Inasmuch as next Monday is Memorial Day I've done some research concerning earlier thoughts on that day.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was only 20 when the Civil War broke out. He fought in the 20th Massachusetts infantry and was wounded 3 times. Eventually he became a Justice of the United States Supreme Court on which he served until 1932.

In 1884 he delivered a Memorial Day address to a convention of Civil War survivors:

[Memorial Day] Embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might.... I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived....[T]he 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....[T]he One and only success which it is [a man's] to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart."

Very very well said Mr. Justice!