Quotes from The Face Of Battle: A Study Of Agincourt, Waterloo And The Somme

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



About the author

John Keegan
Born place: in Clapham, London, The United Kingdom
Born date May 15, 1934
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“You’re nuts, but you’re welcome here.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life


“Oh, as the tragedies of Shakespeare have revealed, the fall of kings is but fodder for the riches entertainments.”
― Robert Alexander, quote from The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar


“We only waste energy to have horrible fights with the people we love the most.”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep


“By this evening,” he declared, “we will all know who we are and what we’re doing here!”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter


“HAMM:
In my house.
(pause.)
One day you’ll be blind, like me. You’ll be sitting there, a speck in the void, in the dark, for ever, like me.
(pause.)
One day you’ll say to yourself, I’m tired, I’ll sit down, and you’ll go and sit down. Then you’ll say, I’m hungry, I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up. You’ll say, I shouldn’t have sat down, but since I have I’ll sit on a little longer, then I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up and you won’t get anything to eat.
(pause.)
You’ll look at the wall a while, then you’ll say, I’ll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I’ll feel better, and you’ll close them. And when you open them again there’ll be no wall any more.
(pause.)
Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn’t fill it, and there you’ll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe.
(pause.)
Yes, one day you’ll know what it is, you’ll be like me, except that you won’t have anyone with you, because you won’t have had pity on anyone and because there won’t be anyone left to have pity on.
(pause.)”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame


Interesting books

Games of the Heart
(18.5K)
Games of the Heart
by Kristen Ashley
In This Moment
(7.9K)
In This Moment
by Autumn Doughton
My Life with the Walter Boys
(16.2K)
My Life with the Wal...
by Ali Novak
The Enchanted
(15K)
The Enchanted
by Rene Denfeld
Fruits Basket, Vol. 7
(16.8K)
Fruits Basket, Vol....
by Natsuki Takaya
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
(1.8K)
Pale Horse, Pale Rid...
by Katherine Anne Porter

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.