#triumph

Now comes the picture of mass defeat, the most awesome spectacle of the war. It is in the bent bodies of old women who poke among ruins seeking some miserable object that will link their lives with the old days. It is in the shamed darting eyes of the defeated. It is in the faces of the little boys who regard our triumphant columns with fear and fascination. And above all it is in the thousands of beaten, dusty soldiers who stream along the roads towards the stockades. Their feet clump wearily, mechanically, hopelessly on the still endless road of war. They move as haggard, gray masses, in which the individual had neither life nor meaning. It is impossible to see in these men the quality that made them stand up and fight like demons out of hell a few shorts months ago. ↗

— Audie Murphy

#soldiers #triumph #war #world-war- #men

And at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind ‒ graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens. And if you are very, very lucky, there are a few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last ‒ and yet will remain with you for life. Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#life #living #lucky #mirth #pain

But let us not too hastily triumph in the shame of Sparta, lest we aggravate our own condemnation. ↗

— Thomas Day

#condemnation #hastily #lest #let us #our

Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end. ↗

— Karel Capek

#devolved #end #in the end #mankind #me

People are really suffering these days. There's a lot of corporate triumph and a lot of personal despair as they wonder what are they working for. ↗

— Laurie Anderson

#days #despair #lot #people #personal

This is the city of dreamers and time and again it's the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed. ↗

— Michael Bloomberg

#again #american #american dream #been #city

To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic. ↗

— Walter Kaufmann

#defeats #endure #faith #fashion #heretic

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake. ↗

— Robert Browning

#baffled #better #break #clouds #doubted

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#evil #good men #good men to do nothing #men #necessary