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.
So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.
I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.
Trust to a plank, draw precarious breath,
At most seven inches from the jaws of death.
For death betimes is comfort, not dismay,
And who can rightly die needs no delay.
Men drop so fast, ere life's mid stage we tread,
Few know so many friends alive, as dead.
Heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle.