World War I Quotes

“The War was over, except for some one like Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed and now the old Manor House must go to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said, with the telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed; but it was over; thank Heaven – over.”

“Really it was a miracle thinking of the war, and thousands of poor chaps, with all their lives before them, shovelled together, already half forgotten; it was a miracle.”

“Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square. There in the trenches the change which Mr Brewer desired when he advised football was produced instantly; he developed manliness ...”

“Prior to the conflict, Europe had enjoyed decades of relative peace and stability. This stability resulted from a series of mutual defense pacts that deterred nations from seeking military solutions to disagreements with their neighbors. Additionally, the experience of so many years of peace led to a citizenry across Europe that became naive about warfare.”

“The war was undoubtedly the most profound and inescapable influence on writers in the 1920s. [...] Social, political, and aesthetic developments were percolating throughout the first part of the 20th century. In Paris, this influences coalesced in an environment that encouraged rather than stifled their growth. ”

“The puritanical, conservative value system of America was stifling after the soldiers’ experience in Europe. At the same time, corruption at all levels of government was commonplace.”

“Many nations were plagued with bankruptcy, inflation, and a flood of shell-shocked war veterans. A spell of innocence and calm had been broken - an indefinable something was lost, never to be recovered. Everyone struggled to make sense of the new world and, if possible, extract meaning from the violence of the war.”

“The collection of expatriate artists who gathered in Paris following the Great War was a diverse group, representing various backgrounds, occupations, and nationalities.”

“Young men who had fought for an uncertain cause had equally uncertain about their place in modern America. An exodus was, therefore, underway, led by artists and intellectuals in search of less restrictive intellectual climates.”

“In those days we did not trust anyone who had not been in the war.”

“But when a guy comes along and says here come with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you’ve got no rights. You haven’t even the right to say yes or no or I’ll think it over.”

“He had seen the airplanes flying in the sky he had seen the skies of the future filled with them black with them and now he saw the horror beneath. He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality.”

“Oh Kareen why do they have a war right now just when we find each other? Kareen we’ve got more important things than war.”

“It was a hundred and twenty-five in the shade and there wasn’t any shade and he felt like he was smothering under a white hot blanket and all he could think was I’ve got to stop I’ve got to stop.”

“He too had been taken away from his home. He too had been put into the service of another without his consent. He too had been sent to a foreign country far from his native parts. He too had been forced to fight against other slaves of his own kind in a strange place.”

“He was all alone with his medal.”

“He’d never had any particular ideas about America. He’d never been very patriotic. It was something you took without even thinking. But now it seemed to him . . . For the first time in his whole life he felt that it would be a little pleasant a little comforting to be in the hands of his own people.”

“Somebody said let’s go out and fight for liberty and so they went and got killed without ever once thinking about liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose idea of liberty?”

″...but he fell in love with the watchers on the tarmac to await the arrival of the overdue machines.”

“He immediately drives from newspaper office to newspaper office before finding a job on a publicity campaign to help the people of Belgium (who were the victims of atrocities during World War I).”

Why the Whales came is a tale with mystery, suspense, and echoes of history from World War I. The emotions it encompasses run the gamut from fear, to loss, to anger. Gracie and Daniel, the two main characters, are courageous and in many ways more mature than those around them. Their actions touch the heart.

In this story of wonder and initiation during WWI on a small island group off of the western shores of Great Britain, a boy and a girl learn about rumors in small towns and destroy some demons of their village’s history.