Quotes from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“We interact with one another as individuals responding to a complex haze of factors: professional responsibilities, personal likes and dislikes, ambition, jealousy, self-interest, and, in at least some instances, genuine altruism. Living in the here and now, we are awash with sensations of the present, memories of the past, and expectations and fears for the future. Our actions are not determined by any one cause; they are the fulfillment of who we are at that particular moment. After that moment passes, we continue to evolve, to change, and our memories of that moment inevitably change with us as we live with the consequences of our past actions, consequences we were unaware of at the time.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“Faint heart never won fair lady,” he wrote; “neither did it ever pursue and overtake an Indian village.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“Odd things happen in a battle, and the human heart has strange and gruesome depths and the human brain still stranger shallows;”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“Living in the here and now, we are awash with sensations of the present, memories of the past, and expectations and fears for the future. Our actions are not determined by any one cause; they are the fulfillment of who we are at that particular moment. After that moment passes, we continue to evolve, to change, and our memories of that moment inevitably change with us as we live with the consequences of our past actions, consequences we were unaware of at the time.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“Custer wrote, “I often think I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people adhered to the free open plains rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization, with its vices thrown in without stint or measure.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“As Herman Melville wrote of that seagoing monster of a man Captain Ahab, “All mortal greatness is but disease.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“fluidity of the sea, not the rigidity of irresistible law, characterizes human conduct, especially in the midst of a calamity.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“If half of the two thousand warriors fired ten arrows each during the engagement, that would have been a total of ten thousand arrows,”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“Over the next hundred years, more gold would be extracted from a single mine in the Black Hills (an estimated $1 billion) than from any other mine in the continental United States.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“Soon after, Tom, all of twenty years old, became the only soldier in the Civil War to win two Medals of Honor. In”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“I’ve always known that I had the happy facility of making enemies of any one I ever knew,”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“a space of time is a great breeder of myths.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“When an enlisted man sees his commanding officer lose his head entirely…,” Private Taylor wrote, “it would…demoralize anyone taught to breathe, almost, at the word of command.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“Hindsight has a way of corrupting people’s memories, inviting them to view a past event not as it actually occurred but as they wished it had occurred given the ultimate result.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“Custer did not drink; he didn’t have to. His emotional effusions unhinged his judgment in ways that went far beyond alcohol’s ability to interfere with clear thinking.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

“The future is never more important than to a people on the verge of a cataclysm.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

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Popular quotes

“When all’s said and done they’re a strange breed, these South and East Londoners, and they’re amused by little things. Their love of jellied eels and pie ‘n’ mash is astonishing. “Food of the Gods,” they call it, as they enter some filthy hovel to order pie ‘n’ mash, without even knowing what they’re eating. I’ve asked what meat it is and been told, “Meat? Its pie, pie ‘n’ mash with liquor. Food of the Gods.”
But it’s not food of the Gods at all. It’s just pie and mashed potatoes, and that’s it. Nothing special about it. There’s nothing nostalgic about it. It’s not Bermondsey Billy Wells or the Artful Dodger. It’s just a meat pie and mashed potatoes. And it looks like Barry Manilow’s blown his nose in it.”
― Karl Wiggins, quote from Calico Jack in your Garden

“Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“Silence asks the questions that are too awkward to phrase. It even asks the questions one does not know to ask.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from Golden Fool

“In the summer you could take out ten books at a time, instead of three, and keep them a month, instead of two weeks. Of course you could take only four of the fiction books, which were the best, but Jane liked plays and they were nonfiction, and Katharine liked poetry and that was nonfiction, and Martha was still the age for picture books, and they didn’t count as fiction but were often nearly as good. Mark hadn’t found out yet what kind of nonfiction he liked, but he was still trying. Each month he would carry home his ten books and read the four good fiction ones in the first four days, and then read one page each from the other six, and then give up. Next month he would take them back and try again. The nonfiction books he tried were mostly called things like “When I was a Boy in Greece,” or “Happy Days on the Prairie”—things that made them sound like stories, only they weren’t. They made Mark furious. “It’s being made to learn things not on purpose. It’s unfair,” he said. “It’s sly.” Unfairness and slyness the four children hated above all.”
― Edward Eager, quote from Half Magic

“119[118] * Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD!  2Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart,  3who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!  4You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.  5O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!  6Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.  7I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances.  8I will observe your statutes; O forsake me not utterly!  9How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.”
― quote from The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version

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