Best 413 quotes in «funeral quotes» category

From life to life, from breath to breath, we remember Elinor.

Funerals aren't for the dead. They're for the living.

Funerals seem less about comforting the souls of these dearly departed than about comforting the people they leave behind.

Funerals aren't for dead people. They are for the living

Go hence, O Death, pursue thy special pathway apart from that which gods wont to travel. To thee I say it who hast eyes and hearest: touch not our offspring, injure not our heroes.

Graham Chapman, co-author of the "Parrot Sketch", is no more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He's kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky. And I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun. Well, I feel that I should say: nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries. And the reason I feel I should say this is he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. (He paused, then claimed that Chapman had whipered in his ear while he was writing the speech): All right, Cleese. You say you're very proud of being the very first person ever to say 'shit' on British television. If this service is really for me, just for starters, I want you to become the first person ever at a British memorial service to say 'fuck'.

Hart having arrived before them, insisted they lift at least one glass to old Mrs. McCray. "May she, her husband, and our father be bullying one another in the great beyond." "I hope they enjoy it", Mac said lifting his glass. His cut crystal goblet held tea, not whiskey. Mac now drank no alcohol of any kind. "Confusion to them all," Cam said, joining the toast.

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it...We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be 'healing.' A Certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to 'get through it,' rise to the occasion, exhibit the 'strength' that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.

Hay cosas de las que la gente nunca habla. No me refiero a las cosas difíciles, como el amor, sino a las más bochornosas, como por ejemplo que los funerales a veces son divertidos o que es emocionante ver arder un edificio. El funeral de Michael fue maravilloso.

He is but as the stubble of the field, and yet he has no beard.

He had the desperation, not the courage, to be himself. Once you do that, you can’t go wrong, because you can’t make any mistakes when people love you for being yourself. But for Kurt, it didn’t matter that other people loved him; he simply didn’t love himself enough.

How quickly, how neatly the chaos of a living person could be reduced to an insignificant box.

He lived then before me, he lived as much as he had ever lived---a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities, a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me---the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshipers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum regular and muffled like the beating of a heart, the heart of a conquering darkness.

He took a deep breath in, still managing himself as if he were resisting temptation. He was a soldier, his father was in the service, too. Crying wasn't something Morell men did. They just didn't. He hadn't cried at Robbie Morell's funeral. So he wasn't going to now.

His face looked almost as gray as his suit, and the pouches beneath his eyes looked like little bags for holding all the sadness that his head couldn't hold.

He knew as deeply as he knew anything that sedation was the prelude to anxiety, stimulation the prelude to exhaustion and consolation the prelude to disappointment, and so he lay on the red velvet sofa and did nothing to distract himself from the news of his mother’s death.

Here's the other thing I think about. It makes little sense to try to control what happens to your remains when you are no longer around to reap the joys or benefits of that control. People who make elaborate requests concerning disposition of their bodies are probably people who have trouble with the concept of not existing. [...] I imagine it is a symptom of the fear, the dread, of being gone, of the refusal to accept that you no longer control, or even participate in, anything that happens on earth. I spoke about this with funeral director Kevin McCabe, who believes that decisions concerning the disposition of a body should be mad by the survivors, not the dead. "It's non of their business what happens to them whey the die," he said to me. While I wouldn't go that far, I do understand what he was getting at: that the survivors shouldn't have to do something they're uncomfortable with or ethically opposed to. Mourning and moving on are hard enough. Why add to the burden? If someone wants to arrange a balloon launch of the deceased's ashes into inner space, that's fine. But if it is burdensome or troubling for any reason, then perhaps they shouldn't have to.

I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.

I am so sorry to hear of Asher's passing. I will miss his scientific insight and advice, but even more his humor and stubborn integrity. I remember when one of his colleagues complained about Asher's always rejecting his manuscript when they were sent to him to referee. Asher said in effect, 'You should thank me. I am only trying to protect your reputation.' He often pretended to consult me, a fellow atheist, on matters of religious protocol. {Charles H. Bennett's letter written to the family of Israeli physicist, Asher Peres}

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading – treading – till it seemed That Sense was breaking through – And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum – Kept beating – beating – till I thought My Mind was going numb – And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space – began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race Wrecked, solitary, here – And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down – And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing – then –

If I should die, and leave you here awhile Be not like others sore undone, who keep Long vigils by the silent dust and weep. For my sake, turn again to life, and smile, Nerving thy heart and trembling hand to do Something to comfort weaker hearts than thine. Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine, And I, perchance, may therein comfort you!

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii: Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Through this well-beloved Brutus stabb'd; And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Caesar follow'd it, As rushing out of doors, to be resolved If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no; For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel: Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him! This was the most unkindest cut of all; For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, Quite vanquishi'd him: then burst his mighty heart; And, in his mantle muffling up his face, Even at the base of Pompey's statua, Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.

I have drunk the night and swallowed the stars. I am dancing with abandon and singing with rapture. There is not a thing I do not love. There is not a person I have not forgiven. I feel a universe of love. I feel a universe of light. Tonight, I am with old friends and we are returning home. The moon is our witness.

