Ten of My Favourite Karl Marlantes Quotes
Love reading? Then it’s likely you will love a good quote from your favourite author. This article covers Karl Marlantes’s Top 10 Popular and Famous Quotes that we at Australia Unwrapped have collected from some of his greatest works. Karl Marlantes quotes to remember and here you will find 10 of the best. A memorable quote can stay with you and can be used along your journey. Choosing Karl Marlantes’s top 10 quotes is not easy, but here they are:
Popular Quotes
“There it is.”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
“He ran as he’d never run before, with neither hope nor despair. He ran because the world was divided into opposites and his side had already been chosen for him, his only choice being whether or not to play his part with heart and courage. He ran because fate had placed him in a position of responsibility and he had accepted the burden. He ran because his self-respect required it. He ran because he loved his friends and this was the only thing he could do to end the madness that was killing and maiming them.”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
“He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn’t evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares.”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
“We mistakenly assume that bodily survival has a higher precedence than ego survival. This is simply not generally true. Ego will happily destroy the body for its own sake. Look at overweight executives headed for heart attacks on the way to getting their pictures in Fortune or anorexic models suffering slow starvation on their way to getting their pictures in Vogue. Protecting ego is the general case.”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War
“He lay before God as a woman opens herself to a man, with legs apart, stomach exposed, arms open. But unlike some women, he did not have the inner strength that allowed them to do such a thing without fear. There was no woman’s strength in Mellas at all.”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
“Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
“It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn’t know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
“Over time, continual bad news will discourage any civilian population, and Americans had the lowest tolerance on the planet for bad news.”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
“We all have shit on our shoes. We’ve just got to realize it so we don’t track it into the house.”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War
“Cynicism is no more mature than naïveté. You’re no more mature, just more burned.”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War
10 Famous Quotes by Author Karl Marlantes
10 quotes by Karl Marlantes there you go! It’s never an easy task picking the best quotations from great writers, so please if you disagree or have more to add, please comment and share your opinions. My 10 greatest Karl Marlantes quotes will likely be different from yours; however, that’s the best thing about them, each quote can mean something different to each person. So don’t wait, comment and shares your best Karl Marlantes Quote.
One Final Bonus – Karl Marlantes Quote
“Many will argue that there is nothing remotely spiritual in combat. Consider this. Mystical or religious experiences have four common components: constant awareness of one’s own inevitable death, total focus on the present moment, the valuing of other people’s lives above one’s own, and being part of a larger religious community such as the Sangha, ummah, or church. All four of these exist in combat. The big difference is that the mystic sees heaven and the warrior sees hell. Whether combat is the dark side of the same version, or only something equivalent in intensity, I simply don’t know. I do know that at the age of fifteen I had a mystical experience that scared the hell out of me and both it and combat put me into a different relationship with ordinary life and eternity.
Most of us, including me, would prefer to think of a sacred space as some light-filled wonderous place where we can feel good and find a way to shore up our psyches against death. We don’t want to think that something as ugly and brutal as combat could be involved in any way with the spiritual. However, would any practicing Christian say that Calvary Hill was not a sacred space?”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War
