“Why should we celebrateThese dead men more than the dying?It is not to ring the bell backwardNor is it an incantationTo summon the spectre of a Rose.We cannot revive old factionsWe cannot restore old policiesOr follow an antique drum.These men, and those who opposed themAnd those whom they opposedAccept the constitution of silenceAnd are folded in a single party.Whatever we inherit from the fortunateWe have taken from the defeatedWhat they had to leave us - a symbol:A symbol perfected in death.”

“Old women are more reconciled to death than old men. By bringing life to the world, we come to see ourselves as debtors. What's given is taken.”

“exactly to those paths which others have taken, or attain to the virtues of those whom they would resemble, the wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour.”

“At least 600,000 men died in the Civil War. Major battles numbered the dead in the thousands; even minor skirmishes killed hundreds...Then why study the death of thirteen men?... Mass death numbs the mind and heart as it numbers its vast toll. Relief from the horror is less possible when we watch old Joe Woods and thirteen-year-old David Shelton plead for life - and then die.”

“We would have visions in those days,a number of us did. Your young men will have visions and your old men will dream dreams”

“The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.”