I hadn't understood funeral pyres before, but now I do. It's ghastly to burn someone you love but watching the smoke going into the sky, I think that's rather beautiful now. And I wish Tess could be up in the sky. Somewhere with color and light and air.

I hate to say this, but I am still holding somewhat of a grudge at the people that could have come to the funeral but didn't, especially when they came up with some lame excuse how it was too sad or how they were afraid of cemeteries or whatever. No justification in the world could make up for you not being there when someone needs you. Period.

In the emptiness that was all around me, I noticed an old tennis ball in the plantings; I picked it up and dropped it at Zoë’s feet. I didn’t know what I was doing, if I had a specific intention. Was I trying to lighten the mood? I don’t know, but I felt I had to do something. So there the ball bounced to a stop at her bare feet. She looked down at the ball but did nothing with it. Maxwell noticed what I had done, and he noticed Zoë’s lack of reaction. He picked up the ball and, with a mighty heave, threw it so far into the woods behind the house that I lost sight of it and could only barely hear it crash through the leaves of bushes on its way back to earth. It was quite an impressive toss, the pale tennis ball sailing through the air against the clear blue sky. What amount of psychic pain was expended on that ball, I had no idea.

I'm telling you, Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interrupt you at his own funeral.

I narrate the story but he dies off-stage between commercials. A washing machine ad later, we are dressed in our funereal best. We sniffle and indulge in product placement for Kleenex. The credits roll.

In perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. (Forever and ever, brother, hail and farewell.)

In the city a funeral is just an interruption of traffic; in the country it is a form of entertainment.

I never saw a dollar bill cry at anyone's funeral.

I remembered back to leo's burial and holding your hand. I was eleven and you were six, your hand soft and small in mine. As the vicar said 'in sure and certain hope of the resurrection of eternal life' you turned to me, 'I don't want sure and certain hope I want sure and certain Bee.

​It is not enough to write and deliver a funeral service for a grieving family…you must love them too.

It was a haunting tune, unresigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire's fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind and say goodbye.

it is sad to fill a grave with a person full of potential yet completely emptied of anymore possibility to try it once again.

It's a tunnel, not a cave.

It’s funny, Lorraine said now, as the scene appeared in front of them. You always wonder about your funeral. How big? Who’ll show up? In the end it’s meaningless. You realize, once you die, that a funeral as for everyone else,not you.

It wasn’t one event, but a series of events followed by years of research adjudicated by panels of experts and committees of laypeople until a decision was finally made: we’ve been going about handling dead people all wrong.

It was like a bomb had just gone off in the kitchen, and instead of cleaning up the rubble, people were stepping around it and eating mini-quiche.

I was dead, and I hadn't even been able to attend my own funeral.

I’ve never been to a funeral until today. I see dazzling arrangements of red, yellow, and purple flowers with long, green stems. I see a stained-glass window with a white dove, a yellow sun, a blue sky. I see a gold cross, standing tall, shiny, brilliant. And I see black. Black dresses. Black pants. Black shoes. Black bibles. Black is my favorite color. Jackson asked me about it one time. “Ava, why don’t you like pink? Or yellow? Or blue?” ”I love black,” I said. ”It suits me.” ”I suit you,” he said. I’m not so sure I love black anymore. And then, beyond the flowers, beneath the stained-glass window, beside the cross, I see the white casket. I see red, burning love disappear forever. As we pull away, my eyes stay glued to the casket. It’s proof that sometimes life does not go on. I look around. If tears could bring him back, there’d be enough to bring him back a hundred times. That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking, I hate good-byes. It’s like I was a garden salad with a light vinaigrette, and Jackson was a platter of seafood Cajun pasta. Alone, we were good. Together, we were fantastic. Memories might keep him alive. But they might kill me.

It was very sad under the trees. Although spring was well advanced, in the deep shade there was nothing but death-rotten leaves, gray and white fungi, and over everything a funeral hush.

I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others.

I wear all black to remind you not to mess with me because I'm already dressed for your funeral.

Mandy, I hardly think this was appropriate, not after… you know… after the funeral we haven’t had the money for any of your weird little games and I was hoping you’d be more mature now that Jud’s gone,” her father had disappointedly added. “How much’d that cake cost you?” “It’s paid for,” Mandy had argued, but her voice had sounded tiny in the harbour wind. “I used the cash from my summer job at Frenchy’s last year and I… it was my birthday, dad!” “You can’t even be normal about this one thing, can you?” her father had complained. Mandy hadn’t cried, she’d only stared back knowingly, her voice shaky. “…I’m normal.

Losing some faculties is worse than losing your life.

*Live fast, die young, and, leave a good looking corpse.* is dumb. When dead, looks matters not. (Furthermore, the corpse will only look good for a day, or, twelve.)

Live life so well that, even if you die, the empty seats behind you will tell the story that, "yea, this soul did what God sent him/her to do". Give life and hope into your family, village, community, country, continent and the world at large. You can do it!