Phyllis Bottome Quotes

Do not say that someone has won and someone has lost. These are unappropriate, blasphemous words. We have all been scorched by the deadly breath of fratricide.

A hospital alone shows what war is.

At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.

War is like love; it always finds a way.

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

War is devastating, and it leaves its scars for generations.

Wars are detested by mothers.

There are worse things than war.

You have deceived our trust, and made us doff our easy robes of peace, to crush our old limbs in ungentle steel.

When I heard your organization was recording testimonies, I knew I had to come. She died in my arms, saying 'I don't want to die.' That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.

Please choose the way of peace.. In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause.

I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

You've lived through a lot of wars, I said. "Yes." Do they ever make more sense? "No.

It's a good thing war is so terrible or else we'd get to liking it too much.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

The essence of war is insanity. Destruction, death, women widowed, children orphaned, lands plundered, property destroyed, lives decimated - it's all bad.

There's nothing glorious about war. There's nothing glorious about holding your friends in your arms and watching them die. There's nothing glorious about having to leave your home for 6 to 8 months while your family's back here and you're away.

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

The disasters of war can be infinitely eerie and poignant.

Wars break things; they break stories.

There are scenes here and effects here that would make George S. Patton wince.

Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.