John Keegan · 352 pages
Rating: (5.6K votes)
“Visually Agincourt is a pre-Raphaelite, perhaps better a Medici Gallery print battle - a composition of strong verticals and horizontals and a conflict of rich dark reds and Lincoln greens against fishscale greys and arctic blues.”
― John Keegan, quote from The Face Of Battle: A Study Of Agincourt, Waterloo And The Somme
“One of Picton's officers fell asleep the instant the halt was sounded and did not think of food until later in the night, when he woke to eat some chops cooked in the breastplate of a dead cuirassier (meat fried in a breastplate was very much à la mode in the Waterloo campaign, rather as rats spitted on a bayonet were to be in 1871 or champagne exhumed from chateau gardens in 1914).”
― John Keegan, quote from The Face Of Battle: A Study Of Agincourt, Waterloo And The Somme
“common soldier must fear his officer more than the enemy’: Frederick the Great)”
― John Keegan, quote from The Face Of Battle: A Study Of Agincourt, Waterloo And The Somme
“Rundstedt, revered throughout the German regular officer corps as its last archetypal Prussian, refused to deal with detail or to look at small-scale maps, as if the fighting itself were distasteful to him, but spent his days reading detective stories and thrice resigned his command.”
― John Keegan, quote from The Face Of Battle: A Study Of Agincourt, Waterloo And The Somme
“There cannot be any hard and fast rules. But there can be suggestions and useful analogies. The most useful, to my mind, is that of the difference between the English and French judicial systems. In England (and America), the task of the court in criminal cases, which it devolves upon a jury, is to arrive at a verdict of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ on the evidence presented by prosecuting and defending counsel in turns. Trials are conflicts and verdicts are decisions; the two sides ‘win’ or ‘lose’. In France, and other countries which observe Roman Law, the task of the court in a criminal case is to arrive at the truth, as far as it can be perceived by human eyes, and the business of establishing the outlines of the truth falls not on a jury, which is strictly asked to enter a judgement, but upon a juge d’instruction. This officer of the court, unknown to English law, is accorded very wide powers of interrogation–of the suspect, his family, his associates–and of investigation–of the circumstances and scene of the crime–at which the suspect is often required to participate in a reconstruction. Only when the juge is satisfied that a crime has indeed occurred and that the suspect is responsible will he allow the case to go forward for prosecution. The character of these two different legal approaches is usually defined as ‘accusatorial’ (English) and ‘inquisitorial’ (French) respectively.”
― John Keegan, quote from The Face Of Battle: A Study Of Agincourt, Waterloo And The Somme
John Keegan
Born place: in Clapham, London, The United Kingdom
Born date May 15, 1934
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“My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says 'PRIVATE--GROWNUPS KEEP OUT': a child sprawled on the bed, reading.”
― Anne Fadiman, quote from Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
“I decided at that moment that we would find a way to be together. The future was terrifying, but we would face it together...our pelts brushing,our tails twined. Our hearts in love,forever. -CrowfeatherXLeafpool. Secrets of the Clans pg.122”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Secrets of the Clans
“... there are as holy persons outside orders as ever there are in, and not to trifle with truth, as good men out of the Christian church as most I've met within it. In the Holy Land I've known Saracens I’d trust before the common run of the crusaders, men honourable, generous and courteous, who would have scorned to haggle and jostle for place and trade as some of our allies did. Meet every man as you find him, for we’re all made the same under habit or robe or rags. Some better made than others, and some better cared for, but on the same pattern all.”
― Ellis Peters, quote from A Morbid Taste for Bones
“Funny thing about chains," he said. "They're everywhere, once you know how to look for them. I like chains.
When Cara laughed at this, he shook his chest, causing the hundreds of golden links that hung there to sparkle in the firelight.
"There's lots of kinds of chains," he continued. "You can't see most of them, the ones that bind folks together. But people build them, link by link, Sometimes the links are weak, snap like this one did. That's another funny thing, now that I think of it. Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all."
As he spoke, he held up the chain, which was whole again. Passing the amulet to Cara, he said, "Never was a chain that couldn't be broken. Sometimes it's even a good idea.”
― Bruce Coville, quote from Into the Land of the Unicorns
“I’d definitely found my equal, the woman who made my life a living hell and lived to antagonize me. A woman whose mouth I wanted to tape shut . . . every bit as much as I wanted to kiss it. My girlfriend, my former intern, Miss Chloe Mills. Beautiful Bitch.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Beautiful Bitch
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