Attila The Hun Quotes

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Um, Dr. Alexander, there’s a couple out here who say they’re related to you. They…um…they’re biker people. (Nurse) Hey, Julian. Tell Attila the Hun here that we’re okay so we can come and ooh and aah over the babies. (Eros)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Fantasy Lover (Hunter Legends, #1))
It was like finding Attila the Hun at a yoga class. Like finding Darth Vader playing ultimate Frisbee in the park. Like finding Megatron volunteering at a children's hospital. Like finding Nightmare Moon having a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.
Cory Doctorow (Homeland (Little Brother, #2))
I admit I have a Hungarian temper. Why not? I am from Hungary. We are descendants of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. —ZSA ZSA GABOR
Julia Buckley (Death in a Budapest Butterfly (A Hungarian Tea House Mystery #1))
Not since Attila the Hun swept across Europe leaving 500 years of total blackness has there been a man like Lee Marvin.
Joshua Logan
I put the odds on a psychic deathmatch between Attila the Hun and Virginia Woolf at fifty-fifty.
Alison Bechdel (Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama)
Father is and always has been a cross between Attila the Hun and a snapping-turtle.
P.G. Wodehouse (Aunts Aren't Gentlemen: (Jeeves & Wooster) (Jeeves & Wooster Series Book 15))
Zlata Dromenko was a stout Cossack about my height with a thick single eyebrow giving her a serious, severe look. I found out she’d been a mail-order bride who came over from Ukraine to marry a local farmer, a Russian immigrant. He died, though, and now Mrs. Dromenko worked in the hospital bullying patients like me. I called her “Hun,” because she made me think of Attila. I was curious as to how Mr. Dromenko died but was afraid to ask.
Phil Truman (Dire Wolf of the Quapaw: a Jubal Smoak Mystery (Jubal Smoak Mysteries Book 1))
For I am inclined to believe that my beloved Arthur of the future is sitting at this very moment among his learned freinds, in the Combination Room of the College of Life, and that they are thinking away in there for all they are worth, about the best means to help our curious species: and I for one hope that some day, when not only England but the World has need of them, and when it is ready to listen to reason, if it ever is, they will issue forth from their rath in joy and power: and then perhaps, they will give us happiness in the world once more and chivalry, and the old medieval blessing of certain simple people - who tried, at any rate, in their own small way, to still the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun.
T.H. White
At this very moment we are breathing the same air that once was Marco Polo’s last breath. And we’re also breathing the same air that was Mozart’s first breath as a baby. you’re also breathing air that’s probably been queefed by Mata Hari, Cleopatra and Marilyn Monroe, which either way you look at it is pretty cool. So, while we’re breathing in the same molecules as Jesus, we’re also breathing in the same air as Pontius Pilot, Attila the Hun and an inmate on Death Row in San Quentin State Prison. We are linked to every other life form that has ever been on this planet because we literally breathe the same air.
Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
Like putting an Armani suit on Attila the Hun, interface design only tells how to dress up an existing behavior.
Alan Cooper (The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity)
The influential 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica goes to the opposite extreme from the Encyclopédie: social history is buried within biography. So to read about the post-Roman world you must look up the entry on Attila the Hun.
Matt Ridley (The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge)
Roman envoys to Attila’s court in 449 greatly offended the Huns when they said that, although Attila was a man, Theodosius II was a god; this was a self-evident statement in Roman eyes, even though the envoys were doubtless overwhelmingly Christian.
Chris Wickham (The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe Book 2))
Mr Harrison taught him about Attila the Hun, Vlad Drakul, and the Darkness Intrinsicate in the Human Spirit. He tried to teach Warlock how to make rabble-rousing political speeches to sway the hearts and minds of multitudes. Mr Cortese taught him about Florence Nightingale10, Abraham Lincoln, and the appreciation of art. He tried to teach him about free will, self-denial, and Doing unto Others as You Would Wish Them to Do to You. They both read to the child extensively from the Book of Revelation.
Terry Pratchett (Good Omens)
then he would hear It, something worse than all the Commies and murderers in the world, worse than the Japs, worse than Attila the Hun, worse than the somethings in a hundred horror movies. It, growling deeply—he would hear the growl in those lunatic seconds before it pounced on him and unzipped his guts.
