~Memorial Day~

Toll of bells, drums’ slow beat–
Silence falls in every street.
In each heart swells the plea:
Keep us safe, but keep us free!

“They are dead; but they live in each Patriot’s breast, And their names are engraven on honor’s bright crest.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?”
Thomas Jefferson

“These heroes are dead. They died for liberty-they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadow of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars-they are at peace. In the midst of the battles, in the roar of conflicts, they found the serenity of death.”
Unknown

“Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.”
G.K. Chesterton

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”
Thucydides

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”
Joseph Campbell

“It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.”
Charles M. Province

“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, ‘What should be the reward of such sacrifices?’…If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Samuel Adams

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”
John F. Kennedy

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
John Stuart Mills

“Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.”
Daniel Webster

“The purpose of all war is peace.”
Saint Augustine (354-430)

“Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.”
Martin Luther

“Those who will may raise monuments of marble to perpetuate the fame of heroes. Those who will may build memorial halls to remind those who shall gather there in after times what manhood could do and dare for right, and what high examples of virtue and valor have gone before them. But let us make our offering to the ever-living soul. Let us build our benefactions in the ever-growing heart, that they shall live and rise and spread in blessing beyond our sight, beyond the ken of man and beyond the touch of time.”
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

“They fell, but o’er their glorious grave Floats free the banner of the cause they died to save.”
Francis Marion Crawford

“We come, not to mourn our dead soldiers, but to praise them.”
Francis A. Walker