Wisdom for Every Moment
Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
Serious sport is war minus the shooting.
One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.
He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.
It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.
Better to fight for something than live for nothing.
Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.
A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.
If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you'll be amazed at the results.
There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.
Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.
The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.
Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.
Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.
Americans play to win at all times. I wouldn't give a hoot and hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor ever lose a war.
There is only one sort of discipline, perfect discipline.
Battle is an orgy of disorder.
Always do everything you ask of those you command.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.
Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.
If a man does his best, what else is there?
Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.
Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.
All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated.
A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.
The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.