Lieutenant Dan Quotes

Lieutenant Chatrand: I don’t understand this omnipotent-benevolent thing. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: You are confused because the Bible describes God as an omnipotent and benevolent deity. Lieutenant Chatrand: Exactly. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning. Lieutenant Chatrand: I understand the concept. It’s just... there seems to be a contradiction. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man’s starvation, war, sickness... Lieutenant Chatrand: Exactly! Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn’t he? Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Would He? Lieutenant Chatrand: Well... if God Loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Do you have children? Lieutenant Chatrand: No, signore. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Imagine you had an eight-year-old son... would you love him? Lieutenant Chatrand: Of course. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Would you let him skateboard? Lieutenant Chatrand: Yeah, I guess. Sure I’d let him skateboard, but I’d tell him to be careful. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: So as this child’s father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes? Lieutenant Chatrand: I wouldn’t run behind him and mollycoddle him if that’s what you mean. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: But what if he fell and skinned his knee? Lieutenant Chatrand: He would learn to be more careful. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child’s pain, you would choose to show you love by letting him learn his own lessons? Lieutenant Chatrand: Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Exactly.

Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning.' 'I understand the concept. It's just . . . there seems to be a contradiction.' 'Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man's starvation, war, sickness . . .' 'Exactly!' Chartrand knew the camerlengo would understand. 'Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn't He?' The camerlengo frowned. 'Would He?' Chartrand felt uneasy. Had he overstepped his bounds? Was this one of those religious questions you just didn't ask? 'Well . . . if God loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help.' 'Do you have children, Lieutenant?' Chartrand flushed. 'No, signore.' 'Imagine you had an eight-year-old son . . . would you love him?' 'Of course.' 'Would you let him skateboard?' Chartrand did a double take. The camerlengo always seemed oddly "in touch" for a clergyman. 'Yeah, I guess,' Chartrand said. 'Sure, I'd let him skateboard, but I'd tell him to be careful.' 'So as this child's father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?' 'I wouldn't run behind him and mollycoddle him if that's what you mean.' 'But what if he fell and skinned his knee?' 'He would learn to be more careful.' The camerlengo smiled. 'So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child's pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?' 'Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It's how we learn.' The camerlengo nodded. 'Exactly.

If you start Forrest Gump at exactly 10:38:57 PM on New Years Eve, you can ring in the new year with Lieutenant Dan.

America’s last step into the Vietnam quagmire came on November 22, 1963, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States. Unlike Kennedy, Johnson was no real veteran. During World War II he used his influence as a congressman to become a naval officer, and, despite an utter lack of military training, he arranged a direct commission as a lieutenant commander. Fully aware that “combat” exposure would make him more electable, the ambitious Johnson managed an appointment to an observation team that was traveling to the Pacific. Once there, he was able to get a seat on a B-26 combat mission near New Guinea. The bomber had to turn back due to mechanical problems and briefly came under attack from Japanese fighters. The pilot got the damaged plane safely back to its base and Johnson left the very next day. This nonevent, which LBJ had absolutely no active part of, turned into his war story. The engine had been “knocked out” by enemy fighters, not simply a routine malfunction; he, LBJ, had been part of a “suicide mission,” not just riding along as baggage. The fabrication grew over time, including, according to LBJ, the nickname of “Raider” Johnson given to him by the awestruck 22nd Bomber Group.

There was a guy next to my cot name of Dan, who had been blowed up inside a tank. He was all burnt and had tubes going in and out of him everyplace, but I never heard him holler. He talk real low and quiet, and after a day or so, him and me got to be friends. Dan came from the state of Connecticut, and he was a teacher of history when they grabbed him up and threw him into the Army. But because he was smart, they sent him to officer school and made him a lieutenant. Most of the lieutenants I know were about as simple minded as me, but Dan was different. He had his own philosophy about why we were here, which was that we were doing maybe the wrong thing for the right reasons, or vice-versa, but whatever it is, we ain't doing it right. Him being a tank officer and all, he say it ridiculous for us to be waging a war in a place where we can't hardly use our tanks on account of the land is mostly swamp or mountains. I told him about Bubba and all, and he nod his head very sadly and said there will be a lot more Bubbas to die before this thing is over.