Stephen King (It)
Leaders are, therefore, caretakers of the interests and well-being of those and the purposes they serve.
Wess Roberts (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun)
The consequence for not adequately training your Huns is their failure to accomplish that which is expected of them.
Wess Roberts (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun)
Whether well or not, I do not know. But know that you have cut off your right hand with your left. [A Roman Senator to Valentinian III after the latter had murdered the general Aetius.]
Priscus (The Fragmentary History of Priscus: Attila, the Huns and the Roman Empire, AD 430-476)
Pada satu tingkatan, mereka menderita dan akibat wajar yang ditimbulkan–ketabahan, kekuatan, independensi yang kukuh–merupakan sumber kebanggaan; di sisi lain, merupakan sumber rasa iri.
John Man (Attila the Hun)
Imperiul hun a fost, mai intai de toate, unul parazitar; succesul sau a constat in abilitatea de a imita cultura celor cuceriti, de a se folosi de bunurile lor si de a consuma hrana produsa de acestia.
Christopher Kelly (The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome)
There are few who will find shortcuts. There are simply rare opportunities to accelerate competence, and without paying the price, no matter how great or small, none will become prepared to lead others.
Wess Roberts (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun)
success is the result of hard work that overcomes all forms of disappointment and moments of discouragement. Success is not achieved through complex strategies. It is achieved only through conscientiously carrying out the duties of your office and exercising the responsibilities of leadership—nothing else will prevail.
Wess Roberts (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun)
The hatred which some of his order feel for Socialists and Demagogues Lord Marshmoreton kept for roseslugs, rose-beetles and the small, yellowish-white insect which is so depraved and sinister a character that it goes through life with an alias—being sometimes called a rose-hopper and sometimes a thrips. A simple soul, Lord Marshmoreton—mild and pleasant. Yet put him among the thrips, and he became a dealer-out of death and slaughter, a destroyer in the class of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan. Thrips feed on the underside of rose leaves, sucking their juice and causing them to turn yellow; and Lord Marshmoreton's views on these things were so rigid that he would have poured whale-oil solution on his grandmother if he had found her on the underside of one of his rose leaves sucking its juice.
P.G. Wodehouse
Duta Besar, betapa senangnya bertemu dengan Anda! Para pelarian? Upeti? Semuanya dalam kondisi baik. Kita akan berbincang setelah makan malam. Mari kami tunjukkan ruangan Anda. Ya, karpetnya dan sutranya bagus, bukan―ini yang terbaik. Segelas anggur, mungkin? Anda suka gelasnya? Ini semua milik Anda. Oh, dan setelah makan malam, para gadis menari. Anda sudah melakukan perjalanan panjang. Gadis-gadis ini khusus dipilihkan untuk mengembalikan semangat para pejuang besar seperti Anda.
John Man (Attila the Hun)
In September 1936, Britain's former prime minister, David Lloyd George, spent two weeks in Germany as his guest. He admiringly wrote in the Daily Express how Hitler had united Catholic and Protestant, employer and artisan, rich and poor into one people – Ein Volk, in fact. (The British press magnate Cecil King wrote in his diary four years later, ‘Lloyd George mentioned meeting Hitler and spoke of him as the greatest figure in Europe since Napoleon and possibly greater than him. He said we had not had to deal with an austere ascetic like Hitler since the days of Attila and his Huns.’)
David Irving (The War Path)
Cousin West,” Kathleen said a month later, fiercely pursuing him down the grand staircase, “stop running away. I want a word with you.” West didn’t slow his pace. “Not while you’re chasing me like Attila the Hun.” “Tell me why you did it.” She reached the bottom step at the same time he did and swung around to block his escape. “Kindly explain what deranged mode of thinking caused you to bring a pig into the house!” Cornered, he resorted to honesty. “I wasn’t thinking. I was at John Potter’s farm, and he was about to cull the piglet because it was undersized.” “A common practice, as I understand it,” she said curtly. “The creature looked at me,” West protested. “It seemed to be smiling.” “All pigs seem to be smiling. Their mouths are curved upwards.” “I couldn’t help it; I had to bring him home.” Kathleen shook her head disapprovingly as she looked at him. The twins had already bottle-fed the creature with a formula of cow’s milk whisked with raw egg, while Helen had lined a basket with soft cloth for it to sleep in. Now there was no getting rid of it. “What do you intend for us to do with the pig once it’s full-grown?” she demanded. West considered that. “Eat it?” She let out an exasperated huff. “The girls have already named it Hamlet. Would you have us eat a family pet, Mr. Ravenel?” “I would if it turned into bacon.” West smiled at her expression. “I’ll return the pig to the farmer when it’s weaned,” he offered.
