Sea Hawke Quotes

“The great river has thousands of tributaries, too, which reach like tentacles into every corner of Brazil. They are fast, twisting, and wild. Until very late in the nineteenth century, the only alternative for entering the interior was by mule, over rutted dirt roads and through heavy jungle and wide, barren highlands.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“poured into the Atlantic. In their wake, the waters left behind the world’s greatest river system and former inland seabed—a vast basin of rich sediments and fertile lowlands perfectly suited to support an array of plant and animal life almost without parallel on the face of the earth.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“He’d also learned from his books that for millions of years, the Amazon River was a vast inland sea that covered the central part of the continent. Finally, during the Pleistocene epoch, which began approximately 1.6 million years ago, the rising waters broke through the continent’s eastern escarpment and”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“He’d read that the Amazon was a nonstop deluge that, by itself, accounts for 15 percent of all fresh water carried to the sea by all of the planet’s rivers put together.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to become a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. And he never, ever gives an order that cannot be obeyed. And this, too, by General Omar Bradley: We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not the lights of every passing ship!”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“A true leader, Hawke thought, has the confidence to stand alone,”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“reckoned with: Little boys. They had a bad habit of instantaneously disobeying any rule you laid down the moment you let your guard slip. The little buggers were oftentimes free spirits, independent, pint-sized carpet monsters capable of little, if any, adult behavior. They ran when they should be walking and walked when they should be running. They woke when they should be sleeping and slept when they should be awaking. And trying to march them in tight formation? Might as well try herding cats.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“How to ground oneself in modesty when one’s position in the world can lead to a grandiosity of manner that is wholly unwarranted, unbecoming, and denigrating.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“Wartime consists of long periods of intense boredom punctuated by short intense periods of fear and trepidation.” This apt description of British military life on the square under a drill sergeant was really meant to apply to the regimental routines of trench and billet.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“nurses began to notice that deafening thunder overhead and blinding flashes of lightning exploding inside the nursery in a blaze of blue-white light only served to make the baby boy smile and giggle and squeal for more!”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“He possessed an innate quality, one inherited from his father’s side of the family. Unpleasant to some, but to his father, a godsend: Ferocity. This ferocity became obvious to his father shortly after the”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“Ah, yes, the egoism of youth. The confident egoism of a young man brought up secure in the knowledge that he was the last and most rarefied of a line of selective breeding that had its sources long before tinkerers became Henry Fords, before coin-changers became Rothschilds, before merchants even dreamed of becoming Medici.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“Always remember, my son. War is never about who is right, but about who is left.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke

“The gods do not deduct from the allotted span of men’s lives the hours spent in reading.”
― Ted Bell, Sea Hawke