Best 769 quotes in «soldier quotes» category

I am Abdumasi of the House of Abd, master of ships, champion cat gambler, and I challenge you to mortal up-fuckery!

I am thankful once again to strip off an old life, as I so often have during these years. I look back upon a soldier, a murderer, a man almost murdered, a man resurrected, a prisoner, a wanderer.

I cannot tell you that the sacrifice will be light: it is a serious thing to stand against the whole current of an age; it is a serious thing to be despised and hated by the generality of one's fellow men. Yet that is increasingly the lot of the truth Christian today. He will not, indeed, be inclined to complain; for he has something with which all that he has lost is not worthy to be compared; and he knows that despite temporary opposition the ultimate future belongs to him and to His Lord. But for the present he is called upon to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. It can hardly be said that unworthy motives of self-interest can lead a man to enter into a calling in which he will win nothing but reproach.

I do not think the long-range bullets I fire provide the mark of a man; I am only dimly aware that they are dehumanising me. They are my opium tto see me through my time here. But with each hit they give, they only provide a feeling respite from the past I cannot escape from and thre present I have chosen to mire myself in. And, grounded as I am in the reality of this hill, I do not yet fully appreciate how this addiction is infecting my future with malediction. With this clinical, psychopathically detached behaviour considered as normal, proper and expected on this hall, I cannot yet stop to think - because I cannot allow myself to here - of how hese respites may be blackening my soul in all the time I will have left on my own back Home - should I even live through the remainder of my months here, in some other corner of this Hell of a country.

I didn’t get it, though. Not at first. Was he training me to be a soldier or trying to kill me? I was pretty sure it was the latter. Then I realized it was both: He really was training me to be a soldier—by trying to kill me.

I feel proud that I have been counted worthy to have blood shed by a traitor, and to suffer torture at the hands of those who have undertaken to trail our Flag in the dust. Signed, Yours as Ever, Franklin M. Haven.

I don’t know how these things died without benefit of a bullet to the brain pan. They seemed to exist in an eternal twilight of longing.

I felt a lunatic’s laugh welling up inside me.

I feel profoundly alone, cut off, unattractive…I feel unloveable. But I respect that unloveable solider—struggling to survive, struggling to be honest, just, honourable. I respect myself.

I feel like so much has been left undone. There are friends I won't see before I leave, there are bills I still need to pay. I haven't written as much as I've wanted, and there are countless things I've said that I wish I could correct, but this is a process that will never end. When my grandmother died she left a library full of books she never finished reading. This is how I feel now.

If you’d saved the girl, you’d be a hero. Next time.

…If one who slays one is a murderer then he who slays a thousand is not a hero,' said Lalu. - Pg. #112, Across the Black Waters.

If only conversations could be more like missions. Identify the target. Get in, do the job, and get out as quickly as possible.

If the thing they were fighting for was important enough to die for then it was also important enough for them to be thinking about it in the last minutes of their lives. That stood to reason. Life is awfully important so if you've given it away you'd ought to think with all your mind in the last moments of your life about the thing you traded it for. So did all those kids die thinking of democracy and freedom and liberty and honor and the safety of the home and the stars and stripes forever? You're goddamn right they didn't. They died crying in their minds like little babies. They forgot the thing they were fighting for the things they were dying for. They thought about things a man can understand. They died yearning for the face of a friend. They died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child They died with their hearts sick for one more look at the place where they were born please god just one more look. They died moaning and sighing for life. They knew what was important They knew that life was everything and they died with screams and sobs. They died with only one thought in their minds and that was I want to live I want to live I want to live. He ought to know. He was the nearest thing to a dead man on earth.

I guess I could drive myself crazy trying to figure out why he left me but I can’t, all I can do is move on, Parisa replied, the words came out smoother and easier than she expected.

I hate myself that I wasn't there for him. I hate that I could not feel it in him. How could I not know what had happened? How could I not hear it in his voice, his comments, or in his demeanor? He needed my help, and I couldn't feel it.

I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. The calling of arms, I have followed from boyhood. I have never sought another. I have known lovers, sired offspring, competed in games, and committed outrages when drunk. I have vanquished empires, yoked continents, been crowned as an immortal before gods and men. But always I have been a soldier.

In 1945, Oppenheimer posited that what happened during the Trinity Test was due to ‘Time Tunnels.’ A 50-year ‘time tunnel.” “So, in 1945, you could send a soldier 50 years back?” “Exactly. Well, except for the fact that at the time we didn’t know if we ever could deliberately send something or someone, but we were already sure it was a one-way trip.

I knew then I was going to die in the street without ever seeing Holly again. All because I tried to help an old woman, proving for all eternity that no good deed goes unpunished.

I know a little of living and a little of dying. I know how to survive, i have mastered it as a soldier gains mastery of his weapons. Yet i prefer dying, for in dying i learn to live.

I’m back. I’m still here. I never left.

I’m not a bad person.

I have become a soldier as competent as my ardent desire to take revenge.

I heard them tearing at it. It was the sound of mortality.

Imagine a soldier who believes killing another human being is wrong, kills his first human being in war when he has never killed before. Worse still, imagine this same soldier has his enemy in his sites and the enemy appears defenseless. Here, he might be allowed the luxury to have that moment with himself to debate whether he should pull the trigger or not. But on another day he may not have that luxury. Imagine further, a soldier is in this situation because his father was a soldier, and his grandfather was a soldier, and he is trying to please them but, unlike them, he doesn’t believe killing people in war is right, yet there he is on the battlefield anyway where ‘killed or be killed’ leads the list in the army’s operation manual. So, he pulls the trigger anyway even though he’s categorically against killing another human being. And maybe this is the first time he’s compromised on such a high principle and he continues killing other people as long as he’s in the war and each time it becomes easier and easier until his principle, his absolute truth, is a motto not to live by, but one that is just a topic of conversation in a philosophy class or a backyard barbecue. War has changed him. From Messages From a Grandfather, by Robert Gately

I'm obsessed with trying to recount events as accurately and honestly as possible, but in practice the only thing I'm really any good at is telling you how I feel.

I put my hands behind my head and lay on my back, trying to hold on to the memories of my family. Their faces seemed to be far off somewhere in my mind, and to get to them I had to bring up painful memories.

In wartime, everyone loves a soldier, and a wounded hero even more so.

It is something that cannot be explained or even understood until you’ve lived it; a man can’t know or fully appreciate his life until he’s been close enough to taste the end of it, and the bonds forged in battle are some of the strongest a man could ever have. We are brothers, the men of ODA 022, and though we didn’t have the same blood running through our veins, we had all shed the blood of others together, and knew that none of us would hesitate to step in the way of fate and take a round or jump on a grenade to save one another.

It’d been a long time since they’d been together, but as close as they were physically, they’d never been so far apart in every other way.

I thought if I loved you enough I could change you. I was so stupid.

I think, though, that another shame of war is that when it’s over, a soldier don’t get to leave it behind where he fought it. He’s gotta carry it right back home with him, in his head, and in his heart.

It just so happened that a big old crocodile had been sunning himself on the beach very close to the soldier who was on point in the left-hand column, but the soldier was concentrating so hard on the tree line ahead that he didn’t notice the creature. Well, the crock got nervous and made a loud hissing sound and then headed for the river. I was nearby in the center column and watched as that soldier turned as white as a sheet.

It might come a time to not follow your passion, so to speak, although it must be prioritized. It may be the case that your passion will serve as the medic, your peace of mind, alongside a higher calling, with your higher calling being the point man.

I turned to her, my whole body hard with tiredness and regret.

Its spiritual revolution time; warrior up and let's get some for the Kingdom and slay them giants of sin and shame, marching upward for God is with us! Push Through church, push through!

It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy

It’s not about winning, it’s about doing what’s right. And yes, we will do what’s right.

It was her turn to hold him up.

Looking toward the Polish Rider she met his calm tender gentle thoughtful gaze. She thought, what he sees is the face of death. He sees the silence of the valley, its emptiness, its innocence — and beyond it the hideous field of war on which he will die. And his poor horse will die too. He is courage, he is love, he loves what is good, and will die for it, his body will be trampled by horses' hooves, and no one will know his grave. She thought, he is so beautiful, he has the beauty of goodness.

I was a spectator who had gotten free admission to a freak show.

Live for your country, die to yourself; live for yourself, die to your country.

I wanted to see the bullet coming, wanted to know the exact moment of my death.

I want to weep for lack of such a noble concept -- a soldier's right to refuse.

Lying half-asleep in his embrace, I looked up and saw on his face the same expression I saw on countless lonely faces every day. It was the homesick look of the children who were lost in the chaos of warfare, witnessing death and disaster, longing for a meaningful touch.

Max?' he asked. 'Yeah?' '...What are you doing?' 'Shooting people.

Mellas was transported outside himself, beyond himself. It was as if his mind watched eveything coolly while his body raced wildly with passion and fear. He was frightened beyond any fear he had ever known. But this brilliant and intense fear, this terrible here and now, combined with the crucial significance of every movement of his body, pushed him over a barrier whose existence he had not known about until this moment. He gave himself over completely to the god of war within him.

...men are poor soldiers in love's war. And it is a war-one that never ends.

Mellas continued to look at the wallet, saying nothing. Hawke, who had been watching Mellas through the steam that rose from his pear-can coffee mug, handed Mellas the cup. Mellas gave a brief smile and took a drink. His hand was shaking. Hawke said in a calm voice, 'Something happened. You want to talk about it?' Mellas didn't answer right away. Then he said, 'I think I know where the gooks are.' He pulled out his map and pointed to the spot, his hand still trembling. 'How do you know that, Mel?' Hawke asked. 'From the direction he crawled after he was shot.' Mellas tossed the wallet down at Fitch. Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out the soldier's unit and rank patches. he looked at them, then at Fitch and Hawke, who were no longer eating. 'I let him crawl toward home with his guts hanging out.' He started sobbing. 'I just left him there.' Snot was streaming from his nose. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.' His hands were now shaking with his body as he clenched the two pieces of cloth to his eyes.

My heart is full and my weapon is clean.