[Winston Churchill] mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
  On conferring honorary US citizenship on Winston Churchill, 9  Apr.

Skiing is a battle against yourself, always to the frontiers of the impossible.But most of all, it must give you pleasure. It is not an obligation but a joy.

-Killy,Jean-Claude
  In Sports Illustrated,18 Nov.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

-Lincoln, Abraham
  Second inaugural address, 4 Mar, a month before the end of the Civil War.

All thenightthefrogsgo chuckle, all theday thebirdsare singing In the pond beside the meadow, by the roadway poplar- lined, In the field between the trenches are a million blossoms springing 'Twixt the grass of silver bayonets where the lines of battle wind Where man has manned thetrenches for the maiming of his kind.

-MacGill, Patrick
  Soldier Songs,'The Trench'.

He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.

-Murrow, Edward (Edgar) R(oscoe)
  Of Churchill. Broadcast, 30 Nov, quoted in In Search of Light (1967).

The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of  World War I. Never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

-Noonan, Peggy
  What I Saw at the Revolution.

   The only candidate who can whistle Dixie while humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

-O'Brien,JohnJ
  Of President Johnson. Quoted in HaroldBrayman (ed)  The President Speaks Off the Record (1976).

In the early morning the mill girls clumping down the cobbled street, all in clogs, making a curiously formidable sound, like an army hurrying into battle. I suppose this is the typical sound of Lancashire.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  Diary entry,18 Feb. He used this as material for his book The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing- fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.One of the dominant facts in English life during the past three-quarters of a century has been the decay of ability in the ruling class.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, pt.4.

It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

-Owen,Wilfred
  'Strange Meeting', collected in Poems (published1920).

Outsidetheir laboratories, thephysicianand chemist are soldiers without arms on the field of battle.

-Pasteur, Louis
Some Reflections on Science in France, pt.1.

The strife is o'er, the battle done; Now is theVictor's triumph won;

-Pott, Frances
English  author  and  illustrator  of  books  for  children,  whose characters have become classics of children's literature.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futuritycastsuponthepresent; thewordswhichexpress what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
A Defence of Poetry.

When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun roseand set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle.Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?† What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my country?

-Sitting Bull real name Tatanka Iyotake
c.1866  Quoted inT C McLuhan Touch the Earth (1973).

The Englishwoman's clothes, too, have improved out of all knowledge†no longer are our hats, as inVictorian days, a kind of Pageant of Empire, whereon the products of all the colonies battle for precedence.

-Sitwell, Dame Edith Louisa
  EnglishWomen.

Love invincible in battle.

-Sophocles
Antigone,781^90 (translated by H Lloyd-Jones,1994).

'There is no terror, brotherToby, in its looks, but what it borrowsfromgroans and convulsionsöand theblowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms ofcurtains, ina dying man'sroomöStrip itofthese, what is it?'ö'Tis better in battle than in bed,'said my uncle Toby.

-Sterne, Laurence
^67  Of death.Tristram Shandy, bk.5, ch.3.

Marriage is like life in thisöthat it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
Virginibus Puerisque,'Virginibus Puerisque', pt.1.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, council, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windyTroy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.6^24.

So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea.

-Tennyson
  Idylls of the King,'The Passing of Arthur', l.170^1.