Quotes about enemies

Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night.

In my protracted sojourn on this planet, Mr. Candle, I have come to value three commodities above all others: good books, decent claret, and worthy opponents.

“Everyone here does think as I do,” replied Nefertiti Jones’s double, “and consequently I have no enemies.”

He irritably suspected himself of a tendency to make enemies unnecessarily.

'The creature no human could overcome? It was a lesson, Bane. A good man tried to teach it to me many years ago. You cannot overcome hatred with more hatred. Sometimes you have to surrender in order to win. There are only three possibilities when faced with an enemy: run from him, fight him, or make him your friend. The creature in the circle was created to respond. Attack it - and it will come back at you with twice your strength. I ignored it. And it, true to its nature, ignored me.'

What joins men together, he said, is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies.

The enemy was always supposed to be an outsider, not the kid who was sitting right next to you.

We have a God-given commission, but it is not a commission to be self-righteous know-it-alls- quite the contrary. Our work in God's world begins with the acknowledgment that we are not God, and that our most bitter rivals are made in God's image.

A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.

But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

You need friends to keep you on your feet, and enemies to keep you on your toes.

[H]e knew that fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world.