# C. S. Forester

- Quotes: 17
- Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/c-s-forester

## Books

- [Death To The French](https://www.leafyquotes.com/c-s-forester/death-to-the-french.md) — 17 quotes

## Recently added quotes

> There is no excuse for defeat in the military code, just as success excuses everything.

> Dodd was not much moved anyway. His trade was in death, and he had seen much of it of late years. He was engaged in war, and war without death was a quite unthinkable thing.

> The regiment had taught him that he must do his duty or die in the attempt; a simple enough religion for his simple mind. As long as there was breath in his body or a thought in his mind he must struggle on; as long as he went on trying there was no need to meditate on success or failure. The only reward for the doing of his duty would be the knowledge that his duty was being done. That was how honour called; and glory -- the man in the ranks did not bother with glory, nor did the men a century later who died in the poison gas at Ypres.

> Bernardino voiced his disgust at the prospect; he was for turning back again, and a man less obstinate than Dodd might have yielded, or one with a lower ideal of military duty. But the British Army had not won the distinction it now possessed by turning back at the first sign of difficulty; nor would Dodd turn back now.

> And seeing that England had been engaged in one continuous war since he was a child in petticoats, a world without war was equally unthinkable. And Dodd had far too much practical common sense ever to begin to think about such a fantastic notion as a world without the possibility of war. He was far too deeply occupied, moreover, with his present business of killing Frenchmen, or aiding them to starve to death, or tormenting them with disease.

> Indeed, now that his efforts had been crowned with success, he was mainly conscious only of weariness, and of something which oppressed him like despair. It was home-sickness -- not the desire for the green Sussex Downs, but the desire to be one more with his regiment, marching along with the green-clad files, exchanging jagged jests with his fellows,squatting round the camp fires, leading a life fatalistically free from anxiety and responsibility.

> Within the next two hours he might be dead or a prisoner, and captivity or death would be imminent all though the day. But at present he was alive and at liberty, and soldier fashion, he did not allow the other possibility to depress his spirits.

> Dodd left him there, shouting and laughing, to sink into exhaustion and coma and die, alone on the windswept hill. After all, a soldier had much more important work to do than to ease an idiot's last hours, as any one would agree who did not have to make the decision.

> Dodd was not exasperated or cast down at the new development. The soldier with years of campaigning behind him has, perforce, acquired a philosophic outlook towards turns of fortune. If one plan goes wrong there is need to make another, that is all.

> Not that it mattered. Not even trifles depended on it, for in those days there were no medals or crosses for men in the ranks. There was only honor and duty, and it was hard for a later generation to realize that these abstractions had meant anything to the querulous bald-headed old boozer who had once been Rifleman Dodd.

> Even in those days the usual retort of a non-commissioned officer was "You thought? You're not paid to think. You're paid to obey orders" -- a speech which had been endured word for word even down to our day.

> But there is nothing so fragile as a military plan.