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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:

"Companions," said he [Saturninus], "you have lost a good captain, to make of him a bad general."

Michel de Montaigne

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style."

Rebecca Solnit

We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count."

Neal A. Maxwell

Her cabin'd ample spirit,
It fluttered and fail'd for breath;
Tonight it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.

Matthew Arnold

The thousand doors that lead to death.

Thomas Browne Religio Medici (1642)

Where the brass knocker, wrapt in flannel band,
Forbids the thunder of the footman's hand,
The' upholder, rueful harbinger of death,
Waits with impatience for the dying breath.

John Gay

Those that God loves, do not live long.

George Herbert Jacula Prudentum (1651)

There is no such thing as death.
In nature nothing dies.
From each sad remnant of decay
Some forms of life arise.

Charles Mackay

When Life knocks at the door no one can wait,
When Death makes his arrest we have to go.

John Masefield

We are all bound thither; we are hastening to the same common goal. Black death calls all things under the sway of its laws.

Ovid

I've said I'm not afraid of death, and that's true. Dying, though, is another matter. Dying slowly in great pain is something I actively try to avoid.

Tom Holt

Softly his fainting head he lay
Upon his Maker's breast;
His Maker kiss'd his soul away,
And laid his flesh to rest.

Isaac Watts

War is fought by human beings.

Carl von Clausewitz

Of course wars are fought by teenagers. Do you realize that? They really should be fought by the politicians and the old people who start these wars.

James Clavell interview with Don Swaim of CBS Radio (1986)

At the border posts, shed blood becomes a sea,
The martial emperor's dream of expansion has no end.

Du Fu

When 'tis an aven thing in th' prayin', may th' best man win … an' th' best man will win.

Finley Peter Dunne

Mankind must put an end to war — or war will put an end to mankind

John F. Kennedy

Arms on armour clashing bray'd
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots ray'd; dire was the noise
Of conflict.

John Milton

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms,—never! never! never!

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

Then more fierce
The conflict grew; the din of arms, the yell
Of savage rage, the shriek of agony,
The groan of death, commingled in one sound
Of undistinguish'd horrors.

Robert Southey Madoc in Wales (1805)

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