ENOBARBUS: When valor preys on reason,
It eats the sword it fights with.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 3, sc. 13, ll. 240ff (3.13.240-241) (1607)
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Quotations about:
fighting
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Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it’s be brave or else be killed.
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) American author and journalist.
Gone with the Wind, ch. 31 [Ashley] (1936)
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For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
Sun-Tzu (fl. 6th C. AD) Chinese general and philosopher [a.k.a. Sun Wu]
The Art of War, ch. 3
Alt. trans.:
- "Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting"
- "The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities .... It is best to win without fighting."
To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other’s looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions. To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American poet and philosopher [Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruíz de Santayana y Borrás]
The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress, vol. 2 “Reason in Society” (1905)
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