Memorial Day Quotes
This page is assembled from three others: War, Death and Gratitude. There is no memorial collection underneath it. One poem is filed against the day itself, Joyce Kilmer’s, in Trees and Other Poems (1914), and it opens with a bugle that, he says, is not singing of war today.
The rest is whatever the three source pages rate highest, so it leans toward poetry and toward writers who saw war up close. Several famous lines about death and sacrifice carry flags here, so read the note on a quote’s own page before you attach a name to it.
A heap of dust remains of thee;
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Death takes the mean man with the proud;
The fatal urn has room for all.
The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.
Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep.
Our souls are prisoners of the terror of death, and the day is beautiful.
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
The world has created no living thing it does not intend to destroy.
Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly long'd for death.
And God said, "A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb."
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.