Teach him how to live,
And, oh still harder lesson! how to die.
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.
Good faith and probity are rarely found among the followers of the camp.
Let the man, who would be grateful, think of repaying a kindness, even while receiving it.
Pale death, with impartial step, knocks at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings.
One night is awaiting us all, and the way of death must be trodden once.
This I ask, is it not madness to kill thyself in order to escape death?
Man should ever look to his last day, and no one should be called happy before his funeral.
It is an extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die.
It is uncertain in what place death may await thee; therefore expect it in any place.
Sometimes death is a punishment; often a gift; it has been a favor to many.
There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom.
Every shot has its commission, d'ye see? We must all die at one time, as the saying is.