Quotes & Sayings About The Unknown Soldier

I returned to the fields of glory, where the green grass an' flowers grow,
An' the wind softly sings the story of the braves lad of long ago.

In the great glen, they lie a-sleeping, where the cool waters gently flow,
An' the grey mist is sadly weeping for the brave lads of long ago.

See the tall grass is there a-waving as their flags were so long ago;
With their heads high, were forward braving, marching onwards to meet the foe.

March no more, my soldier laddie, there is peace where there once was war.
Sleep in peace, my soldier laddie. Sleep in peace now, the battle's o'er. — Unknown

Today I must humbly thank Providence, whose grace has enabled me, who was once an unknown soldier in the War, to bring to a successful issue the struggle for the restoration of our honor and rights as a nation. — Adolf Hitler

Well, it is all over now. The battle is lost, and many of us are prisoners, many are dead, many wounded, bleeding and dying. Your Soldier lives and mourns and but for you, my darling, he would rather, a million times rather, be back there with his dead, to sleep for all time in an unknown grave. — George Pickett

[T]he unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier
dead, melted wax
demands a response among the living ... a response no-one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous
as if cursed
while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?
Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living. — Steven Erikson

To rest was to receive all aspects of the world without judgment. A bath in the sea, a fuck with a soldier who never knew your name. Tenderness toward the unknown and anonymous, which was tenderness to the self. — Michael Ondaatje

For some time she observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing its wings very slowly on a little flat stone.
"What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence; each word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknown sea. Hypnotized by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the discovery of a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time longer. When the butterfly flew away, she rose, and within, her two books beneath her arm returned again, much as a soldier prepares for battle. — Virginia Woolf

I suppose that Heartland, Unknown Soldier and Pride and Joy represent not a quieter side but more of a serious side to my work, something I've been getting into recently. — Garth Ennis

Here's to the drunken Marine
With beer in his canteen!
You've heard of the Unknown Soldier
But, never an unknown Marine! — John Ripley

No, no, it's not me, it's them - that old time that I've tried to have live in me. These were just men, unimportant evidently or they wouldn't have been 'unknown'; but they died for the most beautiful thing in the world - the dead South. You see," she continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears, "people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I've always grown up with that dream. It was so easy because it was all dead and there weren't any disillusions comin' to me. I've tried in a way to live up to those past standards of noblesse oblige - there's just the last remnants of it, you know, like the roses of an old garden dying all round us - streaks of strange courtliness and chivalry in some of these boys an' stories I used to hear from a Confederate soldier who lived next door, and a few old darkies. Oh, Harry, there was something, there was something! I couldn't ever make you understand but it was there. — F Scott Fitzgerald

There was only the broad square with the scattered dim moons of the street lamps and with the monumental stone arch which receded into the mist as though it would prop up the melancholy sky and protect beneath itself the faint lonely flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which looked like the last grave of mankind in the midst of night and loneliness. — Erich Maria Remarque

No one could recall who he was or what he had looked like, least of all Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, who remembered only that a new officer had shown up at the operations tent just in time to be killed and who colored uneasily every time the matter of the dead man in Yossarian's tent was mentioned. The only one who might have seen Mudd, the men in the same plane, had all been blown to bits with him. Yossarian, on the other hand, knew exactly who Mudd was. Mudd was the unknown soldier who had never had a chance, for that was the only thing anyone ever did know about all the unknown soldiers - they never had a chance. They had to be dead. — Joseph Heller

At one point in the journey, we're approaching the Arc de Triomphe.

"That's awesome," states Paul.

"My guidebook says that it's the resting place of the 'unknown soldier' and the flame never goes out," I announce proudly.

The taxi driver says something to Elizabeth, who is sitting in the front.

"Franz here, suggests that if the budget deficit gets any worse, they intend to turn the gas off except on Public Holidays."

"Still practically every day then! — Chambers Mars