Battle of life

“ After your entrance into it, it will not be long before you begin to realise the full meaning of what is called "the Battle of Life." You will find a ceaseless strife going on everywhere in pursuit of food, fortune or fame. ”

“ THE CONQUEST OF NATURE
I MAN AND NATURE "Young men," said a wise physician in addressing a class of graduates in medicine, "you are about to enter the battle of life. Note that I say the 'battle' of life. Not a playground, but a battlefield is before you. It is a hard contest—a battle royal. ”

“ There is no longer, as in former days, a battle of a single day, wherein one is either victor or vanquished, where the outcome is decisive. The attack of to-day is [211] one of the rôles in the drama of life, like being a soldier. Yes, it is life itself. ”

“ Here was war in the true sense as she knew it; not the flinging of a greater force against a lesser, winning on the field of battle and in the very boastful pride of victory, losing in the field of life. ”

“ How tremendous, therefore, must be the struggle for existence! It is thought a terrible thing in battle when one half the whole number of combatants perish. But what are we to think of a battle for life where only one in a thousand survives? ”

“ Yet there shall be many a noble soldier,
Many a noble battle worth the winning,
Many a hopeless battle worth the losing.
Life is battle,
Life is battle, even to the sunset. [Pg 5]
Soldiers of the Light shall strive forever,
In the wards of pain, the ways of labour,
In the stony deserts of the city,
In the hives where greed has housed the helpless ”

“ He had to fight with successive waves of barbarians, inured to danger, adventurous and hardy, holding life in little estimation, willing to die in battle, intrepid in soul, and bent on ultimate victory. ”

“ War typifies and embodies physically the aspect of battle and struggle which belongs to all life, both to our inner and our outer living,in a world whose method is a meeting and wrestling of forces which progress by mutual destruction towards a continually changing adjustment expressive of a progressive harmonising and hopeful of a perfect harmony based upon some yet ungrasped potentiality of oneness. ”

“ In this one I desire to give if possible the impression, for it can be no more than an impression, of a life which in its conflicts and its victories manifested throughout heroic qualities. Such qualities can be shown in many ways, and the field of battle is only one of the fields of human endeavor where heroism can be displayed. ”

“ Among the complicated doings of the world, the features which I followed—and still continue to follow—with passionate interest were the phases of a battle,—the battle which a new idea, a young movement, had begun to wage with deep-rooted existing phenomena. ”

“ War! is the battle cry of a people, who, long suffering and patient, but now, goaded to desperation and thoroughly exasperated, are determined, at all hazards, to protect the rights for which their forefathers fought, bled and died ”

“ It was like the eve of a battle; the heart beat, the eyes laughed, and they felt that the life they were perhaps going to lose, was, after all, a good thing. ”

“ Some truth there must be in the old phrase which speaks of life as a battle. No conflict, no character. Without strife, a weak life. But what is the real meaning of the battle? What is the vital issue at stake? What are the things worth fighting for? In what spirit, with what weapons, are we to take our part in the warfare?
There is an answer to these questions in the text: Overcome evil with good. The man who knows this text by heart, knows the secret of a life that is both strenuous and simple. ”

“ For what is this life of ours but a continual temptation and warfare upon earth? Hence comes that terrible struggle with our enemies, many and strong, whom we are not able to withstand, unless, thou, the Lord mighty in battle, fight for us and protect us. ”

“ Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game. ”

“ You have patiently endured privations, hardships, and difficulties unappalled; you have encountered odds of two to one of the enemy against you, and borne yourselves, in the onset and conflict of battle, in a manner unknown in the annals of modern warfare. ”

“ The flowers which we wove into chaplets at our feasts to wreathe ourselves withal, they are withered and noxious. But the good{98} deeds we have done, the nobler traits of character we have developed—these are imperishable.
As in every battle, so in the great battle of Humanity, the fallen and wounded, too, have a share in the victory; by their sufferings they have helped, and the greenest wreaths belong to them. ”

