Winston Churchill

The Soudan is joined to Egypt by the Nile, as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe. Without it there is only suffocation.

Everything shone wetly in the sunlight: the dust had been laid; the air was cool; the trees looked green and grateful.

Every man's hand is against the other, and all against the stranger.

What an odious affair is a modern sea journey!

Never was there such a house of cards as the Egyptian dominion in the Soudan. The marvel is that it stood so long, not that it fell so soon.

Both had played their part in the history of human developement and passed out of the considerations of living men.

A single step has led from peace to war; from civilisation to savagery; from India to the mountains.

The long brown rattling serpent with the rifles bristling from its spotted sides crawled closer to the rocky hillock on which the scattered black figures of the enemy showed clearly.

Fanaticism is not a cause of war. It is the means which helps savage peoples to fight.

“It is nothing,” said the President. “They threw stones; now, we used bullets; they are better arguments.”

The mountains became as full of explosives as a magazine. Yet the spark was lacking.

The dog who has been whipped must be thankful for the bone that is flung to him.

A man will perhaps tolerate an offensive word applied to himself, but will be infuriated if his nation, his rank, or his profession is insulted.

His philosophy lent itself to a pious fraud⁠—taught him to minimise the importance of his pains, and to magnify that of his pleasures; made life delightful and death incidental.

Diplomatists looked wise, economists anxious, stupid people mysterious and knowledgeable.

'I fight to kill: I do not fight to be killed. If the Field Cornet was to order me to go in an armoured train, I would say to him, "Field Cornet, go to hell."'

Men with sticks had slain men with rifles.

What a game it was! His brain contained the cards he had to play, the world the stakes he played for.

And there are worse deaths than by drowning.

I seemed to smell corruption in the air. Here were the creatures who had fattened on the spoils. There in the field were the heroes who won them. Tammany Hall was defended by the Ironsides.