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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.

Random quote on Memorial Day

Most quoted on memorial day:

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

Michel de Montaigne Attributed

The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth.

Stonewall Jackson Attributed

The sword is the key of heaven and hell.

Muhammad Attributed

I am going to seek a great perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played.

François Rabelais Attributed

Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

Thomas Hobbes Attributed

Wars are God's way of teaching Americans geography.

Ambrose Bierce Attributed

Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound.

Isaac Watts Attributed Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1773)

For those that run away, and fly,
Take place at least o’ th’ enemy.

Samuel Butler Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

In all the trade of war, no feat
Is nobler than a brave retreat.

Samuel Butler Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other.

Thomas Carlyle Attributed

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Plato Misattributed

Bloody wars at first began,
The artificial plague of man,
That from his own invention rise,
To scourge his own iniquities.

Samuel Butler Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Soon, for me, the light of day
Shall for ever, pass away;
Then, from sin and sorrow, free,
Take me, Lord, to dwell with Thee.

William Croswell Doane Misattributed

We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn — the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perenninal, like the music of the spheres.

William Mackergo Taylor Attributed Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellow’d long;
Even wonder’d at, because he dropt no sooner.
Fate seem’d to wind him up for fourscore years;
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more:
Till like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still.

John Dryden Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

There’s but the twinkling of a star
Between a man of peace and war;
A thief and justice, fool and knave,
A huffing off’cer and a slave;
A crafty lawyer and a pickpocket,
A great philosopher and a blockhead;
A formal preacher and a player,
A learn’d physician and man-slayer.

Samuel Butler Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Build me a shrine, and I could kneel
To rural Gods, or prostrate fall;
Did I not see, did I not feel,
That one Great Spirit governs all.
O heaven, permit that I may lie
Where o’er my corse green branches wave;
And those who from life’s tumults fly
With kindred feelings press my grave.

Robert Bloomfield Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

If you're not ready to die for it, take the word "freedom" out of your vocabulary.

Malcolm X Attributed

When poets speak of death, they call it the place "without breasts."

Ramón Gómez de la Serna Attributed

We should provide in peace what we need in war.

Publilius Syrus Disputed

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