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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:

It should be realised that men will take enormous risks rather than be bored. War has been used before now to prevent a bored populace from getting into mischief, at the expense of its rulers.

J. B. Priestley

In every age a few individuals do find The Great Way. They do conquer death by regenerating and restoring their bodies to the Realm of Permanence.

Harold W. Percival Thinking and Destiny (1946)

Everybody dies. So much of growing up consists of coming to grips with this fact.

Michael Swanwick Bones of the Earth (2002)

Not only Ukraine will have to be denazified. The war against Europe and the world is developing a more specific outline, which means we'll have to act differently and to act much more harshly.

Vladimir Solovyov

Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.

Isaiah The Book of Isaiah (-500)

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men.

William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Poets (1818)

Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battle-field than to live a life of defeat.

Swami Vivekananda

The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow.

Lord Byron And Thou Art Dead as Young and Fair (1812)

India wants to avoid a war at all costs but it is not a one-sided affair, you cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

Indira Gandhi

Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.

Willard van Orman Quine

After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.

Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman (1949)

The defence of internal peace and order constitutes the sacred mission of a nation's armed forces and that is what we have carried out.

Francisco Franco The Tyrants : 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption (2006)

War was rapidly doing what war did—making ugly everything it touched.

Harry Turtledove Southern Victory (1997)

But we hate the system - capitalism, militarism, reaction – and that system we scorn with a healthy, burning, eternal hatred.

Ture Nerman

“Dead,” muttered Mycroft with a resigned air. “Never been that before. Not even once. Are you quite sure?”

Jasper Fforde

An absolute doctrine is impossible, for once a doctrine and its articles become dogma, woe to the army which lies enthralled under its spell.

J. F. C. Fuller Men Against Fire. S.L.A. Marshall (1947)

In our system of universal military training, barrack life must be reduced to a minimum, so that ultimately the Red barracks may completely disappear.

Nikolai Bukharin

The death of our close friends and relatives proves that how close the death is to us!

Javad Alizadeh

People who died could not come back to life, so guaranteeing the right to life should not be a thing of the future, but should be advancing right now.

Wang Ching-feng Wang Ching-feng (2010)

He is blind to the dead, to the burning villages, to the starving children. As is the Rebel. Two blind armies, able to see nothing but one another.

Glen Cook The Black Company (1984)

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