Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Bernard Cornwell

Quote by Bernard Cornwell

“Oh the madness of battle! We fear it, we celebrate it, the poets sing of it, and when it fills the blood like fire it is a real madness. It is joy! All the terror is swept away, a man feels he could live for ever, he sees the enemy retreating, knows he himself is invincible, that even the gods would shrink from his blade and his bloodied shield. And I was still keening that mad song, the battle song of slaughter, the sound that blotted out the screams of dying men and the crying of the wounded. It is fear, of course, that feeds the battle madness, the release of fear into savagery. You win in the shield wall by being more savage than your enemy, by turning his savagery back into fear.”

Quote by Bernard Cornwell

Book:Warriors of the Storm
Create image

Work

Warriors of the Storm

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell, born on February 23, 1944, is a renowned British historical novelist. His works, set in medieval England, are particularly known for their vivid depiction of warfare and knightly life, enjoying great popularity among readers. more

You May Also Like

“If two people with no symptoms in common can both receive the same diagnosis of schizophrenia, then what is the value of that label in describing their symptoms, deciding their treatment, or predicting their outcome, and would it not be more useful simply to describe their problems as they actually are? And if schizophrenia does not exist in nature, then how can researchers possibly find its cause or correlates? If psychiatric research has made so little progress in recent decades, it is in large part because everyone has been barking up the wrong tree. It is not a question of getting a bigger and better scanner, but of going right back to the drawing board. What’s more, medical-type labels can be as harmful as they are hollow. By reducing rich, varied, and complex human experiences to nothing more than a mental disorder, they not only sideline and trivialize those experiences but also imply an underlying defect that then serves as a pseudo-explanation for the person’s disturbed behaviour. This demeans and disempowers the person, who is deterred from identifying and addressing the important life problems that underlie his distress.”

ResearchMadnessMental HealthMental IllnessPsychiatryDiagnosisSchizophreniaMental Disorders
Book:The Meaning of Madness
Create image

“Then, as we turned the final curve past the abandoned little hamlet of Ballydubh, with the village almost out of sight, he forced me to turn around and take in the full sweep of the mountains and the sea. "And there", he said, "is your An Clohan. You had best said good-bye, now.”

CulturePoliticsLossEthicsMadnessAngerFieldworkRevisiting
Book:Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland
Create image