“Some deaths a man can enjoy, the death of an enemy, and Sharpe was paid to have enemies. Yet he did not wish death on the French. There was more satisfaction in seeing a surrendered enemy, a defeated enemy, than in seeing a slaughtered enemy.”

— Bernard Cornwell

Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 304
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

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Bernard Cornwell 175

British writer 1944

Joseph Masclet

Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!
Verses of La Marseillaise written by Masclet https://books.google.fr/books?id=tAtItyiK9ywC&pg=PA17&dq=%22Que+tes+ennemis+expirants%22%2B%22Voient+ton+triomphe+et+notre+gloire+!%22&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6sKvNu_vOAhWCthoKHY12BFQQ6AEIHDAC#v=onepage&q=%22Que%20tes%20ennemis%20expirants%22%2B%22Voient%20ton%20triomphe%20et%20notre%20gloire%20!%22&f=false (in French). English translation by Iain Patterson ( marseillaise.org http://www.marseillaise.org/english/english.html).

“If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Power and Innocence (1972), Ch. 11 : The Humanity of the Rebel
Context: The authentic rebel knows that the silencing of all his adversaries is the last thing on earth he wishes: their extermination would deprive him and whoever else remains alive from the uniqueness, the originality, and the capacity for insight that these enemies — being human — also have and could share with him. If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man. In the losing of the chance for dialogue with our enemies, we are the poorer.

“Greetings and death to our enemies.”

Dan Aykroyd (1952) Canadian film actor

Comment to reporters at a press junket in November 2004 for his movie Christmas With the Kranks
[PEOPLE:Aykroyd a man of the world, but which one?, STEVE, EDDY, Orange County Register, Santa Ana, Calif., December 2, 2004]

“The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

“Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!”

Wilfred Owen The Next War

"The Next War"
Context: Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, — knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.

“Here, the enemy was not merely another group of human beings with a differing political persuasion; the enemy here was death.”

Philip K. Dick book Clans of the Alphane Moon

Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 5 (pp. 69-70)

“No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"How to Organise Competition?" (27 December 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/dec/25.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 411, 414.
1910s

“You know, folks, the French have always been reluctant to surrender to the wishes of their friends, and almost anticipatory in their urge to surrender to the wishes of their enemies.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

The Raw Feed (2003)

“It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest toall the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords.

“Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Speech at a First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Florida General who voiced his faith cleared on major accusations http://www.bpnews.net/18948, June 2003.

“Some deaths a man can enjoy, the death of an enemy, and Sharpe was paid to have enemies. Yet he did not wish death on the French. There was more satisfaction in seeing a surrendered enemy, a defeated enemy, than in seeing a slaughtered enemy.”

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Bernard Cornwell 175

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