Memorial Day Quotes and Sayings

Memorial Day, which was formerly known as Decoration Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is observed on the last Monday of May and commemorates the men and women of the United States, who died while serving in the U.S. Military. New York was the first state to officially recognize the holiday on Memorial day, in 1873, and by 1890, it was accredited by rest of the states. Now it is celebrated in almost every state with a three-day weekend for Federal holidays. Here are some of the famous memorial day quotes and sayings.

• 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
• Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism? - Henry Ward Beecher
• That's what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end. - Lise Hand
• 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
• I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived. - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
• Our battle-fields, safe in the keeping
  Of Nature's kind, fostering care,
  Are blooming, - our heroes are sleeping,
  And peace broods perennial there. - John H. Jewett
• But the freedom that they fought for, and the country grand they wrought for,
  Is their monument to-day, and for aye. - Thomas Dunn English
• The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children. - William Havard
• 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
• Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. - Anonymous
• 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
• Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, but, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. - Rupert Brooke
• And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free. And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me. - Lee Greenwood
• Our cheer goes back to them, the valiant dead! Laurels and roses on their graves to-day, lilies and laurels over them we lay, and violets o'er each unforgotten head. - Richard Hovey
• Better than honor and glory, and History's iron pen, was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men. - Richard Watson Gilder
• All we have of freedom - all we use or know - This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. - Rudyard Kipling
• The Flag still floats unblotted with defeat! But ah the blood that keeps its ripples red, the starry lives that keep its field alight. - Rupert Hughes
• Perform, then, this one act of remembrance before this Day passes - Remember there is an army of defense and advance that never dies and never surrenders, but is increasingly recruited from the eternal sources of the American spirit and from the generations of American youth. - W.J. Cameron
• Fold him in his country's stars. Roll the drum and fire the volley! What to him are all our wars, what but death bemocking folly? - George Henry Boker
• 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

Memorial Day commemorates the selfless sacrifice of multiple soldiers in order to maintain the solidarity, peace and freedom of USA as a nation. It embodies the courage displayed by these men in the face of adversity and fight for the sake what is right. These quotes and sayings serve as a prominent motivational factor for the American public even today.