Dirges Quotes & Sayings

There are those, too, who are ethnically predisposed in favor of funerals, who recognize among the black drapes and dirges an emotionally potent and spiritually stimulating intersection of the living and the dead. In death and its rituals, they see the leveled playing field so elusive in life. Whether we bury our dead in Wilbert Vaults, leave them in trees to be eaten by birds, burn them or beam them into space; whether choir or cantor, piper or jazz band, casket or coffin or winding sheet, ours is the species that keeps track of our dead and knows that we are always outnumbered by them. — Thomas Lynch

All the accounts of the burial of Jesus are somber, laced through with the silence of grief, the shock that violence does to one's soul, even experienced vicariously in the body of another who is loved. They are written as though they are dirges, laments hidden in the silences and spaces between the words. — Megan McKenna

Women need a space to be creative
creativity thrives in solitude. — SARK

It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance! - Tropic of Cancer — Henry Miller

All things that we ordained festival,
Turn from their office to black funeral;
Our instruments to melancholy bells,
Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
And all things change them to the contrary. — William Shakespeare

Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs. — Ambrose Bierce

Once you realize that you have identified a passion, invest in yourself. Figure out what you need to know, what kind of experience and expertise you need to develop to do the things that you feel in your heart you will enjoy and that will sustain you both mentally and economically. — Martha Stewart

Quid confert animae pugna Hectoris, vel disputatio Platonis, aut carmina Maronis, vel neniae Nasonis? Of what benefit to the soul are the struggles of Hector, the disputations of Plato, the songs of Virgil, or the dirges of Ovid? — Honorius Augustodunensis

Whether you call yourself a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu or an Atheist, if you have kindness in your heart and compassion in your act, you are on the right path of religion. — Abhijit Naskar

The truth for every superhero is that beneath the greatest pain lies the greatest power. — Frederick Espiritu

Goes to war, still encourages the production of unwanted C3 children by exhausted mothers, and still compels married partners who hate one another to live together in the name of morality. — Vera Brittain

You are not living the life you want because you fear to dream big — Steven Aitchison

Sometimes I play guitar like a frustrated drummer. — Hal Sparks

Man is born only as a potential. He can become a thorn for himself and for others, he can also become a flower for himself and for others. — Rajneesh

For ever so our thoughtful hearts repeatOn fields of triumph dirges of defeat;And still we turn on gala-days to treadAmong the rustling memories of the dead. — Henry Van Dyke

If I could die now, he thought; peacefully, gently, without a tremor or a crying out. If I could be with her. If I could believe I would be with her. His — Richard Matheson

Be sure that your praise songs are numbered higher than your sorrowful dirges and your utmost hope, firmer than your woeful regrets. Be positive. — Israelmore Ayivor

Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love. — Kate Chopin

Loneliness is a long, unbearable pain ... There was never a place for me in the scheme of things ... I had become a living fantasy on a theme in dark, endless dirges ... I made another world, and real men would enter it and they would never really get hurt at all in the vivid, unreal laws of the dream. I caused dreams which caused death. This is my crime. — Dennis Nilsen

When I felt myself escaping from the earth," he commented, "my reaction was not pleasure but happiness." It was "a moral feeling," he added. "I could hear myself living, so to speak. — Julian Barnes

A little later, as we talked of the Maniot dirges by which I was obsessed, I was surprised to hear this bloodshot-eyed and barefoot old man say: "Yes, it's the old iambic tetrameter acalectic." It was the equivalent of a Cornish fisherman pointing out the difference, in practicality incomprehensible dialect, between the Petrachian and the Spenserian sonnet. It was quite correct. Where on earth had he learnt it? His last bit of information was that, in the old days (that wonderful cupboard!) the Arabs used to come to this coast to dive for the murex. — Patrick Leigh Fermor

Ancient Egypt was doubly fortunate, and doubtless owed to this its fabled wealth, in that it possessed two activities, namely, pyramid-building as well as the search for the precious metals, the fruits of which, since they could not serve the needs of man by being consumed, did not stale with abundance. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and sang dirges. Two pyramids, two masses for the dead, are twice as good as one; but not so two railways from London to York. Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so close a semblance of prudent financiers, taking careful thought before we add to the 'financial' burdens of posterity by building them houses to live in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment. We have to accept them as an inevitable result of applying to the conduct of the State the maxims which are best calculated to 'enrich' an individual by enabling him to pile up claims to enjoyment which he does not intend to exercise at any definite time. — John Maynard Keynes

The U.S. and European markets have become mature, profit margins are lower, and equipment isn't so new. Because profits are relatively low, it limits the willingness of companies to invest in newer equipment. — Zong Qinghou

Mother's estate - our estate - a thousand acres centered in a million more. Lawns the size of small prairies with grass so perfect it beckoned a body to lie on it, to nap on its soft perfection. Noble shade trees making sundials of the Earth, their shadows circling in stately procession; now mingling, now contracting to midday, finally stretching eastward with the dying of the day. Royal oak. Giant elms. Cottonwood and cypress and redwood and bonsai. Banyan trees lowering new trunks like smooth-sided columns in a temple roofed by sky. Willows lining carefully laid canals and haphazard streams, their hanging branches singing ancient dirges to the wind. — Dan Simmons

The last rain had come at the beginning of April and now, at the first of June, all but the hardiest mosquitoes had left their papery skins in the grass. It was already seven o'clock in the morning, long past time to close windows and doors, trap what was left of the night air slightly cooler only by virtue of the dark. The dust on the gravel had just enough energy to drift a short distance and then collapse on the flower beds. The sun had a white cast, as if shade and shadow, any flicker of nuance, had been burned out by its own fierce center. There would be no late afternoon gold, no pale early morning yellow, no flaming orange at sunset. If the plants had vocal cords they would sing their holy dirges like slaves. — Jane Hamilton

I see kids today trying to do the things I did, and it makes me feel like I've come a long way. — Allen Iverson

face." I sat spellbound. Here it was - the image of grace I had been seeking: an aspiring father bringing unconditional acceptance to a child who had absolutely nothing to offer, no accolades or accomplishments, just herself in all of her vulnerability and scars and weaknesses. My eyes moistened. This is the love of a dad. Maybe - just maybe - this is the love of a Father. — Lee Strobel

WOMEN ON THEIR OWN RUN in Alice's family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark. — Barbara Kingsolver

The sun was set; the night came on apace, And falling dews bewet around the place; The bat takes airy rounds on leathern wings, And the hoarse owl his woeful dirges sings. — John Gay