Meanwhile, Captain Crozier took to his Private Cabin yesterday and is terribly sick. I can hear his stifled moans since the late Peddie’s compartment borders the captain’s here on the starboard stern side of the ship. I think Captain Crozier is biting down on something hard—perhaps a Strip of Leather—to keep those moans from being heard. But I have always been Blessed (or Cursed) with good hearing. The Captain turned over the handling of the Ship’s and Expedition’s affairs to Lieutenant Little yesterday—thus quietly but Firmly giving Command to Little rather than to Captain Fitzjames—and explained to me that he, Captain Crozier, was battling a recurrence of Malaria. This is a lie. It is not just the symptoms of Malaria which I hear Captain Crozier suffering—and almost certainly will continue to hear through the walls until I head back to Erebus on Friday morning. Because of my uncle’s and my father’s weaknesses, I know the Demons the Captain is battling tonight. Captain Crozier is a man addicted to Hard Spirits, and either those Spirits on board have been used up or he has decided to go off them of his own Volition during this Crisis. Either way, he is suffering the Torments of Hell and shall continue to do so for many days more. His sanity may not survive. In the meantime, this ship and this Expedition are without their True Leader. His stifled moans, in a ship descending into Sickness and Despair, are Pitiable to the extreme.

The men standing on deck now were not surprised by the order to abandon ship. They had been called up and assembled for it. There were only about twenty-five Terrors present this morning; the rest were at Terror Camp two miles south of Victory Point or sledging materials to the camp or out hunting or reconnoitering near Terror Camp. An equal number of Erebuses waited below on the ice, standing near sledges and piles of gear where the Erebus gear-and-supply tents had been pitched since the first of April when that ship had been abandoned. Crozier watched his men file down the ice ramp, leaving the ship forever. Finally only he and Little were left standing on the canted deck. The fifty-some men on the ice below looked up at them with eyes almost made invisible under low-pulled Welsh wigs and above wool comforters, all squinting in the cold morning light. “Go ahead, Edward,” Crozier said softly. “Over the side with you.” The lieutenant saluted, lifted his heavy pack of personal possessions, and went down first the ladder and then the ice ramp to join the men below. Crozier looked around. The thin April sunlight illuminated a world of tortured ice, looming pressure ridges, countless seracs, and blowing snow. Tugging the bill of his cap lower and squinting toward the east, he tried to record his feelings at the moment. Abandoning ship was the lowest point in any captain’s life. It was an admission of total failure. It was, in most cases, the end of a long Naval career. To most captains, many of Francis Crozier’s personal acquaintance, it was a blow from which they would never recover. Crozier felt none of that despair. Not yet. More important to him at the moment was the blue flame of determination that still burned small but hot in his breast—I will live.

Il avait lu des masses de livres là-dessus, tout récement celui d'Hannah Arendt sur le procès d'Eichmann à Jérusalem, il savait que le jour où il écrirait sérieusement, ce serait à ce sujet. Le nazisme, tous les habitants de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle doivent se débrouiller avec, vivre avec l'idée que c'est arrivé, comme lui devait vivre avec la mort de sa soeur Jane. On peut ne pas y penser, n'empêche que c'est là, et il faudrait que ce soit aussi dans son livre. Rien de plus éloigné du tao que le nazisme. Les Japonais, pourtant, qui vénèrent le tao, avaient été alliés aux nazis. S'ils l'avaient emporté... Un moment, il laissa miroiter cette idée. On avait déjà fait des livres de ce genre, il en avait lu un d'après lequel le Sud avait gagné la guerre de Sécession. Il se demanda ce que serait un monde issu de la victoire de l'Axe, quinze ans plus tòt. Qui dirigerait le Reich ? Hitler toujours l'un de ses lieutenants ? Est-ce que cela changerait quelque chose que ce soit Bormann, Himmler, Goering ou Baldur von Schirach? Est-ce que cela changerait quelque chose pour lui, habitant de Point Reyes, Marin County ? Et quoi?

L'aube venait et l'on s'est dit : "Qu'est-ce que c'est ça qui nous arrive là ?" Des hommes en file sur le rouge du ciel, des hommes chargés de caisses et de paquets. Ils ont tout quitté dans l'herbe ; on s'est levé, on est allé voir. Il y a des cartouches, des grenades, du chocolat, du camembert, de grands couteaux de boucherie et voilà le retardataire qui vient là-bas avec ses seaux d'alcool truqué. Olivier a regardé Daniel. — Ça y est encore !... — Seulement, voilà, a dit Daniel : cette fois, ça n'est plus comme d'habitude. On est là en plein dans le champ. Depuis hier, on marche en tirailleurs. Pas un seul n'a l'air de savoir. Le commandant est venu ; il a parlé avec le capitaine et les lieutenants : "Où va-t-on ?" lui a demandé le capitaine. Il a fait comme ça des bras pour dire : "Je ne sais pas." Et puis il a dit : "Non, on ne sait rien. On ne sait pas où ça va se produire. On nous emploiera là où ça sera utile et ça, on ne peut savoir où." Alors, tu vois, ça n'a pas l'air d'être une attaque. On est plutôt des poignées de mortier et là où ça craquera on nous écrasera dessus la fente pour boucher.

Lieutenant Irving.” Crozier didn’t mean to put quite so much bark into the greeting, but he’s not unhappy when the young man levitates as if poked by the point of a sharp blade, almost loses his balance, grabs the iced railing with his left hand, and — as he insists on doing despite now knowing the proper protocol of a ship in the ice — salutes with his right hand. It’s a pathetic salute, thinks Crozier, and not just because the bulky mittens, Welsh wig, and layers of cold-weather slops make young Irving look something like a saluting walrus, but also because the lad has let his comforter fall away from his cleanshaven face — perhaps to show Silence how handsome he is — and now two long icicles dangle below his nostrils, making him look even more like a walrus.

Fitzjames and Lieutenant Gore, working with Captain Crozier from Terror, had confirmed from their star sightings that the current was pushing the ice flow south at a pitiful one and a half miles per month, but this mass of ice on which they were pinned had rotated counterclockwise all winter, returning them to where they had begun.

IRVING Lat. 69° 37′ 42″ N., Long. 98° 40′ 58″ W. 24 April, 1848 Except for the fact that John Irving was sick and half-starving and his gums were bleeding and he feared that two of his side teeth were loose and he was so tired that he was afraid he would collapse in his tracks at any moment, this was one of the happiest days of his life. All this day and the previous day, he and George Henry Hodgson, old friends from the gunnery training ship Excellent before this expedition, had been in charge of teams of men doing some hunting and honest-to-God exploring. For the first time in this accursed expedition’s three years of sitting around and freezing, Third Lieutenant John Irving was a true explorer.

on August 14, Lieutenant David Graben was hit hard by anti-aircraft fire while flying a rescue mission for a downed CIA T-28 in Laos. Zooming his burning jet up to 39,000 feet, he starved the fire of oxygen, then glided down to Korat for a safe landing.

That new mindset moves you from a state of panic into a state of power. Do you remember in the movie Forest Gump how Lieutenant Dan battles the storm on the mast of his ship. “Is that all ya got?” he screams as the waves wash over him. The storm could not throw enough at him. When it eventually passed, he was a transformed man.

There were lots and lots of Lieutenant Dan. His dog only had three legs.

I’d adopted Lieutenant Dan when Amy and I were together.

Lieutenant Dan was a three-legged two-year-old Bernese mountain dog.

Meade had personal and professional respect for five of his seven corps commanders—Reynolds, Hancock, Sykes (now heading the Fifth Corps), Sedgwick, and Slocum. After Chancellorsville he had doubts about Otis Howard. About Dan Sickles he had grave doubts.

Father," Chartrand said, "may I ask you a strange question?" The camerlegno smiled. "Only if I may give you a strange answer." Chartrand laughed. "I have asked every priest I know, and I still don't understand." "What troubles you?" The camerlegno led the way in short, quick strides, his frock kicking out in front of him as he walked. His black, crepe-sole shoes seemed befitting, Chartrand thought, like reflections of the man's essence... modern but humble, and showing signs of wear. Chartrand took a deep breath. "I don't understand this omnipotent-benevolent thing." The camerlegno smiled. "You've been reading Scripture." "I try." "You are confused because the Bible describes God as an omnipotent and benevolent deity." "Exactly." "Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning." "I understand the concept. It's just... there seems to be a contradiction." "Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man's starvation, war, sickness..." "Exactly!" Chartrand knew the camerlegno would understand. "Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn't He?" The camerlegno frowned. "Would He?" Chartrand felt uneasy. Had he overstepped his bounds? Was this one of those religious questions you just didn't ask? "Well... if God loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help." "Do you have children, Lieutenant?" Chartrand flushed. "No, signore." "Imagine you had an eight-year-old son... would you love him?" "Of course." "Would you do everything in your power to prevent pain in his life?" "Of course." "Would you let him skateboard?" Chartrand did a double take. The camerlegno always seemed oddly "in touch" for a clergyman. "Yeah, I guess," Chartrand said. "Sure, I'd let him skateboard, but I'd tell him to be careful." "So as this child's father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?" "I wouldn't run behind him and mollycoddle him if that's what you mean." "But what if he fell and skinned his knee?" "He would learn to be more careful." The camerlegno smiled. "So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child's pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?" "Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It's how we learn." The camerlegno nodded. "Exactly.

Je n'en sais pas plus, je n'ai pas avancé d'un pas, se dit Stefan en attendant le train pour Bucarest. Si au moins j'avais une version personnelle, comme dans ce conte d' Akutagawa que m'a fait lire Radu, "Dans le fourré": le même fait relaté par plusieurs témoins. D'abord la "Déposition d'un bûcheron interrogé par le lieutenant criminel" et, pour finir, le "Récit de l'ombre par la bouche d'une sorcière". Deux questions restent néanmoins sans réponse. La première: Qu'a-t-il fait après avoir vu le sac jaune à la plage? Il a d'abord nié l'avoir vu, ensuite il a avoué, mais il n'en a pas dit plus. La seconde: Qu'a-t-il fait dans la remise, à la pêcherie, avant de couper du bois? A-t-il caché le sac volé la veille? Car c'est là qu'on a trouvé l'autre, avec nos casse-croûte altérés. Et Stefan de se remémorer ce qu'il a écrit: "Il y a farfouillé pendant quelque temps, on entendait des bruits de planches et de caisses déplacées, comme s'il cherchait ou cachait quelque chose." Je n'ai pas avancé d'un pas! Tant pis! De toute façon, ces quatre chapitres seront le début de mon prochain roman.  (p. 190)

À partir d'aujourd'hui [10 mai 1944], officiellement, nous ne sommes plus dans un ghetto mais dans un camp. Sur chaque maison a été placardée une affiche où l'on peut lire tout ce qui est interdit avec la signature de Péterffy, lieutenant-colonel de la gendarmerie, commandant du camp-ghetto d'Oradea. En fait, tout est interdit, mais le plus terrible c'est qu'il n'y a qu'une seule peine : la mort. En cas de faute, peu importe sa gravité, nous ne sommes ni envoyés au coin, ni battus, ni privés de nourriture ou obligés de recopier cent fois des verbes irréguliers comme à l'école, rien de tout ça, rien de rien ! Une seule et unique punition : la mort. Il n'est pas précisé si les enfants sont concernés, mais moi je crois que la règle s'applique aussi à eux. (p. 118)