Michael Shaara Quotes

He had forgotten the Cause. When the guns began firing he had forgotten it completely.

It's no good trying to get yourself killed, General. The Lord will come for you in His own time.

It is unbecoming to a soldier, all this book-learning.

"A Holy War," Longstreet said. He shook his head. He did not think much of the Cause. He was a professional: the Cause was Victory. It came to him in the night sometimes with a sudden appalling shock that the boys he was fighting were boys he had grown up with. The war had come as a nightmare in which you chose your nightmare side. Once chosen, you put your head down and went on to win.

I don't know what else we could have done. Sir, I'm sorry. But it started out as a minor scrap with a few militia and the next thing I know I'm tangling with half the Union Army.

Oh, by the way, there's a story going around, do you know? They say that General Lee was asleep, and the army was marching by, and fifteen thousand men went by on tiptoe so as not to wake him.

General Meade has his son as adjutant. That's different. Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like God on earth as a general on a battlefield.