“It was one long scene of unrelieved misery; not the sort of thing a man of his position should ever be subjected to. One knew that these things happened in war, of course; they were regrettable but necessary. But one preferred not to experience them at first hand.”

Source: Lost in Translation (1995), Chapter 11 (p. 201)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Jan. 10, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It was one long scene of unrelieved misery; not the sort of thing a man of his position should ever be subjected to. On…" by Margaret Ball?
Margaret Ball photo
Margaret Ball 2
Lady Mayoress of Dublic and Catholic martyr 1515–1584

Related quotes

E. B. White photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Introduction to Men at War (1942)

Paul Blobel photo

“I would not say that they were happy. They knew what was going to happen to them. Of course, they were told what was going to happen to them, and they were resigned to their fate, and that is the strange thing about these people in the East.”

Paul Blobel (1894–1951) German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Source: Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 162 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton photo
Tim Powers photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?”

I, st. 3
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Context: My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And intellect is wandering
To this and that and t'other thing,
Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“For as only one thing is necessary, and as the theme of the talk is the willing of only one thing: hence the consciousness before God of one’s eternal responsibility to be an individual is that one thing necessary.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, 1847 p. 197-198
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), Purity of Heart (1847)

Thomas Jefferson photo

“But of all things, they least think of subjecting themselves to the will of one man.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Francis W. Gilmer (1816)
1810s
Context: There is an error into which most of the speculators on government have fallen, and which the well-known state of society of our Indians ought, before now, to have corrected. In their hypothesis of the origin of government, they suppose it to have commenced in the patriarchal or monarchical form. Our Indians are evidently in that state of nature which has passed the association of a single family... The Cherokees, the only tribe I know to be contemplating the establishment of regular laws, magistrates, and government, propose a government of representatives, elected from every town. But of all things, they least think of subjecting themselves to the will of one man.

L. P. Jacks photo

“It is one thing to find the Permanent; it is another thing to find a form of words in which the Permanent shall stand permanently expressed. It is one thing to experience something fixed and changeless; it is another thing to fix this something by a changeless definition. The first may be possible, while the second remains impossible for ever.”

L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: Philosophy has been called the search for the Permanent amid the changing. With this account of philosophy there is no need to quarrel. But having accepted it, a distinction remains to be observed, a distinction of capital importance, which we are in constant danger of forgetting. It is one thing to find the Permanent; it is another thing to find a form of words in which the Permanent shall stand permanently expressed. It is one thing to experience something fixed and changeless; it is another thing to fix this something by a changeless definition. The first may be possible, while the second remains impossible for ever.

Stanisław Lem photo

Related topics