Quotes & Sayings About Funerals

Two great questions are often posed about worthwhile living: Who has the good life? and Who is a good person? The first question gets addressed in ads, the second at funerals. Two — John Ortberg

I have been to so many funerals now. We bury them in the gray soil, stand over the mounds, lean on our shovels. Say the same words again and again. But there are pregnancies too, children coming. A woman like a great egg. Another just conceived. They help us dig, then turn and spit into the earth. They will not say it, but they cannot keep it all in either. For their coming children are their hopes embodied, their faith made flesh, that all that is ending is beginning again. For the world will not be fallen to their children. It will only be the world, new as they are. And perhaps if we tell them enough, if we say the right thing, they will see a way out, and know what to do. — Brian Francis Slattery

Sometimes funerals and weddings bring out the worst rather than the best in people. — Jeanne Phillips

Jazz hadn't given her many details of exactly what life in the Dent house had been like, but he'd told her enough that she knew it wasn't hearts and flowers. Well, except for the occasional heart cut from a chest. And the kind of flowers you send to funerals. — Barry Lyga

Sympathy is why when a man is getting mugged, you let him keep his shirt after you take his life. Funerals are respectable affairs, after all. — Bauvard

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

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

And it struck Obinze that, a few years ago, they were attending weddings, now it was christenings and soon it would be funerals. They would die. They would all die after trudging through lives in which they were neither happy nor unhappy. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

There was something about funerals. It made you see things better. A funeral a day and I'd be rich. — Charles Bukowski

The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare.

I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go. — Laurie Perez

The role of artists is to attend the funerals. They are the pall-bearers of failure, and every wonder they raise high in celebration harks back to a time already dead. — Steven Erikson

A Muslim has five duties towards another Muslim; to return a salutation, visit the sick, follow funerals, accept an invitation and say 'God have mercy on you' when one sneezes. — Elijah Muhammad

They'd started out as a church, or in a church, not liking anyone being gay or getting abortions or using birth control. Protesting military funerals, which was a thing. Basically they were just assholes, though, and took it as the measure of God's satisfaction with them that everybody else thought they were assholes. — William Gibson

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

There had been so many. He had hired young ones because they were more plentiful and worked cheaper. The better of those got married and pregnant and wanted six months off. The bad ones flirted, wore tight miniskirts, and made suggestive comments. He had hired more mature women to negate any physical temptation, but, as a rule, they had been bossy, maternal, menopausal, and they had more doctors' appointments, as well as aches and pains to talk about and funerals to attend. — John Grisham

What was very interesting to me about Clementine Hunter's work is that she couldn't read or write, and she has recorded history of the plantation life and the southern part of the U.S. - the cotton harvests, pecan picking, washing clothes, funerals, marriages - in pictures. — Robert Wilson

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

Funerals weren't just about the dead. They were about the dead leaving this world to reside with God, someone Mother wasn't seeing eye to eye with at the moment, if she ever had, and I couldn't shake the concern that in the middle of the service she would spring from her pew and find some way to spite him. — William Kent Krueger

Funerals and weddings were commonplace, and nothing could have been so interesting to them as the coming of the end of the world ... unless it had been a first-class circus. — Edward Eggleston

Glorious Destinies get you Glorious Funerals. — Mercedes Lackey

Weddings and funerals are when you figure out who your real friends are. — Amy Dickinson

Funerals aren't scheduled. — Benjamin J. Carey

How many funerals had he attended, how many open graves had he seen, watched the coffins eased down, or sometimes just a frayed mat in which the corpse was bundled, the feet sticking out, the soles white and sometimes still specked with dirt if he was a farmer and could not afford slippers, least of all shoes.
-Istak — F. Sionil Jose

The only two places you stand on receiving lines are funerals and weddings. There was probably something poignant in that fact, but Maya couldn't imagine what it could be. She — Harlan Coben

I don't like my parents; I never will. I didn't cry at either of their funerals. I haven't missed them for five seconds. I didn't - you know, our characters were so at odds with one another right from the beginning. But I do understand them now as human beings, with the understanding of an adult. — David Small

Funerals...are for the living. — John Green

Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake's view. Next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war. — Margaret Atwood

We'll do roller. Okay?"
She shrugs. "It's your funerals. Whatever you think will seem realistic, but know this: innocent children will die, limbs will break, and walls will come crashing down. — Anne Eliot

