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This is a collection of quotes and quotations that I find appropriate for the atmosphere I try to create. Again, if you have any that you'd like to see put up here, email me and I'll see what I can do.
What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin.
If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honor.
God's will! I pray thee wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man more from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honor
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse.
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the Feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors
And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words--
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester--
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered--
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother. Be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day!
--Henry V act IV, scene iii ll 18-67
But I sort of wish that more of the people who talk so blithely about "conflict" had had a chance to watch a kid or two bleed out on a stretcher.
A lot of fictional violence has been cleaned up. When I was a kid, I watched Davy Crockett shoot an Indian into a neat, bloodless swan dive from a tree branch. Nowadays you can see a lot of the equivalent thing on TV, folks using fully-automatic weapons which do even less obvious injury than Davy's flintlock had. In prose, the normal technique is for the victim to fall over, out of the storyline, and permit the author to get on to matters of greater interest.
And that's fine, no problem, we all do what we do.... But for my part, I don't want kids joining the Marines--or politicians voting to deploy those Marines--because at the back of their minds they have the notion that real violence is clean and cute.
Violence is sometimes necessary? Maybe; I won't advocate unilateral national disarmament until I'm willing to disarm myself, which at the moment I'm not. But the look and sound and smell of the results of people killing one another--that should be clear to everybody.
Everybody who might be asked some day to kill, or might vote that other people go out and kill for them.
--David Drake At Any Price
And I'm going to do more stories besides this one in the series, because Hammer's Slammers have become a vehicle for a message that I think needs to be more widely known. Veterans who've written or talked to me already understand, but a lot of other people don't.
When you send a man out with a gun, you create a policy maker. When his ass is on the line, he will do whatever he needs to do.
And if the implications of that bother you, then the time to do something about it is before you decide to send him out.
--David Drake Counting the Cost
On the field of battle lie the blackened bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of victory, sat down to rest and, resting, died.
--T. S. Eliot The Wasteland
What it Takes to be Number One by Vince Lombardi
"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don't ever want to finish second again. There is no second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers
played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win. Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he's got to play from the ground up - from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with with their heads. That's O.K. you've got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you've got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second. Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization - an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win - to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don't think it is. It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That's why they are there - to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, "by the rules - but to win. And in truth. I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat. I don't say these things because I believe in the "brute" nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour - his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he's exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."