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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:

For the present, and so long as there are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting.

Felix Adler Life and Destiny (1913)

When every young man refuses to go to war, you will have peace. As long as you fight for gain and greed, there will be no peace. As long as one person commits acts of violence for the sake of peace, you will have war.

Jane Roberts The Seth Material (1970)

He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.

Ralph Waldo Emerson May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.

Robert Browning Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

It is the lot of man but once to die.

Francis Quarles Emblems (1635)

Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.

Thomas Fuller Life of Monica (1642)

Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron,
Shall a nation be moulded at last.

Algernon Charles Swinburne A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems (1884)

Friend Ralph, thou hast
Outrun the constable at last.

Samuel Butler Part I (1663)

This is the soldier brave enough to tell
The glory-dazzled world that "war is hell":
Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife,
And rides through hell to save his country's life.

Henry van Dyke The Statue of Sherman by St. Gaudens (1904)

In war men pass like shadows that stain the grass,
Leaving their lives upon the green:
While Earth bewails the crimson sheen,
Men’s dreams and stars and whispers all helpless pass.

Stephen R. Donaldson Lord Foul's Bane (1977)

My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be my rewarder.

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)

Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,
While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?

William Ernest Henley Poems (1898)

When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war.

Nathaniel Lee The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great (1677)

It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.

Charles Francis Adams Sr.

I have always believed that success would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.

Austen Henry Layard

Don’t mistake gratitude for love.

Esther Friesner Harlot's Ruse (1986)

Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?

William Shakespeare Richard II (1595)

When I'm not thank'd at all, I'm thank'd enough,
I've done my duty, and I've done no more.

Henry Fielding The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1730)

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Francis Bacon

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