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The Balkan wars led to a further inconsistency in U.S. policy. … America asked Europe to carry more of the defense burden, and then grew resentful when the EU did as asked.
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Chapter one: "Grand Strategy and the Paradox of American Power"

 

Charles A. Kupchan

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O most grateful burden, which comforts them that carry it! The burdens of earthly masters gradually wear out the strength of those who carry them; but the burden of Christ assists the bearers of it, because we carry not grace, but grace us.

 

John Chrysostom

 

There are countless reasons the American people have lost confidence in the President's Iraq policy, but chief among them has been the administration's insistence on making promises and assurances about progress and victory that do not appear to be grounded in the reality of the facts. We have been told we would be greeted as liberators. We have been promised the insurgency was in its last throes. We have been assured again and again that we are making progress and that the Iraqis would soon stand up so we could stand down and our brave sons and daughters could start coming home. We have been asked to wait, we have been asked to be patient, and we have been asked to give the President and the new Iraqi Government 6 more months, and then 6 more months after that, and then 6 more months after that.

 

Barack Obama

 

By a strange inconsistency, Luther justified all wars of self-defense except those waged by subjects against tyrannical rulers. He unconditionally condemned rebellion and revolution. In referring to the peasants' revolt... To the soldiers who took the field against the peasants, he said: "If you die in battle against them, you could never have a more blessed end, for you die obedient to God's Word in Romans 13, and in the service of love to free your neighbor from the bands of hell and the devil."

 

Martin Luther

 

Some asked me where the rubies grew,
And nothing I did say;
But with my finger pointed to
The lips of Julia.

 

Robert Herrick

 

We are so much accustomed to the humanitarian outlook that we forget how little it counted in earlier ages of civilisation. Ask any decent person in England or America what he thinks matters most in human conduct: five to one his answer will be "kindness." It's not a word that would have crossed the lips of any of the earlier heroes of this series. If you had asked St. Francis what mattered in life, he would, we know, have answered "chastity, obedience and poverty"; if you had asked Dante or Michelangelo, they might have answered "disdain of baseness and injustice"; if you had asked Goethe, he would have said "to live in the whole and the beautiful." But kindness, never. Our ancestors didn't use the word, and they did not greatly value the quality — except perhaps insofar as they valued compassion.

 

Kenneth Clark