brotherhood Quotes

“During the next year, I learned that the Company was more than a group of men wanting money. We were brothers: strangers in a strange land who had banded together for mutual help and protection. There were arguments, of course, but they were always worked out.”

“The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the great thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted.”

‘‘‘I know,’ he said, breaking our embrace. ‘Inshallah, we’ll celebrate later. Right now, I’m going to run that blue kite for you,’ he said. He dropped the spool and took off running, the hem of his green chapan dragging in the snow behind him.

‘Hassan!’ I called. ‘Come back with it!’

He was already turning the street corner, his rubber boots kicking up snow. He stopped, turned. He cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘For you a thousand times over!’ he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner. The next time I saw him smile unabashedly like that was twenty-six years later, in a faded Polaroid photograph.”

“In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I served in a company of heroes.‘”

“Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.”

“They found combat to be ugliness, destruction and death and hated it. Anything was better than the blood and carnage, the grime and filth, the impossible demands on the body-anything that is, except letting down their buddies.”

“They also found in combat the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They found selflessness. They found they could love the other guy in their foxhole more than themselves. They found that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them.”

“A man can get something from war that is impossible to acquire anyplace else.”

“The jungle is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship; but I will be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me.”

“And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love.”

“He would think about this a lot later, and the best he could explain it was, his own life no longer mattered. All that did matter were his buddies, his brothers, that they not get hurt, that they not get killed.”

“These men around him, some of whom he had only known for months, were more important to him than life itself. ”

“He knew their faces so well they were like brothers.”

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for whoever has shed his blood with me shall be my brother.”

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition”

“I could be compassionate, if I wanted. Metias would be merciful. But I was never as good a person as my brother.”

“You said you were but three, but it appears to me we are four.”

“I saw him and was astounded. I loved him as a woman, falling upon him in embrace. I took him and made him my brother.”

“We were all enclosed by the same fence, bumping into one another, fighting, celebrating. Showing one another our best and worst, revealing ourselves . . . as if that fence had created a circle of trust. A brotherhood.”

“It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith.”

“And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers? I was born in the jungle; I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle; and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!”