Enemies - Quotes

A conquered foe should be watched. - Edgar Watson Howe

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him. - Aesop

A man falling off a cliff to certain death will stretch out a hand even to his worst enemy. - Robert Jordan

A man has no enemy worse than himself. - Cicero

A man with no enemies is a man with no character. - Paul Newman

Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment. - Andre Maurois

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make them my friends? - Abraham Lincoln

An enemy will train us in watchfulness; for if he be wary to seize on every error and trip us, we shall be more heedful to expose nothing, and this will drive us to prudence and thoughtfulness. - James Vila Blake

Beware of meat twice boil'd, and an old foe reconcil'd. - Benjamin Franklin

By a few soft words and pleasant looks enemies have been made friends, and old attachments renewed that had been annulled for years. - Nicias Ballard Cooksey

Enemies don't fight with such determined passion. That kind of focus is reserved for friends at odds with one another. - Heather Brewer

Enemies make us watchful of ourselves and induce self-examination; for we must argue thus: our foe hates us with reason or without reason; if without reason, then he not really hates us, but some other sort of person for whom he mistakes us; but if with reason, then it is plain we should improve, and remove the reason. - James Vila Blake

Enemies make you stronger, allies make you weaker. - Frank Herbert

Enemies were teachers in disguise. - Eiji Yoshikawa

Every man is his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner. - Sir Thomas Browne

Fear not, too much, an open enemy; he is consistent – always at his post; But watchful be of him who holds the key of your own heart, and flatters you the most. - Andrew Downing

Fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world. - Cormac McCarthy

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us – avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. - Petrarca Petrarch

He makes no friends who never made a foe. - Alfred Tennyson

He who has his enemy's love and trust is in a far better position to attack, later, when the time is right. - K. J. Parker

I have only one real and true enemy on earth, and that is myself. - Christian Morgenstern

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

It is easy to crush an enemy outside oneself but impossible to defeat an enemy within. - Eiji Yoshikawa

It is noteworthy that in Japanese pop culture, enemies are not always villains. It is acknowledged that an enemy is simply the person fighting for the other side of the conflict and that if the story were told from his point of view, he would be the hero of the tale. - Robin E. Brenner

It's great to have an enemy. Sharpens your senses. - John Updike

Its hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. - Yogi Sally Kempton

Love your enemies but keep your gun oiled. - Ken Alstad

Make sure your worst enemy doesn’t live between your own two ears. - Laird Hamilton

Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends. - Plato

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. - Aristophanes

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution. - Niccolo Machiavelli

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good. - Jonathan Swift

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy. - E. B. White Our real enemies are the people who make us feel so good that we are slowly, but inexorably, pulled down into the quicksand of smugness and self-satisfaction. - Sydney Harris

Our enemies ... seem always with us. The greater our hatred the more persistent the memory of them so that a truly terrible enemy becomes deathless. So that the man who has done you great injury or injustice makes himself a guest in your house forever. Perhaps only forgiveness can dislodge him. - Cormac McCarthy

Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Our worst enemies are those we least suspect – ourselves. - Ivan Panin

Quite often, our enemies are our enemies because of miscommunications, misunderstandings, irrational emotional states, and illogical, ungrounded conclusions. An enemy can be an enemy for a very justifiable reason. An enemy can be a true intellectual, emotional, or physical threat. A single individual or a group of people can be a real danger to our life and the way that we live it. Despite our perceptions of the level of danger our enemies present, we must act. We must make war. We must kill our enemies with love. We must destroy our enemies by making them our friends and loved ones. And if our enemies refuse to be loved, we must continue to love them as best we can. - Joshua Miller

Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes. - Antisthenes

Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes. - Oliver Goldsmith

The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on. - Joseph Heller

The enemy is never more unnerving than when he's invisible. - K. J. Parker

The enemy to be feared most is one who wears the face of a friend. - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

The foes that are unseen are often stronger than those that are seen. - Edward Counsel

The great enemies of intellectual life are superstition, gullibility, and fallacious reasoning. A mere knowledge of facts, important as that is, is no safeguard against these. A conscious desire and resolve to think clearly is the true remedy. - Edward O. Sisson

The only enemy to fear is the enemy within, the demon that speaks in your own voice, the assassin in the mirror. - Bob Lonsberry

The only good enemy is a dead enemy. - Laurel K. Hamilton

The worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. - Friedrich Nietzsche

The worst enemy you have is right in your head. - Unknown

There's ways you can trust an enemy you can't always trust a friend. An enemy's never going to betray your trust. - Daniel Abraham

There is no little enemy. - Benjamin Franklin

We have two lessons to teach an enemy who despises us – to value himself less highly, and us more worthily. - Christian Nestell Bovee

We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction. - Aesop

We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have become our friends, if we had only known them better. - Jean de La Bruyere

We shall support whatever our enemies oppose and oppose whatever our enemies support. - Mao ZeDong

What is man's chief enemy? Each man is his own. - Anacharsis Cloots

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. - African Proverb

What joins men together ... is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies. - Cormac McCarthy

When the inhabitants of a free city have overcome the enemy in the field, it is not easy to express the pleasure which they feel in putting their opponents to flight, as well as in pursuing and making havoc of them. - Xenophon

When your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies. - Umberto Eco

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. - Eric Hoffer

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. - Winston Churchill

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear. - Victor Hugo

Your worst and most dangerous enemy is the person that injures you under the pretensions of friendship. - Norman MacDonald