In his fevered desire for escape, Churchill was far from alone. Ever since there have been prisoners and guards, men have tried everything, from climbing to digging, from bribery to brute force, to make their escape. In the end, if there is no hope that a prisoner will lose his shackles, he may lose his mind.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Candice Millard)
Staring at the Boer as he moved closer, rifle at the ready, poised to shoot should he make the slightest move to escape, Churchill knew that he had run out of options. He could be killed, or he could be captured. "Death stood before me," he wrote, "grim sullen Death without his light-hearted companion, Chance." The thought of surrender sickened him, but in this moment of fury frustration and despair, the words of Napoleon, whom he had long studied and admired, came to him: "When one is alone and unarmed, a surrender may be pardoned." Standing before the man who was now his captor, Churchill raised his hands in the air.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Candice Millard)
Here and there I'd come out ahead a few times, but it only made me careful. There's too much that can happen - the twig that deflects your bullet just enough, the time you don't quite get the right grasp on the gun butt, the dust that blows in your eyes. . . . Anyway, there's things can happen to the fastest of men and to the best shots. So I was cautious.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
"If we meet up with Indians, you might get taken."
"I'm not afraid. Not with you to care for me."
Now, that there remark just about threw me. I suppose nobody had ever said such a thing to me before, and it runs in the blood of a man that he should care for womenfolk. It's a need in him, deep as motherhood to a woman, and it's a thing folks are likely to forget. A man with nobody to care for is as lonesome as a lost hound dog, and as useless. If he's to feel of any purpose to himself, he's got to feel he's needed, feel he stands between somebody and any trouble.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
It was a big, wide, empty country, and a man couldn't hide easy. There were few people, and those few soon came to know about each other. Folks who have something to hide usually head for big cities, crowded places where they can lose themselves among the many. In open western country a man stood out too much.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
Of course, a man riding western country just naturally looks at it all. I mean he studies his back trail and off to the horizon on every side. Years later he would be able to describe every mile of it. As if it had been yesterday.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
This was a stretch of country I never did cotton to, this area between the Mississippi and the real West. It was in these parts that the thieves and outlaws got together.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
Staring at the Boer as he moved closer, rifle at the ready, poised to shoot should he make the slightest move to escape, Churchill knew that he had run out of options. He could be killed, or he could be captured. "Death stood before me," he wrote, "grim sullen Death without his light-hearted companion, Chance." The thought of surrender sickened him, but in this moment of fury, frustration and despair, the words of Napoleon, whom he had long studied and admired, came to him: "When one is alone and unarmed, a surrender may be pardoned." Standing before the man who was now his captor, Churchill raised his hands in the air.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Cancide Millard)
It will be noticed, by the way, that in the struggle between Miss Climpson's conscience and what Wilkie Collins calls "detective fever," conscience was getting the worst of it and was winking at an amount of deliberate untruth which a little time earlier would have staggered it.
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"I am not the kind of person who reads other people's postcards." This is clear notice to all and sundry that they are, precisely, that kind of person. They are not untruthful; the delusion is real to them. It is merely that Providence has provided them with a warning rattle like that of the rattle-snake. After that, if you are so foolish as to leave your correspondence in their way, that is your own affair.
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
It occurred to him that it was rather early in the year for flies. There had been an advertising rhyme in the papers. Something about "Each fly you swat now means, remember, Three hundred fewer next September." Or was it a thousand fewer? He couldn't get the metre quite right.
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"It is bad for a human being to get to feel that he has any right whatever to dispose of another person's life to his own advantage. It leads him on to think himself above all laws. Society is never safe from the man who has deliberately committed murder with impunity. That is why - or one reason why - God forbids private vengeance."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
