And yet suddenly, terribly, he wanted it again, the way it used to be, arms linked together, all drunk and singing beautifully into the night, with visions of death from the afternoon and dreams of de...
So it was no cause and no country he fought for, no ideal and no justice. He fought for his people, for the children and the kin, and not even the land, because not even the land was worth the war, bu...
Longstreet took a deep breath. In the winter the fever had come to Richmond. In a week they were dead. All within a week, all three. He saw the sweet faces: moment of enormous pain. The thing had push...
The great white joker in the sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf or a tree.
In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible fiel...
Thought, Lee wants a frontal assault. I guess he’ll have one. He turned to the messenger.
The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.
He shuddered. He remembered that day in church when he prayed from the soul and listened and knew in that moment that there was no one there,
Everybody knows all the movements. General So and So should have done such and such. God knows we all try. We none of us lose battles on purpose. But now on this field what can we do that's undone?
Chamberlain closed his eyes and saw it again. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. No book or music would have that beauty. He did not understand it: a mile of men flowing slowly, steadil...
Amazing. Chamberlain let his eyes close down to the slits, retreating within himself. He had learned that you could sleep on your feet on the long marches. You set your feet to going and after a while...
How can they look in the eyes of a man and make a slave of him and then quote the Bible?
There's nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield.
Perhaps it was only that when you try to put it into words you cannot express it truly, it never sounds as you dream it.
It rained all that night. The next day was Saturday, the Fourth of July.
I'll wave no more flags for home. No tears for Mother. Nobody ever died for apple pie.
The earth was actually shuddering. It was as if you were a baby and your mother was shuddering with cold.
How do you force a man to fight – for freedom? The idiocy of it jarred him.
Why do there have to be men like that, men who enjoy another man's dying?
A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals?