be tireless, or the fast-buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay, and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet.” These two angles show up everywhere in his novels: the need to—maybe reluctantly, possibly even grumpily—stand up and be counted on behalf of the weak, helpless, and downtrodden, which included people, animals, and what we now call the environment—which was in itself a very early and very prescient concern: Janice Gantry, for instance, predated Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking Silent Spring by a whole year. But the good knight’s armor was always tarnished and rusted. The fight was never easy and, one feels, never actually winnable. But it had to be waged. This strange, weary blend of nobility and cynicism is MacDonald’s signature emotion. Where did it come from? Not, presumably, the leafy block where he was raised in quiet and comfort. The war must have changed him, like it changed a generation and the world.
”
”
John D. MacDonald (The Deep Blue Good-By)
“
Addicts of attrition," as Simpkin calls them, generally cannot think beyond the battle, and they consider that the only way--or at least the preferred way--to defeat an enemy is to destroy the physical components of his army, especially the combat portions (armored fighting vehicles, troops, guns, etc.). If the attrition addict appreciates war's intangibles at all (such as morale, initiative, and shock), he sees them only as combat multipliers with which to fight the attrition battle better. If the attrition warrior learns about maneuver, he sees it primarily as a way to get to the fight. In other words, he moves in order to fight. Maneuver theory, on the other hand, attempts to defeat the enemy through means other than simple destruction of his mass. Indeed, the highest and purest application of maneuver theory is to preempt the enemy, that is, to disarm or
neutralize him before the fight. If such is not possible, the maneuver warrior seeks to dislocate the enemy forces, i.e., removing the enemy from the decisive point, or vice versa, thus rendering them useless and irrelevant to the fight. If the enemy cannot be preempted or dislocated, then the maneuver-warfare practitioner will attempt to disrupt the enemy,i.e., destroy or neutralize his center of gravity, preferably by attacking with friendly strengths through enemy weaknesses.
”
”
Robert R. Leonhard
“
And what is it you desire of us in exchange for your assistance, King Halfpaw?” She glanced at Eragon and smiled, then added, “We can offer you as much cream as you want, but beyond that, our resources are limited. If your warriors expect to be paid for their troubles, I fear they will be sorely disappointed.”
“Cream is for kittens, and gold holds no interest for us,” said Grimrr. As he spoke, he lifted his right hand and inspected his nails with a heavy-lidded gaze. “Our terms are thus: Each of us will be given a dagger to fight with, if we do not already have one. Each of us shall have two suits of armor made to fit, one for when on two legs we stand, and one for when on four. We need no other equipment than that--no tents, no blankets, no plates, no spoons. Each of us will be promised a single duck, grouse, chicken, or similar bird per day, and every second day, a bowl of freshly chopped liver. Even if we do not choose to eat it, the food will be set aside for us. Also, should you win this war, then whoever becomes your next king or queen--and all who claim that title thereafter--will keep a padded cushion next to their throne, in a place of honor, for one of us to sit on, if we so wish.”
“You bargain like a dwarven lawgiver,” said Nasuada in a dry tone. She leaned over to Jörmundur, and Eragon heard her whisper, “Do we have enough liver to feed them all?”
“I think so,” Jörmundur replied in an equally hushed voice. “But it depends on the size of the bowl.
”
”
Christopher Paolini (Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle, #4))
“
For possession of a single bullet, Shaykh Farhan al-Sa‘di, an eighty-one-year-old rebel leader, was put to death in 1937. Under the martial law in force at the time, that single bullet was sufficient to merit capital punishment, particularly for an accomplished guerrilla fighter like al-Sa‘di.57 Well over a hundred such sentences of execution were handed down after summary trials by military tribunals, with many more Palestinians executed on the spot by British troops.58 Infuriated by rebels ambushing their convoys and blowing up their trains, the British resorted to tying Palestinian prisoners to the front of armored cars and locomotives to prevent rebel attack, a tactic they had pioneered in a futile effort to crush resistance of the Irish during their war of independence from 1919 to 1921.
”
”
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
“
1. Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.
2. The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.
3. A wise man does not make demands of kings.
4. A mind needs a book as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep it's edge.
5. People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up.
6. A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.
7. I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one.
8. In the world as I have seen it, no man grows rich by kindness.
9. If a man paints a target on his chest, he should expect that sooner or later someone will loose an arrow on him.
10. Crowns do queer things to the heads beneath them.
11. In battle a Captain's lungs are as important as his sword arm. I does not matter how brave or brilliant the man is if his commands can't be heard.
12. A man is never so vulnerable in battle as when he flees.
13. Gold has it's uses, but wars are won with iron.
14. The man who fears losing has already lost.
15. Words are wind.
16. The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.
17. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don't ever believe any different.
