Crossing The Rubicon Quotes

Caesar broke the law when he crossed the Rubicon," Frank said. "Great leaders have to think out side the box sometimes.

When asked about how he could have offered the Warren Report, full of inconsistencies, to the American people with a straight face, Dulles is reported to have said, "The American people don't read.

Every story has a beginning and an end. What lies between those two points is the journey.

He never suspected that in so doing, he was crossing his Rubicon.

In association with the ordinary run of men I have had but little to win or to lose ... My companions have with few exceptions exerted no marked influence on me ... So I am standing once more at the point where I must begin in another way. I shall now try to look calmly at myself and begin to act inwardly; for only in this way will I be able ... to call myself 'I' in a profounder sense ... So let the die be cast - I am crossing the Rubicon. This road no doubt leads me into battle, but I will not give up.

In 49 B.C. when Caesar was the governor of Gaul, the Senate, which had become wary of his ambitions, recalled him to the capital, instructing him to leave his troops at the banks of the Rubicon. Instead, Caesar marched his soldiers across the river into Italy and led them straight to Rome, where he soon seized power and launched the Imperial Era. That’s where the expression crossing the Rubicon comes from. It means passing a point of no return.

The New Jim Crow shatters this silence. Once you read it, you have crossed the Rubicon and there is no return to sleepwalking. You are now awakened to a dark and ugly reality that has been in place for decades and that is continuous with the racist underside of American history from the advent of slavery onward.

What the hell was that?” one of them asked. “Jackal,” Irene stated quietly while watching city streets turn to suburb. They weren’t taking her to a main airport but a small airstrip. One built exclusively for private planes. “Did she just call us jackals?” one of them joked. Irene grinned which wiped the smile off the man’s face. “No. I said the howl you heard was jackal.” She looked at Jenny. “They’ll be coming for you.” Jenny glanced at the men and back at her. She looked terribly concerned she had a lunatic in the car with her. “The jackals will be coming for me?” “No. The wolves.” Jenny sighed. “Why oh why do I always get the nutcases?” “Oh!” Irene pointed excitedly. “See that spot up there?” “What about it?” “That’s where it all started. Where I crossed the Rubicon.” Exasperated, Jenny snarled, “What the fuck are you talking about?” “It’s feeding time,” Irene whispered. “That’s it.” Jenny threw up her hands. “We’re so medicating her.

I folded the piece of lined paper and slipped it under his door with the resigned apprehension of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. There was no turning back now. Iacta alea est, Caesar had said, the die is cast.

I am counting on nothing but the facts about me. So come on, Future. I've my back against the past. Anyway, as you see, it is too late to argue. I've crossed the Rubicon, and can return only when I have built a new bridge.

Even earthquakes are the consequence of tensions built up over long spans of time, imperceptibly, incrementally. You don't notice the buildup, just the release. You see a sick person, an old person, a dying person, the sight sinks in, and somewhere down the road you change your life. In movies and novels, people change suddenly and permanently, which is convenient and dramatic but not much like life, where you gain distance on something, relapse, resolve, try again, and move along in stops, starts, and stutters. Change is mostly slow. In my life, there had been transformative events, and I'd had a few sudden illuminations and crises, crossed a rubicon or two, but mostly I'd had the incremental.

Can you feel that in the air? That urgency? For there is an urgency There is no time to waste! Let the trumpet sound throughout the land! A clarion call for a new way of being. Head toward the light, and only the light. Destroy your options. Cross your personal Rubicon. Burn your ships. Ride your horse as it can go, then dismount and carry on. Forward! Never settle! Dregs settle. Lead! Lead! And never follow again!

The New Jim Crow shatters this silence. Once you read it, you have crossed the Rubicon and there is no return to sleepwalking.

Coloured marble, pompous avenues, urban planning: what were these, if not the prerogatives of kings? No one, in a free republic, could be permitted such sinister grandstanding. This was why, in the last feverish decade before the crossing of the Rubicon, the sudden appearance in Rome of a rash of grandiose monuments had served as portents of the Republic’s ruin.

This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world’s history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.

