Sophie,

pretty much anything by Churchill does the same for me, but two especially (also from 1940) sends shivers down my spine everytime and makes me proud to be British. “We shall fight them on the beaches”… especially the line, “we shall never surrender”, spoken at a time when many of our own government were looking to do just that!

Also, “This was their finest hour”. Was there ever a better example of the right man being in the right place at the right time?

Louise,

Laurence Binyon's WW1 poem, For The Fallen, always has an emotional effect on me and has now become a memorial quotation for remembrance to those that have lost their lives in all conflicts since.

'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.'

I always thought that was a psalm. I didn't realise it was from a poem. It's beautiful in it's simplicity, and painfully sad.

Thanks, Neil.

I love alot of Shakespeare quotes, for example: “Love all, trust a few, and do wrong to none” and “All that glitters is not gold”.

I love all of Anne's quotes too!

I like a few from Elizabeth I, like: “I have of a heart of a man, not a woman, and i'm not afraid of anything” and “I'd rather be a beggar and single than a Queen and married”.

There's also one from Albert Einstein..”Learn from yesterday, live for today, and hope for tomorrow”.

♥And this one may not be historic but I'm in love with it: A rose is beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in it's defense. It just means just because something looks a certain way doesn't mean it can't be fierce and defend it's self.

Tilbury Speech, Elizabeth I

“Some men see thing as they are and say why.  I dream things that never were and say why not.”  Geaorge Bernard Shaw quote used by Robert Kennedy

“I have a dream” speech, by Martin Luther King

I could quote Shakespeare all day.  One of the romantic quotes would be:

“…And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars. And he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.”  –Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty of safety.”  Benjamin Franklin

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself” 1st inaugural speech of FDR

My favourite quote from Shakespeare,” My life I ne’r held but as a pawn, to wage war against thine enemies.” Kent to King Lear. Surely the ultimate expression of loyalty.

Thomas Hardy, who I normally can’t stand, from ‘Return of the Native’, “Beware the fury of a patient man”.  

My favorite Shakespearean quote:

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

 – Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene IV

One of my favourite Oscar Wilde quotes:

“Be yourself; everybody else is taken.”

“I am just going outside and may be some time”.
Ten words that, without knowing their context, don’t sound very impressive. These were the last words uttered by Captain Lawrence Oates as he sacrificed his own life in the hope it could enable his comrades to survive. Sadly, this was not to be and they too perished a few days later. As we approach 100 years since Oates’s death (March 17th) I thought these words should be added to this topic as they showed what passed for normal values at the time: Honour, decency, bravery, loyalty, duty and self-sacrifice. Much has been made of Titanic’s demise 100 years ago, but little attention seems to have been made to Scott’s ill-fated journey to the South Pole earlier that year. Another of Scott’s party, Dr Wilson, took it upon himself to write (although close to death himself) a letter to Oates’s mother. “Your son died a very noble death, God knows…never a word or a sign of complaint. You, he told me, are the only woman he ever loved. Now I am in the same can and I can no longer hope to see either you or my beloved wife or my mother or father – the end is close upon us but these diaries will be found”.
“What is a true gentleman?”, asked an editorial in Le Temps. “It will suffice to reply that he is the man who behaves like Captain Oates”.
Can anyone read the words that these brave men wrote and not be moved by them?
We may have advanced in many things over the last 100 years, but our moral standards seem to have declined in direct proportion with these material advances. I know the world was far from perfect 100 years ago, but in some ways, especially in the values people held dear, it seems a better world than now. Sorry, jumping off my soapbox now!

There are so many how do we choose???

Let us show them that they are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves.
Boudica addressing the tribes Circa AD60 – Boudica (allegedly) said a lot of good things.

Anything of Churchill’s including his ‘yes, but in the morning I’ll be sober’

From poetry it has to be the opening of Grey’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard which always gives me shivers to read.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Lastly my dad who had many treasures and snippets to pass on but the one which has always stuck with me and I have to say stood up to the test of time and kept me ‘safe’ was this one…
‘Never trust a man who wears a shirt darker than his tie’
I do not know the why’s and wherefore’s of this but it was told to me most seriously when I was around 14/16 I think and I have to admit in my experience it has – shall we say – merit!