18. Give gold to a foe and he will just come back for more.
19. In this world only winter is certain.
20. The gods have no mercy. That's why they're gods.
21. I have learned that the contents of a man's letters are more valuable than the contents of his wallet
”
”
George R.R. Martin
“
Troops caught nibbling their emergency D- ration chocolate bars were dubbed Chocolate Soldiers and punished by forfeiting two meals. This was a happy penance. The galleys served so much fatty mutton that derisive bleating could be heard throughout the convoy and the 13th Armored Regiment proposed a new battle cry: 'Baaa!' Crunchy raisins in the bread proved to be weevils; soldiers learned to hold up slices to the light, as if candling eggs. The 1st Infantry Division on Reine de Pacifico organized troop details to sift flour through mesh screens in a search for insects. Wormy meat aboard the Keren so provoked 34th Division soldiers that officers were dispatched to keep order in the mess hall. When soldiers aboard Letitia challenged the culinary honor of one French cook, he 'became quite wild and threatened to jump overboard.
”
”
Rick Atkinson (An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (World War II Liberation Trilogy, #1))
“
...but in 1917 we had no cares except the mundane ones of starvation and occupation and civil war, and for those of us in our armored trains traveling up and down the front waging brilliant campaigns, or for our young Natashas and Alyoshas experiencing the education and class steeling of the Komsomol for the first time, learning to ask in every historical situation: How many workers are there? how many peasants, intellectuals? how do they stand on this issue? it was a very exciting and romantic period; what I am getting at is that probably no one felt alone as Bug had felt alone; for everyone worked together and loved each other- oh, I hope that that was true. For if life is worth living at all you can have your cake and eat it, too (съесть ее тунцом as the Russians say, и ее мудак- literally to eat out her tuna and her asshole); when you fight together you feel together; love and politics go hand in hand, and I can demonstrate this feasibly with another linguistic point. A girl's cherry is her tsélka. Raskobót cya kak tsélochka, to pop like a little cherry, means in fact to crack under interrogation. I want to draw your attention, comrades, to that highly significant trope.
”
”
William T. Vollmann (You Bright and Risen Angels (Contemporary American Fiction))
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The next day, September 16, I was sitting with Kerr and several of my AUB colleagues on the veranda of his residence when a breathless university guard came to tell him that Israeli officers at the head of a column of armored vehicles were demanding to enter the campus to search for terrorists. Kerr rushed off to the university entrance, where, he later told us, he rejected the officers’ demands. “There are no terrorists on the AUB campus,” he said. “If you’re looking for terrorists, look in your own army for those who’ve destroyed Beirut.” Thanks to Malcolm Kerr’s courage, we were temporarily safe in a faculty apartment at the AUB, but we soon heard that others were at that moment in mortal peril. On the same night, September 16, Raja and I were perplexed as we watched a surreal scene: Israeli flares floating down in the darkness in complete silence, one after another, over the southern reaches of Beirut, for what seemed like an eternity. As we saw the flares descend, we were baffled: armies normally use flares to illuminate a battlefield, but the cease-fire had been signed a month earlier, all the Palestinian fighters had left weeks ago, and any meager Lebanese resistance to the Israeli troops’ arrival in West Beirut had ended the previous day. We could hear no explosions and no shooting. The city was quiet and fearful.
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Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
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APRIL 6 Don’t be discouraged at the spiritual war you’re called to fight every day. The Lord almighty is with you and wars on your behalf. Between the “already” and the “not yet,” life is war. It can be exhausting, frustrating, and discouraging. We all go through moments when we wish life could just be easier. We wonder why parenting has to be such a continual spiritual battle. We all wish our marriages could be free of war. We all would love it if there were no conflicts at our jobs or in our churches. But we all wake up to a war-torn world every day. It is the sad legacy of a world that has been broken by sin and is constantly under the attack of the enemy. The way the apostle Paul ends his letter to the Ephesian church is interesting and instructive. Having laid out the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ and having detailed their implications for our street-level living, he ends by talking about spiritual warfare: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. (Eph. 6:10–20) When you get to this final part of Paul’s letter, it’s tempting to think that he has entirely changed the subject. No longer, it seems, is he talking about everyday Christianity. But that’s exactly what he’s talking about. He is saying to the Ephesian believers, “You know all that I’ve said about marriage, parenting, communication, anger, the church, and so on—it’s all one big spiritual war.” Paul is reminding you that at street level, practical, daily Christianity is war. There really is moral right and wrong. There really is an enemy. There really is seductive and deceptive temptation. You really are spiritually vulnerable. But he says more. He reminds you that by grace you have been properly armed for the battle. The question is, will you use the implements of battle that the cross of Jesus Christ has provided for you?
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Paul David Tripp (New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional)