Fortresses Quotes - Page 4

• Ancient and oriental civilizations were more sensitive than we are to the cycles of things; to the succession of generations, both divine and human; and to change within stasis. Western man is virtually alone in wanting to make his God into a fortress and personal immortality into a bulwark against time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Men, Civilization, Generations

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• In giving our daughter life, her father and I had also given her death, something I hadn't realized until that new creature flailed her arms in what was now infinite space. We had given her disease and speeding cars and flying cornices: once out of the fortress that had been myself, she would never be safe again ... We disappoint our kids and they disappoint us, and sometimes they grow up into people we don't like very much. We go on loving, though what we love may be more memory than actuality. And until the day we die we fear the phone that rings in the middle of the night.

  Mary Cantwell

  Daughter, Growing Up, Memories

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• Be not that far from me, for trouble is near; haste Thee to help me. Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me. O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me

  Barry Pepper

  War, Blessed, Fighting

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• There are going to be a lot of questions, not just in my country, but across the Middle East. Is Israel going to continue to be "Fortress Israel"? Or, as we all hope, become accepted into the neighborhood, which I believe is the only way we can move forward in harmony. And no matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

  Abdallah II

  Country, Spring, Moving Forward

  Interview with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. September 22, 2011.

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• The weapons that were once outside sharpening themselves on war are now indoors there, in the fortress, fragile in glass cases; Why is it (I'm thinking of the careful moulding round the stonework archways) that in this time, such elaborate defences keep things that are no longer (much) worth defending?

  Margaret Atwood

  War, Thinking, Glasses

  Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems: 1965-1975”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The keys of a fortress are always well worth the retirement of the garrison when it is resolved to yield only on those conditions. On this principle it is always wiser to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has made a vigorous resistance than to risk an assault.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Retirement, War, Yield

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• Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism; and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.

  Edward Gibbon

  School, Rome, Years

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.299

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• Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,' Sayna said. 'That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness.

  Jim Butcher

  Love, Hero, Dark

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• Archer, is there a servant girl in my fortress you haven't taken to bed? I announce you're leaving and within minutes two of them are at each other's throats, and another is crying her eyes out in the scullery. Honestly. You've been here all of nine days." - Roen, "Fire

  Kristin Cashore

  Girl, Archer, Taken

  Kristin Cashore (2009). “Fire”, p.73, Penguin

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• When the world is storm-driven and bad things happen, then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.

  Edith Hamilton

  Strong, Men, Advice

  Edith Hamilton (1987). “The Greek way ; The Roman way”, Random House Value Pub

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• It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge.

  Montgomery Schuyler

  Engineering, Bridges, Shrines

  Montgomery Schuyler (1892). “American Architecture”

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• XXVIII "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a rock, a mighty fortress; "Often have I been to it, "Even to its highest tower, "From whence the world looks black." "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a breath, a wind, "A shadow, a phantom; "Long have I pursued it, "But never have I touched "The hem of its garment." And I believed the second traveller; For truth was to me A breath, a wind, A shadow, a phantom, And never had I touched The hem of its garment.

  Stephen Crane

  Rocks, Wind, Long

  Stephen Crane (1998). “War Is Kind and Other Poems”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• Look what [Chinese] are doing, they're building a massive fortress against everything. A massive fortress in the South China Sea. And yet they're ripping us off.

  Donald Trump

  Sea, Chinese, Looks

  Source: time.com

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• ...once again we face a paradox, for it appears that softening your heart and gently tending its wounds will protect you from evil. Building a fortress and defending yourself behind it will only make you more vulnerable. Healing your own heart is the single most powerful thing you can do to change the world. Your own transformation will enable you to withdraw so completely from evil that you contribute to it by not one word, one thought, or one breath. This healing process is like recovering your soul.

  Deepak Chopra

  Powerful, Healing, Heart

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• If [Chinese] are going to rip us off, you wouldn't think they'd be building fortresses.

  Donald Trump

  Rip, Thinking, Chinese

  Source: time.com

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• How I want to see the mountains, rivers, sunshine, and ruined fortresses! Let the wind course over us until we become beautiful

  Mian Mian

  Beautiful, Sunshine, Wind

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• The spectacular landscape circling the fortress supplies an essential backdrop, inspiring dreamers to wander its ruins for the sake of it; North American tourists, bound down by their practical world view, are able to place those members of the disintegrating tribes they may have seen in their travels among these once-living walls, unaware of the moral distance separating them, since only the semi-indigenous spirit of the South American can grasp the subtle differences.

  Che Guevara

  Wall, Distance, Differences

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• It is unfortunate that we have to live in a fortress, but we are forced to do so given the high crime rate in the country. I travel with two bodyguards all the time and there is substantial cost involved

  Vivian Reddy

  Soccer, Country, Two

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• Hitler built a fortress around Europe, but he forgot to put a roof on it.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Europe, Air Power, Aviation

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• Their [the U.S.’s] defense budget in absolute figures is almost 25 times bigger than Russia’s. This is what in defense is referred to as ‘their home — their fortress.’ And good for them, I say. Well done!

  Vladimir Putin

  Home, Russia, Defense

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• Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary--and terrible elegant.

  Muriel Barbery

  Real, Simple, Feelings

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• But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Sex, Wall, Women

  "Love in the Time of Cholera". Book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1985.

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• Our task is to build cultural fortresses to protect our emerging nativeness. They must be strong enough to hold at bay the powers of consumerism, the powers of greed and envy and pride. One of the most effective ways for this to come about would be for our universities to assume the awesome responsibility to both validate and educate those who want to be homecomers -- not necessarily to go home but to go someplace and dig in and begin the long search and experiment to become native.

  Wes Jackson

  Strong, Home, Responsibility

  Wes Jackson (2015). “Becoming Native to This Place”, p.97, Counterpoint

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• Just as the commander of an army pitches his camp, studies the strength and defenses of a fortress, and then attacks it on its weakest side, in like manner, the enemy of our human nature studies from all sides our theological, cardinal, and moral virtues. Wherever he finds us weakest and most in need regarding our eternal salvation, he attacks and tries to take us by storm.

  Ignatius of Loyola

  Army, Enemy, Trying

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• There are a significant number of learned men and women who hold that any successful effort to make ideas lively, intelligible and interesting is a manifestation of deficient scholarship. This is the fortress behind which the minimally coherent regularly find refuge.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Successful, Men, Ideas

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1988). “Economics in Perspective: A Critical History”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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