“ The Lord gathered the people to where they are gathered by his word; and we may say, to all human appearance, the greatest difficulty is to supply ourselves with the necessary comforts of life; but the battle has been fought, and the victory gained. Fruitful fields are opening all around and extending in every direction. ”

“ They solve the question by the sacrifice of the one or the other. If one considers only the lower and somewhat vulgar aspect of military life it is found to be composed of monotonous obligations clothed in a mechanical procedure of indispensable repetition. If one learns to grasp it in its ensemble and large perspective, it will be found that the days of extreme trial demand prodigies of vigor, spirit, intelligence, and decision! ”

“ Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the fields of battle which have their heroes; ”

“ I will make the blood to stream from their joints, when the sculls of the warriors leap from the blow of my sword. How many chiefs, when they see me eager in the fight, throw away their arms, and save themselves by flight! I am the bold one. As to [85] the fire of war, I kindle it, and hurl the tribes into punishments and death. Death, in the direful combat, fears me, when the battle-dust rises; and the sand-cloud is like a blazing fire. My joy is in the encounter of heroes, when spears and swords clash in my grasp. How many battle-dusts have I dived into, fearless of calamities! ”

“ Where I can fight for liberty and Thee.
Give others, God, the glory; mine the right
To stand beside my comrades in the fight,
To die, if need be, in some foreign land—
Absolved and solaced by a soldier's hand.
O Lord, my God, pray barken to my prayer
And keep me ever humble, keep me where
The fight is thickest, where, 'midst steel and flame,
Thy sons give battle, calling on Thy name. ”

“ It will be a gleesome journey,
On the swift-shod feet of thought;
You can fight a bloodless battle,
You can skirmish along the route,
But it's not worth while to forage,
There are rations enough without. ”

“ This transferred the very scene of conflict, the theatre of spiritual warfare, from an external to an internal world, and the social significance of such individual battle lay in its being typical of all men's lives. ”

“ And what death would be more glorious than yours? on a battle-field in which the elements themselves should join, where you would stand in the midst, high above all, like the angel of death, proclaiming resistance to the last, in a voice which would be heard above the battle-cry; and, when all had fallen, when there remained none to help, you alone would snatch the victory from the enemy's hand, and bear it with you—not to the grave, but to heaven! ”

“ This battle that is coming, this battle that rushes upon us to-night, is only a beginning. All your lives, it may be, you must fight. Take no thought though I am beaten, though I am utterly overthrown. ”

“ Who feels not where the battle-work is grim
A cloud of witnesses, a tidal wave
Of earth's best passion brim along the front,
Weighing upon him and exalting him,
Leaving the world at ebb to make him brave. ”

“ What does each separate human atom feel, when caught in that whirling tornado of passion and of peril? Who shall make visible to us the actual faces in the fighting-line; or make audible the words—stern order, broken prayer, blasphemous jest—spoken amid the tumult? Who shall give us, in a word, an adequate picture of the soldier's life in actual war-time, with its hardships, its excitements, its escapes, its exultation and despair? ”

“ A battle offers the spectacle of, say, a hundred thousand men lifted up suddenly and simultaneously into a mood of intensest passion—heroic or diabolical—eager to kill and willing to be killed; a mood in which death and wounds count for nothing and victory for everything. ”

“ I feel my soul thrilled with an heroic spirit that would do battle even with the fierce enemy—Death! Give me a fair field and a good cause—a band of warlike brothers moved by the same mighty impulse as that by which I am now excited—and let us have fit weapons and enough of them, and we would sweep the oppressors of the world from the earth, like rotten reeds before a whirlwind. Wisely did the ancients honour their bards above all human greatness. ”

“ Who can tell of the boys, the old men, who were stirred to go to war? Who can count the virgins and the weak, trembling old men? Everyone sang of battle, but did not say that they would fight. Offering their necks to the sword, they promised martyrdom. ”

