Patrick MacGill Quotes

The scene was not a happy one yet we looked upon it in the cold stoical spirit of a soldier; a slight chilling pang and then a return soul and body to the enemy before us.

There is no God-given right to victory on the battlefield. You win that through the skill and the devotion, the valor and the ferocity of your troops.

In 1967, I signed up for the Army, where I earned an equivalency diploma, then went on to join the Special Forces. That was really was the turning point in my life. I became more disciplined and focused. I went overseas and was in combat, got wounded a couple of times, lost a lot of good friends but matured a great deal.

I deserve removal because I did not stand up, when my army was not in condition for fighting, and resist to the last.

Nature creates few men brave; industry and training makes many. Discipline in war counts more than fury.

All military history records the triumphs of discipline and courage far more frequently than numbers and resources

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

You know how a fighter always comes into the dressing room way before a fight? That's me - I'm like a fighter.

Alex Dumas was a consummate warrior and a man of great conviction and moral courage. He was renowned for his strength, his swordsmanship, his bravery, and his knack for pulling victory out of the toughest situations. But he was known, too, for his profane back talk and his problems with authority.

I'm an excellent soldier and a good strategist. I love to fight.

I'm pretty prepared for anything. You could shove me out there in any situation - I've done it.

Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.

You want soldiers who, when they get to a river after a long march, don't start rooting for their canteen in their pack, but just dive right in.

There is no fear. There are only two things. Trained and untrained.

For every Seaman of Industry and Ingenuity, is not only a Navigator, but a Merchant, and also a Soldier.

We are not asked to subscribe to any utopia or to believe in a perfect world just around the corner. We are asked to be patient with necessarily slow and groping advance on the road forward, and to be ready for each step ahead as it become practicable. We are asked to equip ourselves with courage, hope, readiness for hard work, and to cherish large and generous ideals.

Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.

The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.

The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.

He doesn't need my help coming up with pranks. He's got too many ideas of his own. - Daja referring to Briar in their first year at Discipline cottage

Brave thoughts, but am I ready to follow through on them?

Ready when you are, Sergeant Pempbry.

FACE A SINGLE FOE as if you are facing ten thousand enemies; face ten thousand enemies as a single foe.

He [the golfer] must have the courage to keep trying in the face of ill luck or disappointment, and timidity to appreciate and appraise the dangers of each stroke, and to curb the desire to take chances beyond reasonable hope of success.

It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.