I kept secrets from you. I let you believe a lie. I am an impious son. But I made my choice, as C(aesar) did, and once the Rubicon is crossed, there can be no turning back (Meto, Caesar's scribe, to his father Gordianus the Finder)

despite the efforts of ancient writers to embellish them with dramatic appearances of the gods, uncanny omens and prophetic dreams – the reality of the surroundings was probably mundane. For us, ‘to cross the Rubicon’ has come to mean ‘to pass the point of no return’. It did not mean that to Caesar.

But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world's history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.

One glance. Once stare. Was all it took to take my lungs to long for air. The moment I saw you, is the moment I found myself. It was unreal; this love thrill, My soul it manifest. I was obsessed. Maybe that's where I went wrong, love possessed. Forced to cross the Rubicon, no protest. From your end ‘cause we shared the same sentiment Love we earned, time we burned, look at what we've done. Now we at the point of no return, no taking it back. Our world like centre CERN, particles go round and back. All we do is speak out of turn, Argue, push buttons;
I guess that's the straw hun, That broke the camel's back.

In 49 BCE, with the dramatic proclamation “The die is cast,” Julius Caesar made the fateful decision to cross the Rubicon River at the head of his 13th Legion. The crossing of the Rubicon was momentous because the river demarcated the boundary between Italy and the province of Gaul to the north, where Caesar was serving as governor. Suspicious of his growing power, the Senate had ordered him to disband his army and return to Rome. But Caesar, defying the Senate, decided to return not in submission but in rebellion, marching on Rome with his legion. By crossing into Italian territory with an army, Caesar had irrevocably made himself a traitor.

Clear-sighted as he was, however, not even Caesar could anticipate the full consequences of his decision. In addition to “crisis point,” “discrimen” had a further meaning: “dividing line.” This was, in every sense, what the Rubicon would prove to be. By crossing it, Caesar did indeed engulf the world in war, but he also helped to bring about the ruin of Rome’s ancient freedoms, and the establishment, upon their wreckage, of a monarchy—events of primal significance for the history of the West. Long after the Roman Empire itself had collapsed, the opposites delineated by the Rubicon—liberty and despotism, anarchy and order, republic and autocracy—would continue to haunt the imaginings of Rome’s successors.

Three years after the United States and the Israelis reached across Iran’s borders and destroyed its centrifuges, Iran launched a retaliatory attack, the most destructive cyberattack the world had seen to date. On August 15, 2012, Iranian hackers hit Saudi Aramco, the world’s richest oil company—a company worth more than five Apples on paper—with malware that demolished thirty thousand of its computers, wiped its data, and replaced it all with the image of the burning American flag. All the money in the world had not kept Iranian hackers from getting into Aramco’s systems. Iran’s hackers had waited until the eve of Islam’s holiest night of the year—“The Night of Power,” when Saudis were home celebrating the revelation of the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad, to flip a kill switch and detonate malware that not only destroyed Aramco’s computers, data, and access to email and internet but upended the global market for hard drives. It could have been worse. As investigators from CrowdStrike, McAfee, Aramco, and others pored through the Iranians’ crumbs, they discovered that the hackers had tried to cross the Rubicon between Aramco’s business systems and its production systems. In that sense, they failed.

Although I am still far from this kind of interior understanding of myself, with profound respect for its significance I have sought to preserve my individuality―worshipped the unknown God. With a premature anxiety I have tried to avoid coming in close contact with those things whose force of attraction might be too powerful for me. I have sought to appropriate much from them, studied their distinctive characteristics and meaning in human life, but at the same time guarded against coming, like the moth, too close to the flame. I have had little to win or to lose in association with the ordinary run of men, partly because what they do―so-called practical life―does not interest me much, partly because their coldness and indifference to the spiritual and deeper currents in man alienate me even more from them. With few exceptions my companions have had no special influence upon me. A life that has not arrived at clarity about itself must necessarily exhibit an uneven side-surface; confronted by certain facts [*Facta*] and their apparent disharmony, they simply halted there, for, as I see it, they did not have sufficient interest to seek a resolution in a higher harmony or to recognize the necessity of it. Their opinion of me was always one-sided, and I have vacillated between putting too much or too little weight on what they said. I have now withdrawn from their influence and the potential variations of my life's compass resulting from it. Thus I am again standing at the point where I must begin again in another way. I shall now calmly attempt to look at myself and begin to initiate inner action; for only thus will I be able, like a child calling itself "I" in its first consciously undertaken act, be able to call myself "I" in a profounder sense. But that takes stamina, and it is not possible to harvest immediately what one has sown. I will remember that philosopher's method of having his disciples keep silent for three years; then I dare say it will come. Just as one does not begin a feast at sunrise but at sundown, just so in the spiritual world one must first work forward for some time before the sun really shines for us and rises in all its glory; for although it is true as it says that God lets his sun shine upon the good and the evil and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, it is not so in the spiritual world. So let the die be cast―I am crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes me into battle, but I will not renounce it. I will not lament the past―why lament? I will work energetically and not waste time in regrets, like the person stuck in a bog and first calculating how far he has sunk without recognizing that during the time he spends on that he is sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet: Do not look back as Lot's wife did, but remember that we are struggling up a hill." ―from_Journals_, (The Search for Personal Meaning)

To the chagrin of the Aussies equipped with recently delivered M1A1s, the aging Aussie Leopard 1’s rifled 105mm gun outranged them, and what was even worse the bloody pommy Challenger and Chieftain 120mm rifled guns were the kings of the battlefield.

As she realized that at the core of it, her life was as empty as the bottle in her hand, she tried to speculate what her life would have been like, had she married someone who wouldn’t have thought of crossing the Rubicon when it came to it. But, as if not to hurt her sensibilities at that point of no return, her faculties failed her. In time, her body too began losing its vitality to hold her restless soul any longer.

The pages turned by themselves as the fan moved through its arc and then stopped to reveal the crossword puzzle page. The answer to four across—‘7 letters. Caesar’s crossing caused certain war?’—had been neatly completed in blue ink. ‘Rubicon.

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, and telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Cæsar’s crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon’s career, with Wellington’s, or Grant’s…? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.

Crossing the Rubicon of absolute pain is the only journey of purpose and meaning in life. Without your pain you are nothing but a spiritual embryo. Your pain offers you, the student, a choice of how you will receive the lesson. You can choose to let the pain harden your heart even more and close you off to the blessings of life. Or, you can allow the hammer of pain to split open the stone armor of your hardness; exposing the tenderness and beauty of your sweet spirit and sacred heart. Your pain is a divine rite of passage through which you will be reborn as a being of strength, wisdom and purpose. With your new eyes, you will see yourself and the world differently. With your new eyes, first look deeply at yourself, and see in yourself the divine architect’s incomprehensible art! Your first realization will be that you are beautiful!

Only in purpose can you find the strength to cross the Rubicon and march toward greatness. Goals are the milestones you create for your journey.

You can cross the Rubicon in a boat without getting wet, but surely, getting wet is the baptism before you begin that new life on the other side.

crossing the Rubicon

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he knew what it would mean.” Mr. Wilson was looking at us all somberly, as if Julius Caesar was his homey and he had just crossed the Rubics Cube yesterday. I sighed and tossed back my hair, slouching even further into my seat

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Cæsar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.

Carefully measure the depth of water when crossing your Rubicon in life. The river was shallow when Julius Caesar crossed 2000 years ago.

Crossing the Rubicon of absolute pain is the only journey of purpose and meaning in life.

The great gain was that I very soon became able to understand a great deal without (even mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in Greek. That is the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the lexicon, and who then substitute the Eng­lish word for it, are not reading the Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle. The very formula, “Naus means a ship,” is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, as behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.

Once that was achieve the rate of fire was reined to preserve ammunition,

Smackdown Zero Two was visible to the right, burning at the edge of the field. One for one was a bad trade off; it was not a good start.

A further tank, a Hussars Mk 10 Chieftain, and three Warriors had been lost.

The Scimitars gave it some clog, intending to go firm once across the bridge but the defenders let the leading troop

I’ll never see the world the same way. Life. The solar system, the universe. I feel I’ve crossed a Rubicon. Nothing will ever be the same.

