Physical fight

“ As it is, I had to choose something where I could fight with other weapons than bone, muscle and bodily endurance. I'm going into the fight of helping men and women in the best way I can, don't you see? ”

“ One reason I wrote to ask for a little talk with you specially, was because I couldn't imagine your doing anything so futile as to pit your physical strength—considerable as it may be—but to pit your muscle against men's is merely absurd. ”

“ On the eve of a combat which promises to be so violent, when all these mortal enemies confront one another, the needs of the fight itself and of finding effective weapons will certainly give me the unexpected jolt which will strike out the sparks which will show me the truth. ”

“ Picture for yourselves two men fighting.—You see them at one moment standing their full height, the next bent double, swerving to right and left, colliding violently, and entangled in a furious encounter; suddenly they break away, recoiling from each other with a bound, rest for a moment, panting and glaring, till suddenly they renew the struggle. Do you suppose that all these intricate evolutions, and the subtle application of muscular force that they imply, can be systematically analysed and taught? ”

“ Or again, do you imagine that anyone would be very anxious in a real fight to run the risk of double hits, by which he might succeed in inflicting a serious wound, but only at the expense of being run through the body himself? ”

“ When we exclaim, "What force!" on seeing a head with prominent bushy brows, incisive nose, deep-set eyes, and a massive jaw, we are indeed expressing our recognition of force, but only of the sort of force underlying instincts of aggression and brutality. ”

“ With these bodily powers of aggression there is a natural outgrowth of mental belligerence. This is a law of Nature. The man who shrinks from a physical contest with his fellows is one of conscious bodily weakness. ”

“ The distinction is well settled in the paralled instance of duress by threats, as distinguished from overmastering physical force applied to a man's body and imparting to it the motion sought to be attributed to him. ”

“ During these frantic leaps and yells, every man distorts his face to the utmost power of his muscles, darting about his glaring eyeballs, and snapping his teeth as if he were in the heat—and actually breathing through his nostrils the very hissing death—of battle. ”

“ With all the force of his being, so to speak, visible, with clenched fists, with the veins on his forehead swollen, with his stern face convulsed by a superhuman effort of will, he demanded that access of feebleness in which all resistance crumbles. ”

“ Wherefore the spirit of the good fighter is terrifying, his occasions sudden; like the stretched cross-bow, whose string is released at the touch of the trigger.
In the maze and tumult of the battle, there is no confusion; in the thick of action the battle array is impenetrable.
If discipline be perfect, disorder can be simulated; if truly bold, we can feign fear; if really strong, we can feign weakness. ”

“ One might trace the terrible conflict which was going on between the living, energetic mind, and the inanimate and helpless body, by the fearful swelling of the veins of his forehead and the contraction of the muscles round the eye. ”

“ Each fight is a spectacle by itself, entirely different from any other. I don’t mean the difference between the fighters in respect to their equipment and appearance, though that contributes to the variety also; I mean the difference in posture, method of defense and attack, style of lunge and parry, and all that; and the countless variations in form in the men, the subtle differences of character which makes them face similar situations so very differently. You’ll get the feeling for it in a half a dozen shows and be as keen on it as the rest of us. ”

“ He found himself fighting desperately in the grip of an immense savage, fighting at a hopeless disadvantage, with the man's knees crushing the breath out of his body, and the man's hands locked upon his throat. ”

“ Strong, that is to say, violent exercise gives vigour to the muscles and nerves: such are digging, and lifting a very heavy burden, while one remains in the same spot, or moves about; or lifting small weights and walking about as much as one can. Of this kind, is the exercise of scaling a rope, and many others of a like kind. The swift kinds of exercise are such as do not require strength and violence, namely, running, fighting with one’s shadow, wrestling with the extremities of the hands, the exercise with the leather bag, and that with the small Ball. ”

