Georges Duhamel Quotes

When you are in deep conflict about something, sometimes the most trivial thing can tip the scales.

You are going to make choices and decisions that sometimes aren't going to always work in your favor and they are going to upset some other people.

My father died during open-heart surgery on March 29 of my senior year in college. I was getting set to go to law school. I remember sitting in the waiting room when the doctor walked in. I said to myself, The worst possible thing just happened. What will you do?

I will always need to compromise and make choices - you just have to work hard at making the right choice day by day.

Some say no when others say yes. That's the difficulty with handball.

They will not be pleased. But they know we must catch the monsoon with a well-found ship; and they know they are in the Navy--they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.' You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.' No, no, it is not quite that either. I mean--I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen.

Some day...after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you.

I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.

You just have to choose which wrong choice feels the least wrong.

I’m afraid you’re going to have to make a choice.

War is not about flag-waving and patriotism. War is about killing and death.

Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?

There is no sure foundation set on blood, No certain life achieved by others' death.

We pass our life in deliberation, and we die upon it.

It's easy to judge, to think we know for certain the right thing to do. Sometimes, it just isn't so clear.

Old men make wars that young men may die.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

Good men but see death, the wicked taste it.

You don't push the button that says "Now I will write something that resonates in time." You don't know. It's what happens after a play is finished.

You think death is any better an excuse for desertion than any other?

It was better that a little blood should be shed that much blood should be saved. The blood that was shed was bad blood; the blood that was saved was good blood.

Regardless of the advertising campaigns may tell us, we can't have it all. Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it's a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that's worth it and a limb you can accept losing. To go consenting to the sacrifice.

You cannot eat your cake and have it.

Behold me waiting—waiting for the knife.... The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, The drunken dark, the little death-in-life.... [F]ace to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. ...I am ready But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Cæsar and his fortunes—steady!

When a soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.