When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime.
I did my job. I’d do it again.
War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.
You don’t need to wear a patch on your arm to have honor.
The effects of loss are acute, and unique to each individual. Not everyone mourns in the same way, but everyone mourns
I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end.
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come Whispering 'it will be happier'
The year is done. I spread the past three hundred sixty-five days before me on the living room carpet… I fold the good days up and place them in my back pocket for safekeeping. Draw the match. Cremate the unnecessary. The light of the fire warms my toes. I pour myself a glass of warm water to cleanse myself for January. Here I go. Stronger and wiser into the new.
The year was past the edge, heading away from the dark... Of course, dark would come again, but that was in the nature of the world. Many things were beginning.
I hope that in the year to come, you make mistakes. Glorious, amazing mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.
New year is another opportunity of seeing life with little more caring, compassion, maturity and beauty.