[A] morning-land full of immeasurable hopes encircled him; he stripped his breast, threw himself all aglow into the dripping grass, washed (but not with any higher purpose than girls have) his firm face with liquid June-snow… – Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography,

A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much. – Homer

The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling. – H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, 1920

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death. – Jean Anouilh, Antigone, 1942