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..."(Oliver Wendell, Jr.) Holmes made a seismic point, something that still resonates today, particularly with veterans:
..."(Oliver Wendell, Jr.) Holmes made a seismic point, something that still resonates today, particularly with veterans:
“The generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
“We have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.
“Such hearts — ah me, how many! — were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories.”
Holmes spoke to a country still reckoning with the aftermath of terrible conflict. In our own way, America is living through unsettled times again.
Rereading Holmes’s speech 142 years later, its sadness, tragic loss and passion for fallen friends still echo like a knell."
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U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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