Quotes & Sayings About A Eulogy

I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well. — Erin Morgenstern

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him - but he was a good and faithful horse.
-Frank

From "Eulogy for a Percheron" in "The Horse Lawyer and Other Poems — Greg Seeley

People feel guilty enough at funerals without having more guilt heaped on. I would prefer a bighearted preacher giving my eulogy, someone inclined to widen heaven's doors. I don't want to leave folks wondering whether I made it. — Philip Gulley

Women speak at an earlier age, more easily, and more agreeably than men; they are accused also of speaking more; this is as it should be, and I willingly change the reproach into a eulogy. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Mama and I would go to a funeral and she'd stand up to read the dead person's eulogy. She made the ignorant and ugly sound like scholars and movie stars, turned the mean and evil into saints and angels. She knew what people had meant to be in their hearts, not what the world had forced them to become. She knew the ways in which working too hard for paltry wages could turn you mean and cold, could kill the thing that made you laugh. — Henry Louis Gates

I can't pray or weigh my words right; doomsday
is here my friend, but you're immune. We suffer
for you. I'm weaving crowns of sonnets, dreads;
a souvenir so you'll never forget your friends. — Jalina Mhyana

A recent survey stated that the average person's greatest fear is having to give a speech in public. Somehow this ranked even higher than death which was third on the list. So, you're telling me that at a funeral, most people would rather be the guy in the coffin than have to stand up and give a eulogy. — Jerry Seinfeld

No eulogy is due to a man who simply does his duty and nothing more. — Augustine Of Hippo

There will be grace and forgiveness enough, old dog, even for you. I pray you will spare me a drink from that cup, when it overflows for you.
- Miles Vorkosigan — Lois McMaster Bujold

We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God's plan for us.
What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings. — Barack Obama

How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have discovered a friend. — William Rotsler

Henceforth we find woman no longer a slave of man and tool of lust, but the pride and joy of her husband, the fond mother training her children to virtue and godliness, the ornament and treasure of the family, the faithful sister, the zealous servant of the congregation in every work of Christian charity, the sister of mercy, the martyr with superhuman courage, the guardian angel of peace, the example of purity, humility, gentleness, patience, love, and fidelity unto death. Such women were unknown before. The heathen Libanius, the enthusiastic eulogist of old Grecian culture, pronounced an involuntary eulogy on Christianity when he exclaimed, as he looked at the mother of Chrysostom: "What women the Christians have! — Philip Schaff

My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit. — Abraham Verghese

Both poetry and philosophy are prodigal of eulogy over the mind which ransoms itself by its own energy from a captivity to custom, which breaks the common bounds of empire, and cuts a Simplon over mountains of difficulty for its own purposes, whether of good or of evil. — Horace Mann

His greatest virtue, I think, was his honesty--not only to others but to himself...He demanded freedom of expression and lived in what we consider the most important of moral freedoms; freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from all self-pity (even throughout all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that might help another more than it might help himself; and freedom from that kind of pride that could make a man feel he was better than his brother or neighbor — Duke Ellington

A person's true wealth is the good he or she does in the world. — Nazr Mohammed

The world spins despite me, not because of me, he muttered. Last week, one of his coworkers died after twenty-five years of service. There was an email and eulogy sent by one of the managers - and then a mad scramble by everyone else to loot his office supplies. — Wesley Chu

In the eulogy by the graveside, I told everyone how my sister and I used to sing to each other on our birthday. I told them that, when I thought of my sister, I could still hear her laughter, sense her optimism, and feel her faith. I told them that my sister was the kindest person I;ve ever known, and that the world was a sadder place without her in it. And finally, I told them to remember my sister with a smile, like I did, for even though she was being buried near my parents, the best parts of her would always stay alive, deep within our hearts. — Nicholas Sparks

A radio show recently did a beautiful eulogy of me. — Janis Ian

According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. — Jerry Seinfeld

A eulogy is no more than a summation of memories, and we will never forget you, because we cannot forget you, because we will miss you every day. To imagine a world without you in it is to imagine a world with a little less God in it, and yet, because God is not a diminishing resource, I cannot believe that. — Mitch Albom

And I understood then that I was a fool when I told you I would take my turn in singing the honours of Love, and admitted I was terribly clever in love affairs, whereas it seems I really had no idea how a eulogy ought to be made. For I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth. — Plato

As I stood and gave the eulogy for young Michael Brown last week, I kept thinking about the fact that this child should have been in college instead of laying in a coffin. — Al Sharpton

