“Call listened with amusement--not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep.”
“This is a damn useless conversation. Goodbye. (Charles Goodnight to Woodrow Call)”
“She didn’t know what to do with the severed leg. She had cut it off, but she didn’t want to touch it or even look at it.”
“Not too many men, in his experience, had achieved a great thing, even one. Very few ever achieved more than one, he knew.”
“Still, he was a salaried man. Even though Katie, who had been a good wife, was dead, he was not his own master.”
“He was just a husband and a salaried man. Choice didn’t play any part in his life.”
“There was no degree of competence that would assure anyone of survival, and no scale that would tell a commander which man would live and which man would die.”
“It seemed to him the highest principle, loyalty. He preferred it to honor. He had never been exactly sure what men meant when they spoke of their honor, though it had been a popular word during the time of the War. He was sure, though, what he meant when he spoke of loyalty. A man didn’t desert his comrades, his troop, his leader. If he did he was, in Call’s book, worthless.”
“Endeavour to serve with such good will and attention to the interest of your employers, that they know they are blessed in having gotten such a good servant, one who serves, not with eye-service as a man-pleaser, but in simplicity of heart as a Christian.
- Samuel and Sarah Adams, The Complete Servant”
“And now I should kiss you again, I think. Isn’t that how it’s done?” Startled, she put her hand to her lips. But their rough, cracked surfaces made the very prospect seem ludicrous. “Yes, I suppose—in a gothic romance. But if you kissed me now, no doubt my lip would split open, and I’d bleed on you.” His shout of laughter was quickly restrained. “Well, all right. Since you put it so romantically. Someplace else. Shall I be adventurous?”
“Eternity bores me,
I never wanted it.
From the poem "Years", 16 November 1962”
“I started, squeezing Keir’s shoulder. He did not look at me, turning to look at Simus instead. “Simus, I ask that you undertake the protection of the warprize personally. Designate whatever men you need to hold her safe. Once the commotion has started, place the army on alert.”
Iften rose at that. “Warlord, it’s my place to take charge of the camp, not Joden.” He almost spat Joden’s name.
Keir almost snarled. “Iften, if you had both feet planted on the earth, were bathed in flames, calling a wind, holding my token, and blessed by rain from the skies, still I would not trust you with my warprize.”
Marcus snickered, as did some of the others. Iften turned bright red, but held his tongue.”
“I am not going to change who I am. I am human and I know how to love, and be kind, and be compassionate to those who are weaker than me. Just because I have power doesn't mean I have to use it!”
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