Quotes by Gosse, Sir Edmund

War is the great scavenger of thought. It is the sovereign disinfectan >>

Quotations about War

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. >>

The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indis >>

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, >>

War is the great scavenger of thought. It is the sovereign disinfectant, and its red stream of blood is the Condy's Fluid that cleans out the stagnant pools and clotted channels of the intellect. We have awakened from an opium-dream of comfort, of ease, of that miserable poltroonery of the sheltered life. Our wish for indulgence of every sort, our laxity of manners, our wretched sensitiveness to personal inconvenience, these are suddenly lifted before us in their true guise as the specters of national decay; and we have risen from the lethargy of our dilettantism to lay them, before it is too late, by the flashing of the unsheathed sword.

Gosse, Sir Edmund