“You gotta kick the habit, my Hobbit!” – Gandolf to Frodo, in the Thug Notes interpretation of “The Fellowship of the Ring”.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die. — Roy Batty, Blade Runner

Boo, reading the latest edition of Field and Stream, which has a picture of a man, holding a hunting knife, facing off against a grizzly on the cover – “How do you kill a bear?”

Me – “Well, your mother is trying to do it using biscuits and gravy, but it’ll take a few years.”

It is our part with the help of Divine holiness to defend by armed strength the holy Church of Christ everywhere . . . it is your part, most holy Father, to help our armies with your hands lifted up to God like Moses, so that by your intercession and by the leadership and gift of God the Christian people may everywhere and always have the victory over the enemies of the Holy Name.

— Charlemagne, in a letter to Pope Leo III, 796 AD

I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my Country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the oeconomy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. — President George Washington, Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

It’s another two-fer.  Both of these came to mind when I read the news today:

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. — John Quincy Adams

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. — George Washington

Today is a two-fer.  First, to commemorate the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775:

Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here. — Captain John Parker, Colonial Militia

Next, we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995:

You have lost too much, but you have not lost everything. And you have certainly not lost America, for we will stand with you for as many tomorrows as it takes. … If anybody thinks that Americans are mostly mean and selfish, they ought to come to Oklahoma. If anybody thinks Americans have lost the capacity for love and caring and courage, they ought to come to Oklahoma.” – President Bill Clinton

Girlie Bear, my beautiful 16-year-old daughter, standing in the kitchen in her Cookie Monster footie pajamas, poking her belly – I didn’t even know you existed.

Me, clutching my chest and looking horrified – Who are you talking to?

Girlie Bear, looking confused – This muscle right here.  I did too many situps today.

Me, taking a deep breath – Oh, thank the Lord!

“The lesson I’ve learned from that experience is that the 1,177 men entombed on the ship right now will never know the love of a wife or the joy of grandchildren,” he said in 2006, when his son, Ted, interviewed him on video at Pearl Habor. “We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.” — Joe Langdell, veteran of the U.S.S. Arizona and Pearl Harbor, who passed away this week.