Love and War Quotes

“That was an explanation, not an excuse.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“Why did people ignore the lessons of history and their own senses, deny a law of life immutable as the seasons, and erect twisted barriers against it in their minds? He didn't know why, but they did. They wept for the goodness of half-imaginary yesterdays, yesterdays beyond altering, instead of anticipating and helping to shape the good of possible tomorrows. They found things to blame for the flow of events they wanted to stop and could not. They blamed God, their wives, government, books, fanciful combinations of unnamed men--sometimes even voices in their own heads. They lived tortured and unhappy lives, trying to dam Niagara with a teacup.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“Remember, men. it is better to wound than to slay, since it takes time to carry an injured man to the rear and sometimes requires two of the enemy rather than one.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“He said he would die an educated man if he didn’t live long enough to die as a free one.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“We was at Sharpsburg. Charlie still is.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“War was never glorious, never grand—except in the pronouncements pols and other noncombatants made about it. It was, as he had experienced it, mostly dirty, disorderly, boring, lonely, and, for brief intervals, terrifying.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“Davis was especially scored for allegedly favoring foreigners and Jews in his administration.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“Were you happy when you heard the news, Grandpa?” “You can’t believe how happy.” “What did you do to celebrate?” “I started dancing and fell in a trench full of shit.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“The slavery of ignorance is as wicked as any other kind. Perhaps it’s the crudest slavery of all, because any man can see an iron cuff on his own leg, but it’s hard to detect an invisible one.” She watched for a reaction.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“The concert of the guns was ready to resume.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“It was a reaction bred into her from childhood. That was an explanation, not an excuse. The reaction shamed her, and yet she seemed powerless to banish it or keep it from affecting her behavior.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“What would bring the Confederacy to an inglorious end was the same thing that had so foolishly created it a rigidity of thought, a clinging to old ways, a refusal to adapt and change.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“There are no ordained results in this world, I’ve discovered. The trying is what counts most.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“I have dwelt a while in the soul of a shackled black man and taken a little of it into my own, forever.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“I cannot describe the change nor do I know when it took place, yet I know that there is a change for I look on the carcass of a man now with pretty much such feeling as I would were it a horse or hog.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“Had she been guided by some unexpressed belief that Negroes were somehow unfit for a white woman to touch? She didn’t know, but this moment in the gray morning jarred her to awareness. Rosalie felt no different from any other child hurting.”
― John Jakes, Love and War

“And with fear of change perplexes monarchs”
― John Jakes, Love and War