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.
This is a time for action — not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery.
There is a fundamental inconsistency between war and freedom.
Happy the state which in times of peace is yet prepared for war.
All wars are civil ones; for it is still man spilling his own blood, tearing out his own bowels.
Tell him your country fought a war so you wouldn't have to answer to kings and queens."
It may be that we shall witness scenes surpassing in horror even those of the recent war.
The Chinese once made war upon us, but were reduced to seek peace.
Why should we hate the people we once loved because of a war that mars even our memories?
The Services in war time are fit only for desperadoes but, in peace, are fit only for fools.
To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.