“The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training – sacrifice.”

Old soldiers never die, they just lose their grip on reality after traumatic brain injuries.

We are bound no longer by the straitjacket of the past and nowhere is the change greater than in our profession of arms. What, you may well ask, will be the end of all of this? I would not know! But I would hope that our beloved country will drink deep from the chalice of courage.

Defensive strategy never has produced ultimate victory.

It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.

The chickens are coming home to roost, and you happen to have just moved into the chicken house.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

Even when opportunity knocks, a man still has to get up off his seat and open the door.

For those to whom much is given, much is required. It is not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up. There is no substitute for victory.

I realize that advice is worth what it costs–that is, nothing.

From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea – written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo – “There is no substitute for victory!”

I see that the flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.

Wars are caused by unprotected wealth.

The scale and grandeur of the Russian effort mark it as the greatest military achievement in all history.

Once war is forced upon us, there is no alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory-not prolonged indecision.

No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.

she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face.

Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

It certainly is gravy every day above ground right now, after kicking that heroin habit.

In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets’ nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.

To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling.