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Ww1 Quotes

Browse 47 quotes about Ww1.

Ww1 Quotes

“She did not respond, only clung harder to my embrace, and I held her with all the afflictions of a man torn by love. What a miracle she was, what a truly exquisite paragon of beauty and virtue so incredibly combined. And all perhaps wrenched from my grasp because of a war I had no real interest in nor knowledge of. In that moment I did not care who won, if only it would end and I could be with her. I would accept the whole responsibility of defeat if I had to, if only it meant a life with her by my side. I just wanted her. Needed her. As simply and clearly as one needs food and oxygen and light, I needed her in my life. And above us, flittering tranquilly in the trees above, the finches and skylarks continued to sing peacefully into the fading sun.”

LoveWarRomanceHistoryRomanticQuoteEmbraceHugWw1FinchesConfictJamie L HardingThe War Of The Finches
Author:Jamie L. Harding
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“And then—but I suppose we'll be able to endure it somehow. To me, the strangest of all the strange things since 1914 is how we have all learned to accept things we never thought we could —to go on with life as a matter of course. [...] If one of them does not come back my heart will break—yet I go on and work and plan—yes, and even enjoy life by times. There are moments when we have real fun because, just for the moment, we don't think about things and then—we remember—and the remembering is worse than thinking of it all the time would have been.”

JoySufferingResilienceWwiWw1L M MontgomeryRilla Of Ingleside
Book:Rilla of Ingleside: A Tale of Youth and War in the Glen
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“No lack of time, strength or money shall prevent me from doing anything that I want to do,” was Sarah Macnaughtan’s lifelong motto, first uttered in her younger years. A compassionate and daring woman ahead of her time who stood barely over 5 feet tall, Sarah let no obstacles become roadblocks in her life.”

LifeWomenCompassionCourageEnglandBraveryScotlandScottishOvercoming ObstaclesWw1
Book:The Strange Side of War: A Woman’s WWI Diary
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“It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world.”

WarRealityTruthDeathHumanityMoralityDestructionMadnessHypocrisyCivilizedAggressionEliteWw1JingoismRuling ClassJames Connolly
Author:James Connolly
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“The consequences of the 1918 armistice that became the 1919 Treaty of Versailles slammed into the last century like a hurricane making landfall at high tide, pushing ever more violent waters up the rivers of history, transforming streams into raging cataracts and covering the global landscape with an ever-rising flood. Looking back over the last hundred years and seeing the fervent desire for war and the sadistic means in which armies murdered their way to bitter victory, we have to grimly conclude that the Great War never ended. The nightmare continued.”

WarHorrorWw1
Book:Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror
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“We do not see the guns that bombard us; the attacking lines of the enemy infantry are men like ourselves; but these tanks are machines, their caterpillars run on as endless as the war, they are annihilation, they roll without feeling into the craters, and climb up again without stopping, a fleet of roaring, smoke-belching armour-clads, invulnerable steel beasts squashing the dead and wounded—we shrivel up in our thin skin before them, against their colossal weight our arms are sticks of straw, and our hand-grenades matches.”

WarTanksWorld War 1Ww1Remarque
Book:All quiet on the western front
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“When I see them here, in their rooms, in their offices, about their occupations, I feel an irresistible attraction in it, I would like to be here too and forget the war; but also it repels me, it is so narrow, how can that fill a man’s life, he ought to smash it to bits; how can they do it, while out at the front the splinters are whining over the shell-holes and the star-shells go up, the wounded are carried back on waterproof sheets and comrades crouch in the trenches. — They are different men here, men I cannot properly understand, whom I envy and despise.”

WarWorld War 1Ww1Remarque
Book:All quiet on the western front
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“Can the spring really come this year?' Then she laughed—such a dreadful little laugh, just as one might laugh in the face of death, I think, and said 'Observe my egotism. Because I, Gertrude Oliver, have lost a friend, it is incredible that the spring can come as usual. The spring does not fail because of the million agonies of others—but for mine—oh, can the universe go on?' 'Don't feel bitter with yourself, dear,' mother said gently. 'It is a very natural thing to feel as if things couldn't go on just the same when some great blow has changed the world for us. We all feel like that.”

DeathLossGriefSpringWwiWw1L M MontgomeryRilla Of Ingleside
Book:Rilla of Ingleside: A Tale of Youth and War in the Glen
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“I have lived now for over a century, yet I can still say with complete confidence that no one can claim to have plumbed the depths of human misery who has not shared the fore-ends of a submarine with a camel.”

HumorHumourWw1CamelSubmarine
Book:A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire
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“Bergson felt the event of the First World War this way. Before it broke out, it appeared both possible and impossible (the similarity with the suspense surrounding the Iraq war is total), and at the same time he experienced a sense of stupefaction at the ease with which such a fearful eventuality could pass from the abstract to the concrete, from the virtual to the real. We see the same paradox again in the mix of jubilation and terror that characterized, in a more or less unspoken way, the event of 11 September. It is the feeling that seizes us when faced with the occurrence of something that happens without having been possible. In the normal course of events, things first have to be possible and can only actualize themselves afterwards. This is the logical, chronological order. But they are not, in that case, events in the strong sense. This is the case with the Iraq war, which has been so predicted, programmed, anticipated, prescribed and modelled that it has exhausted all its possibilities before even taking place. There is no longer anything of the event in it. There is no longer anything in it of that sense of exaltation and horror felt in the radical event of 11 September, which resembles the sense of the sublime spoken of by Kant. The non-event of the war leaves merely a sense of mystification and nausea.”

Iraq WarWw1911 AttacksBergsonPossibles And Impossibles
Book:The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact
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“To The Warmongers I'm back again from hell With loathsome thoughts to sell; secrets of death to tell; And horrors from the abyss. Young faces bleared with blood sucked down into the mud, You shall hear things like this, Till the tormented slain Crawl round and once again, With limbs that twist awry Moan out their brutish pain, As the fighters pass them by. For you our battles shine With triumph half-divine; And the glory of the dead Kindles in each proud eye. But a curse is on my head, That shall not be unsaid, And the wounds in my heart are red, For I have watched them die.”

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Book:The War Poems
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“The last time I saw Collin was in 1917, at the foot of Mort-Homme. Before the great slaughter, Collin’d been an avid angler. On that day, he was standing at the hole, watching maggots swarm among blow flies on two boys that we couldn’t retrieve for burial without putting our own lives at risk. And there, at the loop hole, he thought of his bamboo rods, his flies and the new reel he hadn’t even tried out yet. Collin was imaging himself on the riverbank, wine cooling in the current his stash of worms in a little metal box and a maggot on his hook, writhing like… Holy shit. Were the corpses getting to him? Collin. The poor guy didn’t even have time to sort out his thoughts. In that split second, he was turned into a slab of bloody meat. A white hot hook drilled right through him and churned through his guts, which spilled out of a hole in his belly. He was cleared out of the first aid station. The major did triage. Stomach wounds weren’t worth the trouble. There were all going to die anyway, and besides, he wasn’t equipped to deal with them. Behind the aid station, next to a pile of wood crosses, there was a heap of body parts and shapeless, oozing human debris laid out on stretchers, stirred only be passing rats and clusters of large white maggots. But on their last run, the stretcher bearers carried him out after all… Old Collin was still alive. From the aid station to the ambulance and from the ambulance to the hospital, all he could remember was his fall into that pit, with maggots swarming over the open wound he had become from head to toe… Come to think of it, where was his head? And what about his feet? In the ambulance, the bumps were so awful and the pain so intense that it would have been a relief to pass out. But he didn’t. He was still alive, writhing on his hook. They carved up old Collin good. They fixed him as best they could, but his hands and legs were gone. So much for fishing. Later, they pinned a medal on him, right there in that putrid recovery room. And later still, they explained to him about gangrene and bandages packed with larvae that feed on death tissue. He owed them his life. From one amputation and operation to the next – thirty-eight in all – the docs finally got him “back on his feet”. But by then, the war was long over.”

WarSufferingWw1AmputationMedalsBasket Case
Book:Goddamn This War!
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“As Ramses did the same for his mother, he saw that her eyes were fixed on him. She had been unusually silent. She had not needed his father's tactless comment to understand the full implications of Farouk's death. As he met her unblinking gaze he was reminded of one of Nefret's more vivid descriptions. 'When she's angry, her eyes look like polished steel balls.' That's done it, he thought. She's made up her mind to get David and me out of this if she has to take on every German and Turkish agent in the Middle East.”

MotherhoodWw1Amelia PeabodyRamses
Book:He Shall Thunder in the Sky
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“Bells Screamed all off key, wrangling together as they collided in midair, horns and whistles mingled shrilly with cries of human distress; sulphur-colored light ex-ploded through the black windowpane and flashed away in darkness. Miranda waking from a dreamless sleep asked without expecting an answer, “What is happening?” for there was a bustle of voices and footsteps in the corridor, and a sharpness in the air; the far clamour went on, a furious exasperated shrieking like a mob in revolt. The light came on, and Miss Tanner said in a furry voice, “Hear that? They’re celebrating . It’s the Armistice. The war is over, my dear.” Her hands trembled. She rattled a spoon in a cup, stopped to listen, held the cup out to Miranda. From the ward for old bedridden women down the hall floated a ragged chorus of cracked voices singing, “My country, ’tis of thee…” Sweet land… oh terrible land of this bitter world where the sound of rejoicing was a clamour of pain, where ragged tuneless old women, sitting up waiting for their evening bowl of cocoa, were singing, “Sweet land of Liberty-” “Oh, say, can you see?” their hopeless voices were asking next, the hammer strokes of metal tongues drowning them out. “The war is over,” said Miss Tanner, her underlap held firmly, her eyes blurred. Miranda said, “Please open the window, please, I smell death in here.”

DeathWorld War OneInfluenzaWw1Southern WritersArmisticeFemale Writers1918Short NovelsKatherine Anne PorterSpanish Influenza1918 InfluenzaPale Horse Pale Rider
Book:Pale Horse, Pale Rider
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“… the white stain of chalk mixed with the clay topsoil zigzagging across the freshly-turned earth, the tell-tale marks of the German trenches from which ***** had been enfiladed. Fifty ploughings and fifty harvests had failed to erase those marks, so maybe they were etched into the land for all time, just like the spadework of the ancient peoples which the archaeologists studied with such fervour.”

Great WarFirst World WarWw1Trench Warfare
Book:Other Paths to Glory
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“Izolarea la care au fost supuși basarabenii în timpul regimului țarist a făcut ca aceștia să nu fie pregătiți pentru evenimentele care au avut loc în anii 1917‑1918. După cum am văzut în capitolele precedente, unii dintre ei se „deșteptau“ în timpul studiilor din marile orașe ale Imperiului Rus, când luau exemplu de la estonieni, polonezi, ucraineni etc. Văzând că aceștia vorbeau în propria limbă, aveau un cult pentru propriii lor scriitori etc., moldovenii au început să aibă idealuri precum introducerea limbii române în școală, biserică și administrație sau chiar proclamarea unei autonomii locale în Basarabia. Acestor idealuri li se adăuga, sub influența mișcărilor socialiste din Rusia, necesitatea de a dobândi „pământ și voie“, cum spuneau ei, ceea ce se traducea prin introducerea votului universal și realizarea unei reforme agrare. În special aceste două deziderate îi mobilizau pe moldoveni, iar pământul era cerința cea mai importantă pentru ei. În ceea ce privește unirea cu România, aceasta nu exista în lista de deziderate ale elitei basarabene în 1917, cu mici excepții. Atașamentul față de Rusia era unul puternic, moldovenii considerând că problemele pe care le întâmpinau se datorau doar regimului țarist. Guvernul provizoriu sau „vremelnica stăpânire“, cum i se spunea, avea o componentă socialistă solidă, ceea ce le dădea încredere românilor din Basarabia că viitorul le va aduce realizarea reformelor sociale de care aveau nevoie. Pe de altă parte, majoritatea moldovenilor nici nu erau conștienți de apartenența lor la poporul român, mulți aflând de acest lucru cu ocazia intrării în contact cu frații lor de peste Prut, pe frontul din România. În plus, chiar dacă unii ar fi vrut, în sinea lor, ca Basarabia să se unească cu România, acest lucru părea imposibil din moment ce România era aliată cu Rusia în război.”

Ww1Istorie1918RomâniaMoldovaBasarabiaMarea Unire
Book:Elita Basarabiei la 1917-1918. Zece personalități care au făcut Unirea
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“Her soul died that night under a radiant silver moon in the spring of 1918 on the side of a blood-spattered trench. Around her lay the mangled dead and the dying. Her body was untouched, her heart beat calmly, the blood coursed as ever through her veins. But looking deep into those emotionless eyes one wondered if they had suffered much before the soul had left them. Her face held an expression of resignation, as though she had ceased to hope that the end might come.”

DepressionWw1War Story
Book:Not So Quiet...
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“I just call a volunteer standing two steps next to me who holds his head out for too long after the shot. At that moment, his head jolts, the familiar and terrible dull sound of the bullet’s impact sounds, and the man slowly collapses. The bullet penetrated the forehead and tore off half the skullcap behind. Still mid-fall, he claws his hands into the wound and smears himself over and over with his own brain. It was a terrible sight.”

CombatWw1War StoryWar MemoirThe Great WarWar Diary
Book:The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary and Photos of a German Officer
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“He'd grown accustomed to the yawning emptiness in his own life. Perhaps it always chafed like imagined sackcloth, but like sackcloth in the scriptures, he'd decided at some point in the last months that it ought to be a reminder to fall to his knees. Perhaps the cup given him wasn't happiness, but rather holiness. Perhaps he could do as a man of prayer all that he'd failed to do as a man of action.”

Christian FictionWw1Time Slip RomanceWwll
Book:Yesterday's Tides
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