Quotes & Sayings About Funerals And Death

Begbie doesnae even notice; he's in his element, particularly good at funerals in the way a lot ay psychopaths tend tae be. Ah suppose if bringing death and despair is yir life's work, then being somewhere like this must feel like a result; the job's already done and you can just kick back and relax. — Irvine Welsh

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

I'm the god of funerals. I know every death custom in the world - how to die properly, how to prepare the body and soul for the afterlife. I live for death."
"You must be fun at parties," I said. — Rick Riordan

This stupidity of sounding a siren and speeding through traffic with a coffin must be an African speciality. — Nana Awere Damoah

She says that the world is divided into the people who imagine their own funerals and the people who don't, and that smart and artistic people naturally fall into the former category. — Gayle Forman

A sea of red lights, and I slow down. My job now is to gather everyone together and tell them we have to let her go. I won't tell anyone over the phone, because I didn't like hearing the news from the doctor that way. I have maybe a week to handle the arrangements, as the doctor said, but the arrangements are overwhelming. How do I learn how to run a family? How do I say goodbye to someone I love so much that I've forgotten just how much I love her? — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Some people hate funerals. I find them comforting. They hit the pause button on life and remind us that it has an end. Every eulogy reminds me to deepen my dash, that place on the tombstone between our birth and our death. — Regina Brett

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. — Voltaire

You know all my life I've hated funerals. The fuss and bother never brings anybody back. It just spoils remembering them as they really are. And when I see people actually facing it that way, I have to act like a sap. — Jules Furthman

It's not what I'd want for at my funeral. When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when the pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie. — Neil Gaiman

Apophis the god of Chaos Anubis the god of funerals and death Babi the baboon god Bast the cat goddess Bes the dwarf god Disturber a god of judgement who works for Osiris Geb the earth god Gengen-Wer the goose god Hapi the god of the Nile Heket the frog goddess Horus the war god, son of Isis and Osiris Isis the goddess of magic, wife of her brother Osiris and mother of Horus Khepri the scarab god, Ra's aspect in the morning Khonsu the moon god Mekhit minor lion goddess, married to Onuris Neith the hunting goddess Nekhbet the vulture goddess Nut the sky goddess Osiris the god of the Underworld, husband of Isis and father of Horus Ra the sun god, the god of order; also known as Amun-Ra Sekhmet the lion goddess Serqet the scorpion goddess Set the god of evil Shu the air god, great-grandfather of Anubis Sobek the crocodile god Tawaret the hippo goddess Thoth the god of knowledge — Rick Riordan

The falseness of the seventeenth century became a large measure of the truth by the nineteenth. Money made the man, or at least went a long way toward doing so; and death became the occasion for a final accounting, a stocktaking of worldly success. Of course, there were other metrics: virtue, martyrdom, political standing, fraternal ties. But it took money to publicize them. The funeral became more and more a standardized commodity whose cost could be matched with exquisite precision to the class and degree of 'respectability' of the deceased. When one bought a funeral, one bought a more or less splendid parade, each additional bauble, each horse, each feather or set of nails adding to the base price. Bit by bit, finery accumulated, and by looking at the account books of an undertaker who specialized in pauper funerals, we can begin to see the bounds of decency in death. — Thomas W. Laqueur

We don't plan funerals till the body is dead. — Nilesh Rathod

Merger Evers/John F. Kennedy/Malcolm X/Martin Luther King/Robert Kennedy/Che Guevara/Patrice Lamumba/George Jackson/Cynthia Wesley/Addie Mae Collins/Denise McNair/Carole Robertson/Viola Liuzzo
It was a decade marked by death. Violent and inevitable. Funerals became engraved on the brain, intensifying the ephemeral nature of life. For many in the South it was a decade reminiscent of earlier times, when oak trees sighed over their burdens in the wind; Spanish moss draggled blood to the ground; amen corners creaked with grief; and the thrill of being able, once again, to endure unendurable loss produced so profound an ecstasy in mourners that they strutted, without noticing their feet, along the thin backs of benches: their piercing shouts of anguish and joy never interrupted by an inglorious fall. They shared rituals for the dead to be remembered. — Alice Walker

Previous generations understood about death, and undoubtedly would have seen a reasonable amount of death. Once you get into the Victorian era, you might well have seen the funerals of many of your siblings before you were very old. — Terry Pratchett

Clint repined for his childhood when Lucy would help him get into his pajamas and then tuck him into bed with a hug and a kiss. She tucked him in every single night until he was 11 or 12, and she stopped only when he refused to let her do it anymore. He ached to go back in time and tell her, 'It's okay, Mom. I'm not too big yet.' Too, he longed to be a kid again so that his biggest problem would be getting ready for the next exam or sports contest - not death and funerals. — William T. Prince

