The Good Shepherd Quotes

“Plain cowardice was far rarer than idiocy, just as plain courage was more common than nerve.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“Krause found himself swaying on his feet again. This was quite absurd; he had been awake for less than forty-eight hours, and he had had two or even three hours of good sleep the night before last.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“The most important objective was to drive the sub away from the convoy. To destroy the sub was an important objective but not the only one.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“Krause knew academically that a human touch was desirable in these relationships even though he himself had never felt the need of it. He would be perfectly content to do and die in reply to a badly worded order from a superior and would feel no resentment at the absence of a polite phrase.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“he had his duty to do, whether it was a losing phase of the war or a winning one. He could only go on, fight on to the end of his strength.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“Order, counter order, disorder”; at more than one lecture at Annapolis he had heard that quotation, and during twenty years of service he had seen its truth demonstrated scores of times.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“The British officer who had lectured on antisubmarine warfare at Casco Bay had been fond of quoting an army story of the previous war in which two infantry privates put their clothes through a newly invented machine for delousing them. “Why,” said one, bitterly, after inspecting results, “they’re all alive still.” “Yes,” said the other, “but I expect they’ve had a hell of a fright.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“It would never do for the captain to be lounging on his stool in the pilothouse while someone else buried the ship’s dead. The profoundest respect must be paid to the poor relics of the men who had given their lives for their country.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“Through Krause’s mind drifted the unsummoned hope that if he had to die he would die in a like fashion although in a better cause,”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“It was quite disgraceful that he had allowed sleep to creep up on him unawares. He had never had the experience before in his life. It was only thirty hours since he had been awakened in readiness for yesterday’s general quarters after two hours of perfectly sound sleep.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“With two years of high school to his credit the boy had at least the educational requirements for his station. And only experience would tell if he had the others; if he would stand at his post amid dead and wounded, amid fire and destruction, and still pass on orders without tripping over a word.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“The convoy commodore whose pennant flew in her was an elderly British admiral back from retirement, undertaking a difficult, monotonous, dangerous and inglorious duty of his own free will, as of course he ought to do as long as the opportunity presented itself, even though that meant being under the orders of a young commander of another nation.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“Expressing uselessly values quite immeasurable, three thousand lives and property worth fifty million dollars were in the charge of Commander George Krause of the United States Navy,”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“and they, or their ships (not to differentiate between ships and their crews) were things to be fought for, things to be protected by one side or destroyed by the other; things to be escorted across the ocean or things to be sent down into the freezing depths.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“If those ships, if thousands of other ships equally unknown, did not reach their destination, the men and women and children who awaited their arrival would be hungry, cold, diseased.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“No, I’m afraid not,” said Diamond. “I want you to see these two boys get home all right. They’re not fit to be out by themselves.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd

“A pillar of water rose in the sea halfway between them; something black shot out of the base of the pillar, turning end over end with incredible rapidity, rising out of Krause's sight and roaring overhead with a sound like the fastest subway train ever heard.”
― C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd