Civil War Officer

Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or officer:

    They have been waiting for us in a foetor
    Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
    Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
    Of the expropriated mycologist.
    Derek Mahon (b. 1941)

    Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
    And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
    Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
    Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
    Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
    A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;
    Dreading e’en fools, by flatterers besieged,
    And so obliging, that he ne’er obliged;
    Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
    And sit attentive to his own applause:
    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

    This war no longer bears the characteristics of former inter-European conflicts. It is one of those elemental conflicts which usher in a new millennium and which shake the world once in a thousand years.
    Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)

    When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had been forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, “Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can” —and walked out of the room.
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)