“ The next time you look at the front faces of Pershing, Haig, Hindenberg or even that of your traffic policeman, note the extremely muscular face and jaw. Combat or personal fighting is a matter of muscle-action. ”

“ She fought him with fists, feet, knees, teeth and nails, with all the strength of her magnificent body and all the knowledge of hand-to-hand fighting she had acquired in her years of roving and fighting on sea and land. ”

“ Although the development of the wonderful efficiency of the hands has led to a modification of the once powerful canines of our progenitors, the ancestral use of the teeth for attack and defense is attested in the display of anger. In all stations of life differences of opinion may lead to argument and argument to physical combats, even to the point of killing. ”

“ How paralyze your strength with a look, heal your wound with a touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless from my unprotected flesh? How shall I walk on the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean? ”

“ Well, then--these attacks of yours are increasing both in frequency and violence. Each one that comes diminishes your reserve of strength. One more sharp attack might, and probably would, prove fatal to you. ”

“ It, too, has its manual of feints, holds, tricks, and specialties, and calls out wariness, quickness, strength, and shiftiness. Victory need involve no cruelty or even pain to the vanquished. The very closeness of body to body, emphasizing flexor rather than extensor arm muscles, imparts to it a peculiar tone, gives it a vast variety of possible activities, developing many alternatives at every stage, and tempts to many undiscovered forms of permanent mayhem. ”

“ When the rattle of musketry is heard, the smoke of battle, and the wild plunging of the frightened horses, and the shouts and fierce onset of a maddened mass of human beings is felt, there is an excitement, a fever in the blood that strengthens the arm, and hardens the muscles—thoughts of self are forgotten. ”

“ Stamping feet, curses, grunts, groans, the soft sound of fist on flesh, the scraping of squirming masses of men going this way and that, the heavy breathing and other sounds of conflict filled the dusty, smoky air. ”

“ Can we conceive a “law of battle” among unconscious beings? If success in the combat were a mere matter of brute strength, it would imply some consciousness in its dull exercise. But it is more. It is also a trial of skill. ”

“ Severe and early training, long habits of rigid abstemiousness, the toils of war, and, more than all, perhaps, the constant play of a restless, anxious, aspiring temper, had left, undisfigured by superfluous flesh, the grand proportions of a frame, the very spareness of which had at once the strength and the beauty of one of those hardy victors in the wrestling or boxing match, whose agility and force are modelled by discipline to the purest forms of grace. ”

“ The first blow dealt upon such occasions opens the artery of a whole nation, and the wild blood streams forth until strength is utterly exhausted, and the arm yields feebly to the bandage which often only conceals a new fetter. ”

“ Then, like two enemies bound together, and who were making violent efforts to release themselves from this forced embrace, they strained their muscles and nerves, stiffening their limbs without succeeding in releasing themselves. ”

“ If the dire speed of spear that cleaves the bones And bares the inner thews hits not the life, Yet follows a fainting and a foul collapse, And, on the ground, dazed tumult in the mind, And whiles a wavering will to rise afoot. So nature of mind must be corporeal, since From stroke and spear corporeal 'tis in throes. ”

“ Then follows a test of strength, a sort of tug-of-war reversed, for each strives to push the other to his knees, and succeeding, to deal a deadly sideways thrust at the kneeling adversary’s heart with the spike-shaped brow-tines. ”

“ The hands immediately on an attack exert themselves to defend the head and the body; and the limbs are swift to carry off the body from dangers against which resistance would be vain. Even the heart takes alarm from both the eyes and the ears; and when an attack is made on the body, every external muscle becomes inflated and contracts itself, that, by thus collecting and concentrating its force, it may the more effectually resist the assailants, and contribute to the defense of the system. ”

“ We must reckon success a constitutional trait. Courage,—the old physicians taught, (and their meaning holds, if their physiology is a little mythical,) —courage, or the degree of life, is as the degree of circulation of the blood in the arteries. "During passion, anger, fury, trials of strength, wrestling, fighting, a large amount of blood is collected in the arteries, the maintenance of bodily strength requiring it, and but little is sent into the veins. This condition is constant with intrepid persons." Where the arteries hold their blood, is courage and adventure possible. ”