I’d crossed the Rubicon from being a person who “handled” stories to being the person featured in the story.

But the decade ended, and I had crossed my Rubicon, and I came, I saw and conquered many of my doubts, and doing what Caesar had done, securing the people's republican traditions being my excuse, cultivated the zeal of a Marius, forgetting what enormities gestate in a republic, so many, in fact, that every month requires it Ides to drive out the old and drive in the new, and, in short, I was insufferable.

This river... it's a crossing over Rubicon.

The Romans had their aleae, rudimentary tetrahedral dice made from the ankle bones of sheep, as memorialized in Julius Caesar’s declaration upon crossing the Rubicon: “Alea iacta est.” (The die is cast.) The

KANSAS CITY, March 28, 1963—If all goes as it should—and in space, that is no sure thing—then sometime today, thirteen brave voyagers will cross a Rubicon that no man ever has: the halfway point between our home planet and Mars.

Trump is Caesar,” he says. “That’s what I keep saying!” I gush. “I’ve been saying that for years.” “He’s gonna lead us across the Rubicon,” he says. “I think he already crossed the Rubicon,” I say. “I think this is him getting assassinated.” There is a pause and then he looks at me. “All of these politicians,” he says slowly and evenly, “They don’t understand that they’re paving the way for somebody so much worse than Trump. This movement isn’t going to go away. I’ve already talked to people who say things crazy, things like they want to overthrow the government. People who hadn’t been saying that three years ago.

There’s a feeling after a year of restrictions that people will do anything to ‘get back to normal’. But declaring your health status to use businesses and services has never been normal. The introduction of a health status ID to access products and services will cross a rubicon.

Everyone understood that a Rubicon had been crossed. Here was an architect of US policy saying that the US should not merely respond to specific terrorist attacks but pivot to preemptive action. And he aimed his comments at the state sponsors of terrorism.

Love's Great Adventure by Stewart Stafford Look out for the wandering eye, And the fervour that follows it, A jewel clasped is the first part, Guarding against theft is trickier. Surreptitious teases acted out then, The Rubicon crossed and drained, Love, blind to impediment boundaries, Prized contagion spread as lightning. Rival houses intrude to spoil it, To still the fluttering of butterflies, And the bosom of Eros heaving, Unstoppable to every homo sapien. Here, I'll act as Cupid's emissary, Whisper lovers' spells in my ear, I'll parrot them to her to the letter, So lured, she'll have me over you. Groggy from humid moon nectar, On summertime clouded visions, A second an hour, as a day a year, Arousal of fire in swelled chests. Stallions of the Venus chariot, Borne freely to the new Arcadia, Feet skimming over terra firma, The youthful mask smothers all. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

By early 1873, he had crossed his own Rubicon and never looked back.

We as manifest humans must come to terms -psychologically, cognitively, and ethically - with the hard fact of what it means to be human: One cannot have the cake of humanity without eating its consequences. Once we treat ourselves as a species of rights and entitlements, once we say what ought or ought not to be thought or done, the moment we distinguish the order of things and respons to it in accordance with what we think is right, however far from the truth it may be, we have committed ourselves to the impersonal order of reason to which sapiens belongs - an order that will expunge our manifest self-portrait. We have crossed the cognitive Rubicon. In committing to this impersonal order we must realize that what is manifestly human - us as we stand here, now - will be overcome by that very order. Reason is a game in which we are all fleeting players and from which we cannot defect, so let us play this game well by committing to its interests and its ramifications.

that the last bridge has been burned, the Rubicon most definitely crossed…

After crossing the Rubicon—the real one—in 49,

crossing the Rubicon,

young lady, he thought. Special Forces on home soil? Good God. Somebody in our government just crossed the Rubicon. The concrete

Our flint-hearted politicians fundamentally have not only crossed the Rubicon in treks of their power struggles but also pigeonhole the national issues.

With Malone’s decision to parse the plays for evidence of what an author thought or felt, literary biography had crossed a Rubicon.

cross the Rubicon River in present-day northeastern Italy