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
He knew that he needed to calm the fuck down, because Lauren had been looking at him like he was Attila the Hun ever since they'd left her apartment. One little innuendo about killing anyone who touched her, and she'd started looking at him as if he was crazy.
Anonymous
So who do you suppose Imogene was last time around?" "Oh, that's easy," Haven laughed. "Attila the Hun.
Kirsten Miller (The Eternal Ones (Eternal Ones, #1))
Cousin West,” Kathleen said a month later, fiercely pursuing him down the grand staircase, “stop running away. I want a word with you.” West didn’t slow his pace. “Not while you’re chasing me like Attila the Hun.
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
the horsemen'---men like Attila the Hun or Adolf Hitler; the men who believe that might makes right, who want what someone else has and would rather take it by force than work for it. He said that no matter how far humanity advances, and no matter how civilized we think we are, there'll always be the horsemen waiting in the wings to catch us with our guard down.
Rick Partlow (Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy)
Ego sum Attila, flagellum Dei" (Ben de Attila, Tanrı'nın kırbacı/I am Attila, the scourge of God)
John Man (Attila the Hun)
Please. If you were any more of a Republican, you'd be Attila the Hun.” “Really? He was a revolutionary, so that makes him more of a left-winger, doesn't it?” Marco's
Declan Finn (Honor at Stake (Love at First Bite #1))
EL-FAYOUMY: Do not bait this great man, lady! He presided over the appeal of Attila the Hun when you were nothing more than a cheap shot of whiskey on your great-great-grandfather’s first unpaid bar tab! JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Well said!
Stephen Adly Guirgis (The Last Days of Judas Iscariot: A Play)
In 1900, sending a contingent of German troops to China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, he shouted to the departing soldiers, “There will be no quarter, no prisoners will be taken! As a thousand years ago, the Huns under King Attila gained for themselves a name which still stands for terror in tradition and story, so may the name of German be impressed by you for a thousand years on China.
Robert K. Massie (Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea)
your greatness will be made possible through the extremes of your personality—the very extremes that sometimes make for campfire satire and legendary stories.
Wess Roberts (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun)
We cannot permit strong chieftains or groups of young Huns to attempt the founding of customs that serve only their purpose. Customs are of nations, not of individuals.
Wess Roberts (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun)
The Magyars were claimed to be descendants of the hideous Asiatic Scythians of legend, half men and half apes, a witches’ brood begotten by devils. The sources—chronicles and annals—were all copied from one another, not on the basis of eyewitness accounts but following the characterisation of older chroniclers. Soon the “new barbarians” became identified with the Huns, who are remembered only too well in Europe. Attila had, after all, become in Western eyes the embodiment of barbarism, the anti-Christ, and at the time of the Renaissance he already appeared in Italian legends as the king of the Hungarians, constantly hatching plots, and depicted with dog ears, the bestial offspring of a greyhound and a princess locked up in a tower.12
Paul Lendvai (The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat)
We love to mock people behind their back, but most of us would frankly be unable to criticize Attila the Hun to his face if the opportunity presented itself.
Rob Asghar (Leadership is Hell: How to Manage Well - And Escape with your Soul)
I think it’s vital. It’s odd to me because many people say we live in these awful times and we need culture and art especially in times like these, in these dire times. Well, first of all, I don’t think these times are more dire than other times. People who say that just need to go back and read Herodotus, read any book of history, read a biography of Attila the Hun. If people are going to wring their hands over these troubled times, I would think that humor should be indispensable. I find it strange that –at least in my take on it—the people who are the most alarmed about the dire times we live in are the ones who seem to be humorless, in their taste for poetry anyway. Humor is just an ingredient.
Billy Collins
I remember the great feeling of sadness to have left many of our brothers behind in a foreign land, but as I sat on the rowing bench, alongside Hengist and Yffi, as the Famous Horse sailed over the gentle waves, I couldn't help but feel excited of what was to come. Yet none of us could have predicted that we were sailing towards a head -on-collision with the Roman General, Flavius Aëtius and his Hun allies, where Hengist and I would come face to face with the legendary Siegfried the Dragon Slayer and the one they call Attila the Hun!