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead. — Ambrose Bierce

The sixth and last eulogy was from Roderick, Hugo and Verna's oldest child. He wrote a three-page tribute to his father, and it was read by the reverend. Even Michael Geismar, a cold-blooded Presbyterian, finally succumbed to his emotions. The — John Grisham

Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man.
Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I subsequently became addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me. — Flann O'Brien

The man who said, "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed," put the eulogy quite inadequately and even falsely. The truth "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised." The man who expects nothing sees redder roses than common men can see, and greener grass, and a more startling sun. Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall possess the cities and the mountains; blessed is the meek, for he shall inhereit the earth. Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are. — G.K. Chesterton

A funeral eulogy is a belated plea for the defense delivered after the evidence is all in. — Irvin S. Cobb

A twenty-minute eulogy, unless composed by a) William Shakespeare, b) Winston Churchill, or c) Mark Twain, is sixteen minutes too long. Technical note: It is better to tell a eulogist to speak for four minutes not five minutes. "Five minutes" to the modern ear sounds like "around five minutes," whereas "four minutes" means "four minutes. — Christopher Buckley

If I close my eyes, I can feel his body, in that way that you do when someone is near, a faint yet intent electric pulsing. — E.W. Storch

I've never heard a eulogy about a person where they talk about the value of wealth and how much money the've left behind. They only talk about the character ,love, integrity, humour strength etc.
So why is it so important to some that they lose sight of everything else in life ? — Lou Silluzio

I know it's a bit self-aggrandizing."
"Hey, you're stealing my eulogy," Isaac said. "My first bit is about how you were a self-aggrandizing bastard. — John Green

Ironic, is it not, that the great Divinicus Nex cowers in fear from that which should be her fated prey? A decidedly diametric circumstance.
What? It's irritating when the monster hunting you has a better vocabulary than your own. Maybe it could do my eulogy? — A&E Kirk

Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. — Robert Kennedy

I'm pragmatic. If I were cruel, I'd give him an eulogy instead of a conversation. — Leigh Bardugo

I'm used to being in front of camera and knowing what to think. But if you're asking me to be me, I get very self-conscious. My job isn't to be me. Being an actor, people think you can do a eulogy at a funeral, a speech at a wedding. I find all that very nerve-racking. — Eddie Marsan

From behind the wheel, I learn the difference between a eulogy and an elegy, and discover which is more vital, in life and in death. — David Levithan

And I have begun thinking of that life as miraculous and lucky. How could a man I had dreaded as my commandant and who tried twice to get me kicked out of college become the subject of the first book I would write? [ ... ] Who could have foreseen the day I would deliver his eulogy at the Summerall Chapel, or that I would give a speech on the night they named the dining room in the new Alumni Hall after him? Not me. Not once. Not ever. — Pat Conroy

Very few people in the world would care to listen to the real defense of their own characters. The real defense, the defense which belongs to the Day of Judgment, would make such damaging admissions, would clear away so many artificial virtues, would tell such tragedies of weakness and failure, that a man would sooner be misunderstood and censured by the world than exposed to that awful and merciless eulogy. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN! — William Shakespeare

Scarring smiles, hidden tears,
You stand, heads bowed and revere
The soul before us, burnt and torn
Her faded essence, we sadly mourn
And though she walked a path of lies
Her spirit surely still shall rise
And among her own, she can be at peace
An eternal angel, she's been released. — Amelia Mysko

'The Imitation Game' is a celebration of Alan Turing's life and legacy, and Joan's final monologue is our eulogy. It's the thing we all wished we could have said to him. — Graham Moore

Such pedantic apotheosis is reached by so few, and when parishioners are left without their guiding star, we can only desperately cling to the last intimations of a passing titan. — Michelle Franklin

Services were held today for Ken Lay - convicted thief and crook Ken Lay.They folded his arms across his chest and sowed his sleeves together so he couldn't put his hands in anyone's pockets when they walked by. You know when they say in a eulogy, "You're all richer for having known him." I don't think they're going to hear that. — Jay Leno

What is an argument for the defense that neither torments nor troubles - what is a eulogy that fails to kill? Every apology should be a murder by enthusiasm. — Emil Cioran

Eulogy - especially from a young lass who, as he informed his mother that evening, had such uncommon eyes, they looked somehow as they made him feel nohow. — George Eliot

No money, no church service, no eulogy,no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit. p 354 — Abraham Verghese

My face warms under the scrutiny of silence, and I'm almost relieved when he launches into his eulogy. To my dismay, it turns out to be a sermon. — Rae Carson

