William Manchester Quotes (12 Quotes)

Abruptly the poker of memory stirs the ashes of recollection and uncovers a forgotten ember, still smoldering down there, still hot, still glowing, still red as red.

As she sallied forth from her boudoir, you would never have guessed how quickly she could strip for action.

Actors who have tried to play Churchill and MacArthur have failed abysmally because each of those men was a great actor playing himself.

An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome.

It would be inaccurate to say that Churchill and I conversed. . . . Like Gladstone speaking to Victoria, he addressed me as though I were a one-man House of Commons. It was superb.

I wondered vaguely if this was when it would end, whether I would pull up tonight's darkness like a quilt and be dead and at peace evermore.

Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity.

The coconut trees, lithe and graceful, crowd the beach like a minuet of slender elderly virgins adopting flippant poses.

Our Boeing 747 has been fleeing westward from darkened California, racing across the Pacific toward the sun, the incandescent eye of God, but slowly, three hours later than West Coast time, twilight gathers outside, veil upon lilac veil.

Japanese naval officers in dress whites are frequent guests at Pearl Harbor's officers' mess and are very polite. They always were. Except, of course, for that little interval there between 1941 and 1945.

He was a great thundering paradox of a man.

The destruction of Manila was one of the greatest tragedies of World War II. Of all the allied capitals only Warsaw suffered more.