S.A. Swaffington (The Scourge of the Gods (Hengist and Horsa Chronicles #2))
strangely, on the verge of storming Rome itself, Attila withdrew. Why? For many centuries the official answer was that God had intervened in some mysterious way to protect his chosen city, Rome, seat of the papacy. In more recent times, such supernatural explanations have fallen out of favor and the question has arisen anew. Some have suggested that Attila was overawed by the sanctity of Rome. But why would a pagan warlord like Attila stand in awe of a Christian center? Attila was by no means an ignorant barbarian: For example, he invited Roman and Greek engineers into Hun territory to install bathing facilities. However, his respect for Roman civilization was clearly of a pragmatic rather than a religious nature. Another theory is that Attila was worried about leaving unattended his newly acquired homeland, in what is now Hungary. But then why did he venture out almost as far as Rome and hang around indecisively for so long before returning? All these explanations founder on the same point. It seems clear that Attila did indeed set out with every intention of taking Rome, but his expedition came to a premature halt. Mounting modern evidence suggests that Attila was stopped by a virulent epidemic of dysentery, or some similar disease. Most of his men were too ill to stay on their horses, and a significant number died. In short, bacteria saved Rome.
David P. Clark (Germs, Genes, & Civilization: How Epidemics Shaped Who We Are Today (Ft Press Science Series))
We can find no man unit reason for the sudden invasion of Europe by a race of Hun shepherds, who were transformed overnight into a destroying force, a true phalanx, and in another generation had become shepherds again, so weak that an invasion of Tartars overwhelmed them. We can find no man unit reason for the sudden migration of the Mayas. We say Attila did it or Ghenghis Khan, but they couldn’t. They were simply the spokesmen of the movement. Hitler did not create the present phalanx in Germany, he merely interprets it.
John Steinbeck (A Life in Letters)
And what if she says she's up for it?” Bobby asked. “How do we teach her to be smarter?” “That's a high-class problem, my friend,” Clare announced. “If Attila the Hun walked into this office right now and convinced me that he really wanted to get better dealing with people, I know we could do it. Most training and development comes down to how much a person wants to change.
Patrick Lencioni (The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues (J-B Lencioni Series))
The rules of warfare seem to go in cycles alternating from neat rows—the Roman square, the French knights at Agincourt, the fixed battles of the early eighteenth century, the trenches of 1915–18, and the Maginot/Siegfried lines—to rules that stress mobility, irregularity, adaptability—Attila the Hun, the English longbowmen at Agincourt, the colonial guerrillas in 1776, both sides in our Civil War, the German panzers, the Viet Cong, and the Afghan guerrillas.
Joe Coulombe (Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys)
Attila, just like every other nomadic conqueror, appreciated the skills of the clever craftsmen and engineers of rival sedentary, bureaucratic empires.
Kenneth W. Harl (Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilization)
At the start of this book, we asked what the world would be like if, instead of suckling Romulus and Remus, the wolf had eaten them. What if there had been no Rome? What if there had been only Barbarians? After the disappearance of the last Roman emperor from the West, a Barbarian empire came into being that seems to answer that question. The Eastern Goths, the Ostrogoths, whose parents and grandparents had raided with Attila and his Huns, moved back to Italy in 489, and this time they stayed there. They were no longer pagans, but as self-aware Goths they avoided the Roman Catholic Church. Like the Vandals and the Visigoths, they were Arians, and under their king Theodoric they set about building a new kind of Rome. In place of the old violent, intolerant and ruthless Roman Catholic empire, there was a gentler and more inclusive Barbarian vision. Whereas Rome tried to make all its citizens ‘Romans’, and tried not to recognize nations within the Empire, Theodoric believed that it was possible to build an empire of different nationalities. He set out to establish harmony between the different kingdoms and peoples of the West, intermarrying his relatives to different royal families and guaranteeing them their own law codes. He ruled both as a Gothic king and as a patrician, paying respectful homage to Constantinople, but never calling himself emperor.