“ A deserter now, when, in our little rectory corps, I see the hands that grasp the sword growing weaker, and the hands that uphold the sword-bearer’s growing frailer, and when, in eyes keen to pierce the Enemy’s darkness, I read the growing peace prophetic of the battle over? ”

“ Simply because their heart is not in their work, and because when they are ranged inline of battle the only motives which induce them to struggle for victory are the soldier’s instincts and the natural human desire to save their own lives. ”

“ The world is full of warfare 'twixt the evil and the good;
I watched the battle from afar as one who understood
The shouting and confusion, the bloody, blundering fight—
How few there are that see it clear, how few that wage it right! ”

“ Many death-sick nations have reached convalescence through a series of battles, a procession of battles, a weary tale of wasting conflicts stretching over years, but only one has reached it in a single day and by a single battle. ”

“ Earth may run red with other wars—they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living ”

“ Although endowed with a perception keen enough to discern the hidden plans of opposing generals, he could but see one road to immortality—a path which led through battle-fields and marshes wet with human gore ”

“ Made strong by this, he endures the ordeal, the hazard of death, in the full splendour of the war, or at its sullen, dragging close, or in the battle's onset, or on patrol, the test of the dauntless, surrendering the sight of the sun, the coming of spring, and all that the arts and various wisdom of the centuries have added of charm or depth to nature's day. ”

“ When we walk through the field of battle, slippery with blood, and strewn with the bodies of the slain—when we hear the shrieks and the groans of the wounded and the dying—when we see the country wasted, cities burned, houses pillaged, widows and orphans wailing in the track of the victorious army, we cannot help exclaiming—O, what a blessing is peace! ”

“ You will forth to battle on the morrow with light hearts and determined spirits, though the solemn duty—the duty of avenging the dead—may rest heavy on your souls.
'And in the hour of battle, when all around is darkness, lit by the lurid cannon glare and the piercing musket flash—when the wounded strew the ground, and the dead litter your path—then remember, soldiers, that God is with you. ”

“ And from afar there comes a sound like the confused din of battle,—muffled roaring of cannon, the clatter of fire-arms, the rumble of the earth beneath the hoofs of raging horses,—prayers for the dying can be heard, beseeching pleas to the guider of battles, the chaos and the anguish and the wrath of the fight move farther and farther away ”

“ It may be that before this book is complete in print another, a greater, a longer and bloodier, and a last battle may be begun, and I wish this book may indicate the kind of men who will be fighting it, the stout hearts they will bring to the fight, the manner of faith and assurance they will feel in Victory, complete and final to the gaining of such Peace terms as we may demand. ”

“ Have we grasped the truth that this is no light undertaking; that in this warfare there are no quiet winter quarters into which we may retire, no light summer campaigns to be gaily prosecuted against a foe who flees at our first approach; but that the struggle is inevitable, that it is real, that our enemy is powerful, sleepless, and relentless; and above all, that we are in the thick of the conflict as long as life endures? ”

“ The young soldier who in his first battle tastes the bitterness of defeat and endures the hardships of the hurried march, the wakeful rest under arms, the wretched food, the dirt and worse than dirt, the continual strain upon the nerves, and all things else which are the portion of the conquered, will see war divested of all its seeming glory ”

“ Though many still may linger of the brave, the tried, the true,
They all must quickly gather for the final grand review.
Dead on the field of battle? Nay, living heroes come
With martial note, with banners furled, with sadly muffled drum;
We hear the dirges wailing past upon the fragrant breeze,
And know they swell and sob and die, o'er thousands such as these.
Dead on the field of battle, the bugle sweet and clear
Is telling how they fought and bled, these soldiers we revere;—
These noble comrades, honor crowned, now moving on abreast
To love's eternal camping ground and to eternal rest. ”

“ See, we stand in front, on the perilous edge of battle. We dare the demons who lie in wait to catch your immortal souls. We beat the bushes, and dislodge them from their hiding-places; strong not in our own strength, but in the grace of God. ”