dulce et decorum est

full quote: we here highly resolve that those dead shall not have died in vain


full title: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

meaning: it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country

while i'm not exactly patriotic, i understand that many people died to give me the life i have...
but abraham's quote from the gettysburg address really rings true to me, because they didn't die fighting another nation for their own, they died fighting amongst themselves. now, all that we can do is remember what they died for, and try to make peace with eachother before it's too late.


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and since i love the gettysburg address, here it is:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.