I hate funerals and would not attend my own if it could be avoided, but it is well for every man to stop once in a while to think of what sort of a collection of mourners he is training for his final event. — Robert Tappan Morris

It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."
" ... We think such thngs are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole." "It is why we are drawn to babies ... " "And to funerals. — Mitch Albom

Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out ofthe window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it's over. Be pleasant but don't smile too much; be sad but don't overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don't let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming. — Cecelia Ahern

Sensei says funerals are not really for the dead. They are for those left behind. "The dead are long gone by the time a funeral is held," he told us. "Who would wait when the doors of Heaven are open? Only the living would be foolish enough to still hang around on earth. — Sandy Fussell

Do you really think anyone needs some kind of notarized statement saying
'Dear Saint Peter, here's another stiff, pass him through the gates, signed, Father McGonnigill.' ... 'PS: He once had a hot dog on a Friday, but don't hold that against him.' — P.N. Elrod

Mamie told me living rooms were once known as death rooms, back when funerals were a home matter. After mortuaries came into fashion, there was no need for keeping bodies on ice at home, and the death room was rechristened the living room. — Sarah Jude

Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward. — Wendy Webb

We never expect that any evil will befall ourselves before it comes, we will not be taught by seeing the misfortunes of others that they are the common inheritance of all men, but imagine that the path which we have begun to tread is free from them and less beset by dangers than that of other people. How many funerals pass our houses? Yet we do not think of death. — Seneca.

Thousands of people are being buried and no one attends the funerals,' said one of the soldiers. 'In peacetime it's the other way round: one coffin and a hundred people carrying flowers. — Vasily Grossman

I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living. — John Green

He comes down next to me, and when I hold out my hand, he takes it. Our fingers lace together. And in that feeling, that perfect feeling of our hands and fingers pressed together, I want to tell him everything. I want to tell him about Josh, and his sister, Emily. I want to tell him about tall, crazy Gert. I want to tell him about bridges and funerals, and most of all, maps. More than anything else, I want to tell him about myself. I want to tell him that I know what things look like from above now. There's so much I want to tell him, because I know he'll understand. — Shawn Klomparens

People can act so nice, bringing you food and all, but in the end they are nothing but buzzards. Waiting to pick your bones. — Lee Smith

Wary of being caught unawares, we planned our parenthood, committed to trial marriages with pre-nuptials, and pre-arranged our parents' funerals - convinced we could pre-feel the feelings that we have heard attend new life, true love, and death. — Thomas Lynch

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
"It is why we are drawn to babies ... " He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals. — Mitch Albom

Welcome to Israel, where chanting "Death to Arabs" is democracy, running over children is equality, and firing on funerals is peace. — Remi Kanazi

He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals! — Albert Camus

Everyone was eating, talking softly, glancing at me, hugging me, eating. It was as if someone had turned the volume down. Everything looked normal, but the sound was muted. Death did this, set all this weirdness in motion, made people appear out of nowhere carrying casseroles, saying 'I'm sorry' over and over, death muffled their voices. — Joan Abelove

Atmosphere" is a massive song. A lot of people say it's their favorite Joy Division song, but it's not mine; it reminds me too much of Ian, like it's his death march or something, and it figures that it's one of the most popular songs to play at funerals: Robbie Williams has got "Angels" for weddings and we've got "Atmosphere" for funerals. — Peter Hook

I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things: disease and death ... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals. — Emma Thompson

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration. — John Steinbeck

There was something unbearable about the damp, dark earth closing over a coffin and the still, empty flesh that was inside. She had attended a hundred funerals, but when you really loved someone there was something too final about a burial. Something brutal. — Sara Sheridan

Few occasions are as joyous to small children as funerals, almost better than the big wedding blowouts that take place at night when it's hard to stay awake. A small boy will never be harshly criticized at a funeral; he is more treasured as death comes close and all his wickedness vanishes before the inescapable fact that thank God, he is healthy. — Arthur Miller

I wore a black suit and a white shirt, a black tie and black shoes, all polished and shiny: clothes that normally would make me feel uncomfortable, as if I were in a stolen uniform, or pretending to be an adult. Today they gave me comfort of a kind. I was wearing the right clothes for a hard day. — Neil Gaiman

Western funerals: black hearses, and black horses, and fast-fading flowers. Why should black be the colour of death? Why not the colours of a sunset? — Daniele Vare

And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. — Tennessee Williams

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard. — Henry David Thoreau

It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

We may all host ourselves to death, and if we're all dead who will host our funerals? — Amy Poehler