This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,--This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
The Pashtun tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian Every large house is a real feudal fortress. . . . Eve ry family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. . . . Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid.
Whoever wishes to hold the fortress of contemplation must first of all train in the camp of action.
Prepare your hearts as a fortress, for there will be no other.
. . . once again we face a paradox, for it appears that softening your heart and gently tending its wounds will protect you from evil. Building a fortress and defending yourself behind it will only make you more vulnerable. Healing your own heart is the single most powerful thing you can do to change the world. Your own transformation will enable you to withdraw so completely from evil that you contribute to it by not one word, one thought, or one breath. This healing process is like recovering your soul.
A fortress is of no use to cowards.
The keys of a fortress are always well worth the retirement of the garrison when it is resolved to yield only on those conditions. On this principle it is always wiser to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has made a vigorous resistance than to risk an assault.
The enemy and his allies are now at the gates of the capitalists' fortress. Is there any hope that the businessman will finally sense the danger to himself and the system of which he is a part and rise to meet the challenge?
What happened in Kosovo was the exact reversal of what happened in 'Fortress Europe' in 1943-45. Let me explain. Air Marshall 'Bomber' Harris used to say that 'Fortress Europe' was a fortress without a roof, since the Allies had air supremacy. Now, if we look at the Kosovo War, what do we see? We see a fortress without walls but with a roof! Isn't that disappearance extraordinary?!
Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.
Image has to be its own fortress, in spite of the owners. People can't separate that or they don't comprehend that you can turn that on and off for each one of the different entities.
Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies.
In giving our daughter life, her father and I had also given her death, something I hadn't realized until that new creature flailed her arms in what was now infinite space. We had given her disease and speeding cars and flying cornices: once out of the fortress that had been myself, she would never be safe again. . . We disappoint our kids and they disappoint us, and sometimes they grow up into people we don't like very much. We go on loving, though what we love may be more memory than actuality. And until the day we die we fear the phone that rings in the middle of the night.
There is no man who desires as passionately as a Russian. If we could imprison a Russian desire beneath a fortress, that fortress would explode.
Do not lose your faith. A mighty fortress is our mathematics. Mathematics will rise to the challenge, as it always has.
A language which we do not know is a fortress sealed.
Look what [Chinese] are doing, they're building a massive fortress against everything. A massive fortress in the South China Sea. And yet they're ripping us off.
It is the same in love as in war; a fortress that parleys is half taken.
a fortress against ideas and against the Shuddering insidious shock of the theory-vendors The little sardine men crammed in a monster toy Who tilt their aggregate beast against our crumbling Troy.
If thou canst but thither, There grows the flower of Peace, The Rose that cannot wither, Thy fortress and thy ease.