Rorke Denver · 304 pages
Rating: (2.2K votes)
“Read. You can always talk with another reader.”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“What we teach is pure SEAL. The lessons are simple, clear, and well-defined: They come right out of our basic values. Winning pays. Losing has consequences. Nothing substitutes for preparation. Life isn’t fair and neither is the battlefield. Even the smallest detail matters. We are a brotherhood. Our success depends on our team performance. And we will not fail.”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“We gotta haul ass so that clown doesn’t catch us,” Trey said. “What?” “That clown on the bicycle. He’s gaining on us. I don’t want that sucker to catch us.” Four days into Hell Week, and Trey truly believed that a clown on a bicycle on the Bay of San Diego was going to catch us in our IBS. He couldn’t let that happen.”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“I like working the day shift,” I told Ro and Rolex as they put their sniper rifles down and we climbed off the roof. “Any shift,” Ro said. It didn’t take long for word to spread across Anbar. A new group of predators were in town now, and they were working around the clock.”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“In summer months, the concrete gets so blisteringly hot, instructors have to hose it down so the recruits won’t singe their hands doing push-ups. The Grinder is where SEAL graduations are held and where, like a constant taunt, the SEAL exit bell hangs. A famous sign is also there: THE ONLY EASY DAY WAS YESTERDAY.”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. —LEO TOLSTOY”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“You’re going to see him quit and some of you are going to say, ‘If he can’t make it, I can’t make it.’ Don’t praise false idols. I promise you—one has nothing to do with the other.”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“Whatever might happen, I always knew my brother had my back.”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“It was like learning life lessons from your big brother or your crazy uncle. How to handle yourself in a bar fight: “Hit first. Hit hard. And be ready to move.” How to behave around women: “Date strippers. Don’t marry strippers.” Some of the advice was sage.”
― Rorke Denver, quote from Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
“As children we accept magic as a normal part of life. Everything seems rooted in it, everything conspires in magic terms.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence
“When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.
Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired -- though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.
Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on -- in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.
Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am."
(Best Company)”
― Philip Larkin, quote from Collected Poems
“Snacks taste better when you’re hungry, but do they ever actually taste bad? I ask you.”
― Spencer Quinn, quote from Dog on It
“On the contrary, I believe it doesn't make much sense to say that one man is worth more than another. One man can be stronger than another but less wise. Or more educated but not so brave. Or more generous but also more stupid. So his value depends on what you want from him; a man can be very good at his job, and worthless if you set him to do some other job.”
― Primo Levi, quote from If Not Now, When?
“If I were asked under what sky the human mind…has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions to some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant—I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life…again I should point to India. Max Müller”
― Huston Smith, quote from The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions
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