Terry Jones (Terry Jones' Barbarians)
prayers of St. Genevieve diverted the march of Attila from the neighborhood of Paris. But as the greatest part of the Gallic cities were alike destitute of saints and soldiers, they were besieged and stormed by the Huns; who practised, in the example of Metz, their customary maxims of war.
Edward Gibbon (History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire 3)
The same language, even in the camp of the Huns, was used by his ambassador Apollonius, whose bold refusal to deliver the presents, till he had been admitted to a personal interview, displayed a sense of dignity, and a contempt of danger, which Attila was not prepared to expect from the degenerate Romans.
Edward Gibbon (History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire 3)
What connects two Roman emperors, Attila the Hun, and Leonardo da Vinci? The Constantine Order.
Amerigo Consta (CODEX: The Origin of Thought)
When Jobs finally took over, gone was the dismissive attitude toward soldiers. In March 1998, he hired Tim Cook, known as the “Attila the Hun of inventory,” from Compaq to run operations.
Safi Bahcall (Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries)
In 449 Honoria appealed to none other than Attila the Hun to come and rescue her from Ravenna, sending Hyacinthus, one of her eunuch servants, to him with her request. Because Attila was the most aggressively determined enemy of the Roman empire at that time, her invitation constituted a stupendously treasonable act. And the seriousness of her message was marked by the gift of a ring, which Attila interpreted as a proposal of marriage. If he could marry the imperial princess, sister of the western emperor, she might bring at least half the western provinces as her dowry! The dangers were clear enough to both Theodosius II and Valentinian, who reacted quickly. The eastern emperor recommended that Honoria be dispatched to the Huns straight away, which might have reduced the threat of invasion, but Valentinian had reservations about allowing his sister to marry the ‘scourge of God’, who was known to be polygamous. Instead, he punished his sister by exiling her from the court and executing her eunuch servant and other accomplices. Only Galla Placidia’s interventions and insistence upon the planned marriage to the senator Herculanus, secured Honoria’s restoration. In 452 Herculanus was named consul in Rome, a mark of the emperor’s gratitude for saving Honoria from total disgrace.
Judith Herrin (Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe)
My name is Attila.’ ah-til-ha. ‘That’s an unusual name,’ Jean said. ‘to whom?’ replied Attila cheerfully. ‘Well . . . everyone,’ said Jean. ‘not to the Hungarians or the Turks,’ said Attila. ‘your parents named you after Attila the Hun?’ Attila smiled. ‘Some people,’ he said, ‘name their baby girls Victoria.
Aminatta Forna (Happiness)
hen Roman princess Justa Grata Honoria found herself about to be packed off to some backwater to be the docile wife of a yes-man in service to her brother, Emperor Valentinian III, she sat down to write a letter. To Attila the Hun.
Linda Rodríguez McRobbie (Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings)
In 378, the emperor Valens confronted roving war bands of Germanic Goths at Adrianople near Constantinople. With a massive cavalry charge, the Goths shattered Valens’s army and killed the emperor. It was a disaster of the first order.28 The capital managed to shut its gates against the German invader. However, the price of the Eastern Empire’s survival was the loss of the West. One Germanic tribe after another—Goths, Vandals, Franks, Allemanni, Burgundians—shot westward through the Balkans, overrunning the Rhine frontier and the Roman provinces on the other side, including Italy. The basic framework of imperial government, like the Roman road system dating back to Caesar Augustus, collapsed under the strain. So did law and order. Only the Church held firm. In virtually every town, starting with Rome itself, its leaders became symbols of resistance. Like the young Genovefa (later canonized Saint Genevieve) in Paris, they rallied citizens to stand fast and defend their cities; like Pope Leo I with Attila the Hun, they struck deals with the invaders to spare their congregations. When negotiations failed they organized humanitarian relief for the devastated areas and offered words of comfort and hope when everything looked its bleakest. The Catholic bishop became the one upholder of a social and cultural order to which the people living in his diocese, including pagans, could still cling.
Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization)
Effectiveness achieved by following the ‘Attila the Hun’ school of leadership theory is the exception rather than the norm,
Anonymous
A Hun without a purpose will never know when he has achieved it.
Wess Roberts (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun)
By their own actions, not their words, do leaders establish the morale, integrity and sense of justice of their subordinate commanders. They cannot say one thing and do another.
Wess Roberts (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun)