War Is Glorious/Quotes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


I think a curse should rest on me -- because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment -- and yet -- I can't help it -- I enjoy every second of it
Winston Churchill, A letter to a friend (1916)
"I love it. God help me, I love it so."
General Patton in the 1970 film Patton
"War... it's fantastic!"
Arvid Harbinger, Hot Shots! Part Deux
"My friends, it has often been said that I like war. Friends, I like war. No friends, I LOVE WAR!!"
The Major, Hellsing
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.
John Stuart Mill
"Bloodless victory"? Where's the fun in that?!
Fructose Riboflavin, The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob
"I tell you that neither eating, drinking, nor sleep has as much savor for me as to hear the cry 'Forwards!' from both sides, and horses without riders shying and whinnying, and the cry 'Help! Help!', and to see the small and great fall to the grass at the ditches and the dead pierced by the wood of the lances decked with banners."
Bertran de Born
"The pleasant season is drawing nigh when our ships shall land, when King Richard shall come, merry and proud as he never was before. Now we shall see gold and silver spent; the newly built stonework will crack to the heart's desire, walls crumble, towers topple and collapse, our enemies taste prison and chains. I love the melee of blue and vermilion shields, the many-colored ensigns and the banners, the tents and rich pavilions spread out on the plain, the breaking lances, the pierced shields, the gleaming helmets that are split, the blows given and received."
Bertran de Born
"The nightmares? They never go away, Snake. Once you have been on the battlefield, tasted the thrills, the exhilaration, the tension... It all becomes part of you. Once you've awakened the warrior within, it never sleeps again. You crave ever bigger tensions, ever bigger thrills. As a mercenary, I think that you would have realized all of this by now, Snake. People like you and I, we care nothing for power, money, or even sex... only WAR!"
Big Boss of Metal Gear fame.
"You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know one time we had a hill bombed for 12 hours and when it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinking dink body. The smell... you know that gasoline smell. The whole hill. It smelled like... (sniffs the air, pondering for a moment) victory. (Mortar strike goes off behind him, Colonel Kilgore doesn't even flinch) Someday this war is gonna end."
Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now
"Just because I can give multiple orgasms to the furniture just by sitting on it, doesn't mean I'm not sick of this damn war. The blood. The noise. The endless poetry!"

Rajputs had a certain scorn for Ye-tai barbarity. But this was a day of manliness and no one questioned Ye-tai courage.
...
In a daze, he stared up at the sky. It was sunset, and the mountains were bathed in purple majesty. Around him, vaguely he heard thunderous cheers from thousands of Rajput throats. And, seconds later, felt hands laying him down and beginning to bind his wounds.

A glorious victory. He had not felt this clean -- this Rajput pure -- for many years. Not since the day he fought Raghunath Rao, and first entered himself into Indian legend.
Rajput King Rana Sanga on winning an honorable single combat with Roman General's bodyguard, Valentinian, in Fortune's Stroke by Eric Flint and David Drake