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.
Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.
Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over may be meant to save.
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.
A grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharg'd.
Let never day nor night unhallow'd pass,
But still remember what the Lord hath done.
Death is the universal salt of states;
Blood is the base of all things — law and war.
"Passing away" is written on the world and all the world contains.
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invoked.
Death is the waiting-room where we robe ourselves for immortality.
One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die as a man.
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.