Lest we forget

Poignant quotes and verse, lest we forget…

• The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them. – Czeslaw Milosz, The Issa Valley
• The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children. – William Havard
• 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
• When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep? – George Canning, The Pilot that weathered the Storm
• And they who for their country die shall fill an honored grave, for glory lights the soldier’s tomb, and beauty weeps the brave. – Joseph Drake
• When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow we gave our today. – John Maxwell Edmonds
• The dead soldier’s silence sings our national anthem. – Aaron Kilbourn
• They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation. – Henry Ward Beecher
• To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. – Thomas Campbell, Hallowed Ground
• I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’ -Eve Merriam
• In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. – Jose Narosky
• For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity. – William Penn
• They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. / At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. – Laurence Binyon, For The Fallen
• In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. – American General Douglas MacArthur
• And each man stands with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Nurture your minds with great thoughts, to believe in the heroic makes heroes. – Benjamin Disraeli
• Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul. – Michel de Montaigne
• Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened. – Billy Graham
• The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war. – Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
• Heroism … is endurance for one moment more. – George F. Kennan
• The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example. – Benjamin Disraeli
• Give me American supply lines, British planes, German officers and Canadian troops, and I can take over the world. – German Nazi General Erwin “The Fox” Rommel
• Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear. – William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

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Remembrance Verses

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

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
By all their country’s wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallow’d mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there.

– William Collins

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Cover them over with beautiful flowers,
Deck them with garlands, those brothers of ours,
Lying so silent by night and by day
Sleeping the years of their manhood away.
Give them the meed they have won in the past;
Give them the honors their future forcast;
Give them the chaplets they won in the strife;
Give them the laurels they lost with their life.

– Will Carleton

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

– John McCrae, In Flanders Fields

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Chris George, providing reliable PR & GR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.