Tim Cook > Tim's Quotes

“Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“A day came when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important. So I have stayed as I am, without regret, separated from the normal human condition.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual.

One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could be really disturbed by a question of salary.

One should read about war standing up, late at night, when one is tired, as I am writing about it now, at dawn, while my asthma attack wears off. And even now, in my sleepless exhaustion, how gentle and easy peace seems!”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Then there was the war, and I married it because there was nothing else when I reached the age of falling in love.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“A day came when I should have died,
and after than nothing seemed very important,
so I stayed as I am, without regret
separated from the normal human condition.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Only the victors have stories to tell. We, the vanquished, were all cowards and weaklings by then, whose memories, fears, and enthusiasms should not be remembered.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Abandoned by a God in whom many of us believed, we lay prostrate and dazed in our demi-tomb. From time to time, one of us would look over the parapet to stare across the dusty plain into the east, from which death might bear down on us at any moment. We felt like lost souls, who had forgotten that men are made for something else, that time exists, and hope, and sentiments other than anguish; that friendship can be more than ephemeral, that love can sometimes occur, that the earth can be productive, and used for something other than burying the dead.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“What happened next? I retain nothing from those terrible minutes except indistinct memories which flash into my mind with sudden brutality, like apparitions, among bursts and scenes and visions that are scarcely imaginable. It is difficult even to even to try to remember moments during which nothing is considered, foreseen, or understood, when there is nothing under a steel helmet but an astonishingly empty head and a pair of eyes which translate nothing more than would the eyes of an animal facing mortal danger. There is nothing but the rhythm of explosions, more or less distant, more or less violent, and the cries of madmen, to be classified later, according to the outcome of the battle, as the cries of heroes or of murderers. And there are the cries of the wounded, of the agonizingly dying, shrieking as they stare at a part of their body reduced to pulp, the cries of men touched by the shock of battle before everybody else, who run in any and every direction, howling like banshees. There are the tragic, unbelievable visions, which carry from one moment of nausea to another: guts splattered across the rubble and sprayed from one dying man to another; tightly riveted machines ripped like the belly of a cow which has just been sliced open, flaming and groaning; trees broken into tiny fragments; gaping windows pouring out torrents of billowing dust, dispersing into oblivion all that remains of a comfortable parlor...”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything - fortune, love, even a limb - if I could simply survive.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Only victors have stories to tell,
we the vanquished were then thought of
as cowards and weaklings whose memories
and fears should not be remembered.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“As I remember his laugh, there was nothing mad about it, it was more like the laugh of someone who has been the victim of a practical joke, a farce in which he had believed until suddenly he realized his folly.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Men who have embraced one idea can live only by and for that idea. Beyond it, they have nothing but their memories.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Peace has brought me many pleasures, but nothing as powerful as that passion for survival in wartime, that faith in love, and that sense of absolutes. It often strikes me with horror that peace is really extremely monotonous. During the terrible moments of war one longs for peace with a passion that is painful to bear. But in peacetime one should never, even for an instant, long for war!”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“I may not always walk the straight and narrow, but I sure in hell try to cross it as often as I can.”
― J. Golden Kimball

“A sermon should be like a woman’s dress. Long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep your attention.”
― J. Golden Kimball

“What can God do for a liar who refuses to repent? Can the Lord save him? He can’t claim salvation. Baptizing him in water will not settle the trouble, unless you keep him under.”
― J. Golden Kimball

“I don't know about this here eternal marriage business. But it seems to me that if you can't live with the sons-of-bitches on earth the Lord won't force you to remain with them in heaven.”
― J. Golden Kimball

“Some people say a person receives a position in this church through revelation, and others say they get it through inspiration, but I say they get it through relation. If I hadn't been related to Heber C. Kimball I wouldn't have been a damn thing in this church.”
― J. Golden Kimball

“I believe if I had a house in hell and a house in St. George, I'd rent out the one in St. George and live in hell. I really would.”
― J. Golden Kimball