When a man's life is over, it remains true that he was one sort of man and not another. A man who understands himself under the form of eternity knows the quality that eternally belongs to him, and knows that he cannot wholly die, even if he would, for when the movement of his life is over, the truth of his life remains. — George Santayana

It's important to have a buddy like that. Somebody who'll stop you from doing that really stupid thing you were gonna do just because you couldn't think of anything better.
unidentified soldier, eulogizing his dead buddy — Henry V. O'Neil

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} — Charles H. Bennett

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin. — Hunter S. Thompson

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love ... What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. — Robert F. Kennedy

Robert G. Ingersoll was a great man. a wonderful intellect, a great soul of matchless courage, one of the great men of the earth -- and yet we have no right to bow down to his memory simply because he was great. Great orators, great soldiers, great lawyers, often use their gifts for a most unholy cause. We meet to pay a tribute of love and respect to Robert G. Ingersoll because he used his matchless power for the good of man.

{Darrow's eulogy for Ingersoll at his funeral} — Clarence Darrow

So I put it out of its misery, if it really was miserable, and tried not to think about it. That was another thing they taught us at Willow Creek: don't write their eulogy, don't try to imagine who they used to be, how they came to be here, how they came to be this. I know, who doesn't do that, right? Who doesn't look at one of those things and just naturally start to wonder? It's like reading the last page of a book ... your imagination just naturally spinning. And that's when you get distracted, get sloppy, let your guard down and end up leaving someone else to wonder what happened to you. — Max Brooks

People say, "How would you like to be remembered?" I don't want to be remembered. Gimme a break. What I want is to hear what's great about me now. Let me hear it! In the box you don't hear these eulogies. — Jerry Lewis

The setting sun threatened to consume me - it could have, you know. It would have been a beautiful death with an honorable eulogy: slain by a magnificent slice of piercing orange energy. I simply turned and walked away; I would live another day. — Chila Woychik

I had a sort of classic moment when a friend of mine rang up and said she'd just been to a funeral, and in the middle of the eulogy, this kid had taken out the phone and had a whole proper text conversation - while everyone was weeping! — Beeban Kidron

There is no tongue to speak his eulogy; Too brightly burned his splendor for our eyes; Far easier to condemn his injurers, Than for the tongue to reach his smallest worth, He to the realms of sinfulness came down, To teach mankind, ascending then to God, Heaven unbarred to him her lofty gates, To whom his country heres refused to ope. Ungrateful land! Well, too, does this instruct That greatest ills fall to the perfectest. And, midst a thousand proofs, let this suffice- That, as his exile had no parallel, So never was there man more great than he. — Michelangelo

More people have a fear of speaking than a fear of death. So at a funeral, most people would want to be the person in the coffin rather than the person delivering the eulogy! — Geoffrey Rush

Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges ... And the greatest eulogy we can give it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which two contracting parties always both gain; consequently, society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members. — Antoine Destutt De Tracy

Life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor. — Homer

She pictured herself running from a hoard of ravenous zombies on a hot day eventually collapsing from heatstroke and getting devoured. Then she imagined Hal giving a rousing eulogy at her funeral explaining how Kendra's death was a beautiful sacrifice allowing the noble zombies to live on delighting future generations by mindlessly trying to eat them. With her luck it could totally happen. — Brandon Mull

This film [Chi-Raq]is a declaration. It's a scream. It's a warning. And I can really break it down to one scene. That's the scene where we have the eulogy and sermon that is given by the great John Cusack. — Spike Lee

I do not think there is a person in this world who has been a more ardent admirer of him than I have been. His life and work have been an inspiration to the whole earth, shedding light in the dark places which so sadly needed light. His memory calls forth my most sincere homage, love, and esteem.

{Burbank on the great Robert Ingersoll, whom he admired so much that he requested Ingersoll's eulogy for his brother, Ebon Ingersoll, to be read at his own funeral} — Luther Burbank

While I can make no claim for having introduced the term "rugged individualism," I should be proud to have invented it. It has been used by American leaders for over a half-century in eulogy of those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life. — Herbert Hoover

To hear how much of a great human being you were - even if you really weren't - open your ears at your funeral. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood - but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum ... — John Geddes

The truth is, that all genuine appreciation rests on a certain mystery of humility and almost of darkness. The man who said, "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed," put the eulogy quite inadequately and even falsely. The truth "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised." The man who expects nothing sees redder roses than common men can see, and greener grass, and a more startling sun. Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall possess the cities and the mountains; blessed is the meek, for he shall inherit the earth. Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are. Until we see the background of darkness we cannot admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have seen that darkness, all light is lightening, sudden, blinding, and divine. — G.K. Chesterton

I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it. — George Carlin