Woe to the man that first did teach the cursed steel to bite in his own flesh, and make way to the living spirit.—Spenser.
Providence for war is the best prevention of it.—Bacon.
The bodies of men, munition, and money, may justly be called the sinews of war.—Sir W. Raleigh.
War is the matter which fills all history, and consequently the only or almost the only view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape; and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.—Burke.
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.—Gibbon.
The fate of a battle is the result of a moment,—of a thought: the hostile forces advance with various combinations, they attack each other and fight for a certain time; the critical moment arrives, a mental flash decides, and the least reserve accomplishes the object.—Napoleon.
The feast of vultures, and the waste of life.—Byron.
I abhor bloodshed, and every species of terror erected into a system, as remedies equally ferocious, unjust, and inefficacious against evils that can only be cured by the diffusion of liberal ideas.—Mazzini.
Weakness.—Weakness is thy excuse, and I believe it; weakness to resist Philistian gold: what murderer, what traitor, parricide, incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it? All wickedness is weakness.—Milton.
The strength of man sinks in the hour of trial; but there doth live a Power that to the battle girdeth the weak.—Joanna Baillie.