“ In such terrific fights as these, conducted in the extremes of rage and hate, the mechanisms for reënforcing the parts of the body which are of primary importance in the struggle are brought fully into action and are of utmost value in securing victory. ”

“ Indeed, almost all the punishments of a purely physical kind fall within the domain of the organic sensations. What is it that makes punishment formidable, but its threatening the very vitals of the system? It is the lower degree of what, in a higher degree, takes away life.
For example, the muscular system is the seat of a mass of sensibility, pleasurable and painful: the pleasures of healthy exercise, the pains of privation of exercise, and the pains of extreme fatigue. ”

“ Men fall, blood flows, short deep curses ring through the sunny air, the fighters creep up to one another, dodging behind trees and broken ruins, till they are at cruelly short range; faster and faster fly the stones, and scores are lying prostrate, bleeding, groaning and cursing. ”

“ If your adversary strikes at your body you must either get away, stop, or suffer the blow in hopes of being able to hit him in return. In stopping you receive the blow on your arm, and break its force. ”

“ Once the student has thoroughly caught the idea he may teach himself much. Both for purposes of self-defence and of increasing muscular strength it is necessary for the beginner to seek, at every possible opportunity, for parts of the body that are vulnerable to pain and paralysis when a proper grip is taken. ”

“ What a sight it would have been to have seen two of these big brutes in mortal combat, as they charged upon each other with all the impetus to be derived from ten tons of infuriate flesh! We may picture to ourselves horn clashing upon horn, or glancing from each bony shield until some skilful stroke or unlucky slip placed one combatant at the mercy of his adversary.... ”

“ And thus I fought as I never had fought before, against such frightful odds that I cannot realize even now that human muscles could have withstood that awful onslaught, that terrific weight of hurtling tons of ferocious, battling flesh. ”

“ The face and those parts of the body whose defence in the assault we unjustifiably neglect have blood which your enemy may cause to flow. Your adversary is not picked out by yourself. The choice of chance, he may be short or tall, strong or weak, your inferior, your equal, or your superior in physique. ”

“ He lay pressed hard against his adversary, his body adjusting itself to its one pure purpose of choking the other man, resisting exactly at the right moment, with exactly the right amount of strength, the struggles of the other, silent, intent, unchanging, gradually pressing its knuckles deeper, feeling the struggles of the other body become wilder and more frenzied. ”

“ This opens the chest, exercises the limbs, and gives a man all the pleasure of boxing without the blows. I could wish that several learned men would lay out that time which they employ in controversies and disputes about nothing, in this method of fighting with their own shadows. ”

“ One man might have a hundred hard fights in him, another man only twenty; each, according to the make of him and the quality of his fibre, had a definite number, and, when he had fought them, he was done. Yes, he had had more fights in him than most of them, and he had had far more than his share of the hard, gruelling fights—the kind that worked the heart and lungs to bursting, that took the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots of muscle out of Youth's sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain and bones weary from excess of effort and endurance overwrought. ”

“ But if in this experiment you say that a violence is done to nature, I do not doubt but that, if you proceed in the same way, only taking as great a length of vein as possible, and merely remark with what rapidity the blood flows upwards, and fills the vessel from below, you will come to the same conclusion. ”

“ The eye should send to the brain the message—“Yorker on the leg stump,” or whatever it may be—and with the least possible expenditure of force, either of muscle or nerve, the attack should be met. The more the movements of the body are automatic, the less you will exhaust yourself. ”

“ It is a powerful leverage. Twenty seconds after I have started revolving, the blood will be bursting out of his finger-ends, the delicate tendons will be rupturing, and all the muscles and nerves will be mashing and crushing together in a shrieking mass. ”