Winston S. Churchill · 536 pages
Rating: (223 votes)
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal”
“One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. Life is a whole, and luck is a whole, and no part of them can be separated from the rest.”
“It matters very little whether your judgments of people are true or untrue, and very much whether they are kind or unkind,”
“He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.”
“Spare the conquered and confront the proud.”
“A man may be poor; he may have nothing at all except his labour to sell; he may be a manual worker for a weekly wage, but in a free commonwealth he must enjoy as good a right as any lord, or prelate, or capitalist in the country to the integrity of his own political convictions.”
“Let it never be said that you crept into the crypt, crapped, and crept out again.”
“One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision.”
“The uncertainty and importance of the present reduce the past and future to comparative insignificance, and clear the mind of minor worries. And when all is over, memories remain which few men do not hold precious.”
“We, in short, propose to tax luxuries, monopolies, and superfluities, but we scrupulously avoid taxing the necessaries of life.”
“Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.”
“Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world.”
“So I’d been called the Barbara Walters of weird shit.There’s weird shit and then there’s weird shit.”
“Kate said, her eyes very large, ‘I find your rudeness abominable and your politeness obnoxious but my goodness, Francis Crawford, what terrifies me more than a jungle of tigers is the moment when you look worried.”
“Anxiety and anticipation, I was to learn, are the essential ingredients in suffering from pain, as opposed to feeling pain pure and simple.”
“I hoped what little dinner I'd eaten wasn't something my new baby-rich body didn't like. I didn't want to throw up all over the bad guys, or then again maybe I did. It would certainly be distracting.”
“Liam had seen warriors playing chess, and started to pepper me with questions about the rules. As the dishes were removed, nothing would satisfy him but that we play a game. "I know your memory is not like ours," he spoke eagerly as he pulled a wooden box out from under the platform. "So I bartered for this."
He pulled out the first piece with a flourish and pressed it into my hand. I studied it as he set the rest out on the board. The carving was amazing. It was a fierce warrior of the Plains on a galloping horse, poised to fling a lance at his opponent. But it was plain wood, with no color distinction.
Then I glanced at the board and realized that it wouldn't be a problem telling the pieces apart. One side was the Firelanders, clearly, lean and fierce warriors of both sexes, armed to the teeth. The others were all chubby city-dwellers, unarmored, with no weapons, cowering in fear of their attackers. Even the castles looked afraid somehow.
I arched an eyebrow at Liam, and he had the grace to look embarrassed. "The set is well carved," he offered as if in apology.
I chuckled. "Well, let's just see how you fare against me, Warlord.”
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