Drew Gilpin Faust Quotes

The Vietnam memorial is a masterpiece. The names of the dead are listed there, chronologically. Just the names.

During my past career as a journalist, I relished writing obits and equally dreaded phoning relatives for the necessary facts. But to my surprise and great relief, they often wanted to talk - they wanted their recently deceased loved ones recorded in print.

Death created the modern American union, not just by ensuring national survival, but by shaping enduring national structures and commitments. The work of death was Civil War America's most fundamental and most demanding undertaking.

I'm not a fan of people romanticizing their loved ones in death.

Americans in the Civil War period were very interested in Heaven and what it might be like, because they were having to face the fact that many of their loved ones were gone and many of their loved ones, they hoped, were in this other realm called Heaven.

My only rule: I never photographed the face of the dead, ever, out of respect for the families.

Memorial Service: Farewell party for someone who already left.

The elegy does the work of mourning; it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into remembrance, and it delivers an inheritance.

Probably half the cases of Civil War dead were not identified. And so there was no way to let loved ones know, and there were no regularized processes in either Northern or Southern Army for notifying next of kin.

In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.

I know you aren't supposed to speak ill of the dead.

He got badly hit in his leg and side at Fredericksburg that eventful Saturday, 13th of December. He lay the succeeding two days and nights helpless on the field, between the city and those grim terraces of batteries. His company and regiment had been compelled to leave him to his fate. To make matters worse, it happened he lay with his head slightly down hill, and could not help himself. At the end of some fifty hours he was brought off the field, with other wounded, under a flag of truce. I ask him how the rebels treated him as he lay during those two days and nights within reach of them -- whether they came to him -- whether they abused him? He answered that several of the rebels, soldiers and others, came to him at one time and another. A couple of them, who were together, spoke roughly and sarcastically, but nothing worse. One middle-aged man, however, who seemed to be moving around the field, among the dead and wounded, for benevolent purposes, came to him in a way he will never forget; he treated our soldier kindly, bound up his wounds, cheered him, gave him a couple of biscuits and a drink of whiskey and water, and asked him if he could eat some beef.

No victory is free from sorrow.

The war has carried mourning into almost every home … it can almost be said that the heavens are hung in black

More than a million Americans have died in our wars—each one much loved by someone.

It was sad news to read of two more of our destroyers being lost. I cannot bear to think of the many women whose hearts ache for the boys and men who are lost with each of these ships; as well as any one of the airplanes that fail to come back from a raid, or that crash somewhere in this country or in foreign parts. These days are terrible ones for the men themselves and for the women who wait at home for news. So many of the boys are very young and, under ordinary circumstances, would have their whole lives still before them. I wonder if women in every country are making up their minds that out of this war there shall come some kind of permanent peace.

Firemen have a culture of death. There are rituals, carefully constructed for the living, to process the dead.

But sometimes I fear that the people of my country can unite only beside victims' bodies, over coffins and in cemeteries. Like tribesmen who dance around old totems, we ignore the living and can only appreciate the dead.

Now, we have inscribed a new memory alongside those others. It's a memory of tragedy and shock, of loss and mourning. But not only of loss and mourning. It's also a memory of bravery and self-sacrifice, and the love that lays down its life for a friend-even a friend whose name it never knew.

It's a taboo subject. How the dead are betrayed by the living. We who are living--we who have survived--understand that our guilt is what links us to the dead. At all times we can hear them calling to us, a growing incredulity in their voices, You will not forget me -- will you? How can you forget me? I have no one but you.

Wiped the cold dew-drops from his cheek And sought the mourner's side again. "Once more, dear lady, I must speak: Your last remaining son was slain Just at the closing of the fight; Twas he who sent me here to-night." "God knows," the man said afterward, "The fight itself was not so hard."

When a lost loved one appears before you, it's your brain that fights it, not your heart.

With the tears a Land hath shed. Their graves should ever be green.

When we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. Instead. we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them, something...I don't know...even an earring