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.
Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise the King born of all England.
War, no matter what our intentions may be, brings suffering and tragedy.
There 's but the twinkling of a star
Between a man of peace and war.
There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
There may be a hundred stances and sword positions, but you win with just one.
A serjeant is a soldier with a halbert, and a drummer is a soldier with a drum.
To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war.
Death must be an evil — and the gods agree;
for why else would they live for ever?
The atomic bomb had dwarfed the international issues to complete insignificance.