Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain Quotes

I'm just a kid, Chiron," I said miserably. "What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?" Chiron managed a smile. '"What good is one lousy hero'? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War.

In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.

I know in whom all my highest hopes and dearest joys are centered. I know in whom my whole heart can rest — so sweetly and so surely.

The power of noble deeds is to be preserved and passed on to the future.

It is something great and greatening to cherish an ideal; to act in the light of truth that is far-away and far above; to set aside the near advantage, the momentary pleasure; the snatching of seeming good to self; and to act for remoter ends, for higher good, and for interests other than our own.

There is a way of losing that is finding. When soul overmasters sense. When the noble and divine self overcomes the lower self. When duty and honor and love immortal things bid the mortal perish. It is only when a man supremely gives that he supremely finds

But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men- men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order- do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard or His forgiveness we must forever implore?

It is by miracles we have lived to see this day, — any of us standing here.

There was no war between the States. It was a war in the name of certain States to destroy the political existence of the United States.

Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine, who so valiantly defended Little Round Top at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, was in command of the Union troops assembled in formation to observe and accept the stacking of arms. In deference to the officers of Lee’s army, Chamberlain lowered his sword in an officer’s salute as each ranking member of his former enemy passed by. Leading the parade of surrender were the surviving members of the Stonewall Brigade. Appendix

Far to the north, in Bangor, Maine, a little- known professor at Bowdoin College named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain read the news and “could not abide the thought of a divided nation; the Founding Fathers ‘did not vote themselves into a people; they recognized and declared that they were a people’ whose bonds out not to be severed by political, social, or economic grievances.” The professor was seized with anger that “the flag of the Nation had been insulted,” and “the integrity and existence of the people of the United States had been assailed in open and bitter war.

It is the discipline which is the soul of armies, as indeed the soul of power in all intelligence. Other things -- moral considerations, impulses of sentiment, and even natural excitement -- may lead men to great deed; but taken in the long run, and in all vicissitudes, an army is effective in proportion to its discipline.

The inspiration of a noble cause involving human interests wide and far, enables men to do things they did not dream themselves capable of before, and which they were not capable of alone. The consciousness of belonging, vitally, to something beyond individuality; of being part of a personality that reaches we know not where, in space and in time, greatens the heart to the limits of the soul's ideal.

-Sic vos non nobis- --not for you yourselves -- says Virgil to his bees and birds building nests and storing up food, mostly for others. Strange shadows fall across the glamour of glory. The law of sharing for the most of mankind seems to be that each shall give his best according to some inner commandment, and receive according to the decree of some far divinity, whose face is of a stranger, and whose heart is alien to the motives and sympathies that animate his own.

I do not fear these men of science, for after all they are following God's ways, and whether they see him now or not, these lines will surely lead to him in the end....I do not fear the advance of science...for I know that all true working and real discovery...can rest in no other theory than truth, and no other goal than God.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain