On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation!

—Thomas William Parsons

I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day.  I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it.  We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did.

—Benjamin Harrison

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

—Joseph Campbell

Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays.... The grim cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach blossoms.

—Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.

—a headstone in Ireland

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

We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.

—Albert Einstein

It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.

—Norman Schwarzkopf

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

—Arthur Ashe

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

—John F. Kennedy

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

 – Billy Graham

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

Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave.

– Muhammad

Here dead lie we because we did not choose / To live and shame the land from which we sprung / . Life to be sure, is nothing much to lose; / But young men think it is, and we were young.

 – A.E. Housman

Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books.

—Walt Whitman