Nature never quite goes along with us. She is somber at weddings, sunny at funerals, and she frowns on ninety-nine out of a hundred picnics. — Alexander Smith

We girls in the 4-H club had made a flag to hang in the church, adding a blue star every time someone from the township went off to fight. When one of them died, we changed the blue star to a gold one. Just two, so far, but I had been to their funerals, and I knew there was no "just" about it. — Lauren Wolk

Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush has released all of his emails. I'd like to release all of my emails. I've got nothing but emails about low-cost funerals and Viagra. — David Letterman

I didn't see eye to eye with young Barry Bingham," the publisher, Hollenbach says. "I told him respectfully that I didn't think there was anything wrong with this city that a handful of well-placed funerals wouldn't cure.") — Alec Macgillis

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

Directing a funeral isn't about death at all. Funerals are for the living, not the dead. — Rebecca McNutt

I've been at the funerals of a lot of people in my neighborhood. Sometimes when I sit back and relax, I think about that and just blank out. — Carmelo Anthony

I guess I do prefer a ball cap. I have performed without a cap, mostly at funerals and weddings. — Rodney Atkins

People dress up for funerals. Why not dress up to celebrate that you're alive? — Gay Talese

Who am I to decide what someone should or shouldn't do? People skip funerals and memorials all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they want to grieve for their loved ones in private. Maybe it's too hard for them. Maybe they just don't believe in funerals. It's not my place to judge — Elle Kennedy

She tried not to be gloomy at funerals. People lived, and died, and were remembered. It happened in the same way that winter followed summer. It was not a wrong thing. There were tears of course, but they were for those who were left. Those who had gone on did not need them. — Terry Pratchett

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

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

In New Orleans I have noticed that people are happiest when they are going to funerals, making money, taking care of the dead, or putting on masks at Mardi Gras so nobody knows who they are. — Walker Percy

During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebration. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough to be that ... — Alice Walker

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

A [Jewish] woman could not divorce her husband, but she could petition for divorce, and the religious courts could force him to grant the divorce on grounds of impotence, denial of conjugal rights, or unreasonable restriction of her freedom-for example, preventing her from attending funerals or wedding parties. — Israel Shenker

You lose the known package of your nice organized self almost instantly here. Overeating is one way back, the way it is at funerals at home. — Anne Lamott

The easiest time to be funny is during a fairly serious situation. That way, you can break the ice. It's crazy, but even at funerals, people will get huge laughs. — Adam McKay

The Irish are often nervous about having the appropriate face for the occasion. They have to be happy at weddings, which is a strain, so they get depressed; they have to be sad at funerals, which is easy, so they get happy. — Peggy Noonan

By the 1980s, practically no one under 60 in the real civilian world wore hats for anything except weddings, funerals or Ascot. Hats had been in competition with hair, and hair had won. Thirty years before that, Brits of all classes and ages wore hats all the time. — Peter York

It's crazy because people expect you to be funny all the time and every day is not a funny day. I go to funerals and people are like 'tell a joke' and 'say one of your lines in a movie.' It's a funeral, man! — Chris Tucker

I only wear suits to funerals and I only cash checks when the bank is about to take the house.
from surely he's dead by now — K.R. Albers

I am at a crossroads; I have always been against armed opposition ... I have chosen civil disobedience. But I will apologize to my people if there are funerals coming out of prisons. I will criticize myself and I won't be the mayor of Diyarbakir. — Osman Baydemir

Cinemascope is not for men, but for snakes and funerals. — Fritz Lang

It matters not what your individual position is on either war we are currently prosecuting - in Iraq or Afghanistan - certainly we can all agree protesting at military funerals is a cruel and unnecessary hardship on our military families during their most difficult hour. — Solomon Ortiz

We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough. — Yitzhak Rabin

One night in Tokyo we watched two Japanese businessmen saying good-night to each other after what had clearly been a long night of drinking, a major participant sport in Japan. These men were totally snockered, having reached the stage of inebriation wherein every air molecule that struck caused them to wobble slightly, but they still managed to behave more formally than Americans do at funerals. — Dave Barry

give a fig for the dead while they was still alive, or if they never gave a fig for you, because let's face it, as great a proportion of the dead are arseholes as the living. It stands to reason, although you won't find many funerals begin with 'he was a total pain in the neck and only half as clever as he thought, so let's put him in the ground and have a pint, and good riddance.' I've always thought that would have a certain charm, myself. — Nick Harkaway

Weddings are quite similar to funerals in that, apart from the main players, when it's all over, people are never quite sure what they should be doing next, which is why they see if there is any wine left. — Terry Pratchett

The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering. — Erin Gruwell

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

Westboro Baptist Church: STOP. Stop protesting the funerals of our soldiers who died in action because you are anti-gay. When one of you dies, I'm going to show up with a couple of gay veterans and we're going to do a musical at your funeral. — Billy Crystal

As the years go by those relationships are tested, and only then do you realize their true nature. Only after they've been tested through weddings, moves, funerals, divorces, births and other stages in life are you able to judge them. Until then, 'best friend', 'good guy', etc are only labels. In the end, it's interesting; often surprising to see the results. — Benjamin J. Carey

On going to funerals: "You don't have to say anything. By showing up you are reassuring them that they are not alone. Just being there is enough. — Kunal Nayyar

Funerals aren't for the dead. They're for the living. — Gavin Extence

Another weird thing about funerals: Wear black but kill something as colorful as flowers to decorate. — Harlan Coben

Someone trying to be funny probably isn't as funny as someone who doesn't want to be funny but is and can't help it. Someone being serious or angry might be funny. If you get angry, the first thing I want to do is laugh because I don't know why you're getting that angry. Pathos makes me laugh, funerals make me laugh. — Ricky Gervais

Funerals often make us want sex - it's one in the eye for death. — Thomas Harris

Accepting a religion may be more like enjoying a poem, or following the football. It might be a matter of immersion in a set of practices. Perhaps the practices have only an emotional point, or a social point. Perhaps religious rituals only serve necessary psychological and social ends. The rituals of birth, coming of age, or funerals do this. It is silly to ask whether a marriage ceremony is true or false. People do not go to a funeral service to hear something true, but to mourn, or to begin to stop mourning, or to meditate on departed life. It can be as inappropriate to ask whether what is said is true as to ask whether Keats's ode to a Grecian urn is true. The poem is successful or not in quite a different dimension, and so is Chartres cathedral, or a statue of the Buddha. They may be magnificent, and moving, and awe-inspiring, but not because they make statements that are true or false. — Simon Blackburn

My present post amounts to about 700 thaler, and when there are rather more funerals than usual, the fees rise in proportion; but when a healthy wind blows, they fall accordingly ... — Johann Sebastian Bach

Oh, I believe you. It's too ridiculous not to be true. It's just that each time my world gets stranger, I think: Right. We're at maximum oddness now. At least I know the full extent of it. First, I find out my brother and I are descended from the pharaohs and have magic powers. All right. No problem. Then I find out my dead father has merged his soul with Osiris and Why not? Then my uncle takes over the House of Life and oversees hundreds of magicians around the world. Then my boyfriend turns out to be a hybrid magician boy/immortal god of funerals. And all the while I'm thinking, Of course! Keep calm and carry on! I've adjusted! And then you come along on a random Thursday, la-di-da, and say, Oh, by the way, Egyptian gods are just one small part of the cosmic absurdity. We've also got the Greeks to worry about! Hooray! — Rick Riordan

Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence. — J.G. Ballard

What I'm asking is will watching The Discovery
Channel with my young black boy instead
of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests
riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him
from harm? — Jennifer Givhan

I hate mourning," she said. "It always smells of moth balls because it's been laid up somewhere." "You don't need to go on wearing mourning. It's only to go to the funeral in," said Tommy. "Oh no, I know that. In a minute or two I'm going to go up and put on a scarlet jersey just to cheer things up. You can make me another White Lady." "Really, Tuppence, I had no idea that funerals would bring out this party feeling. — Agatha Christie

I was one those kids who had books on them. Before weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals and anything else where you're actually meant to not be reading, my family would frisk me and take the book away. If they didn't find it by this point in the procedure, I would be sitting over in that corner completely unnoticed just reading my book. — Neil Gaiman

Whenever humans come together for any reason, music is there: weddings, funerals, graduation from college, men marching off to war, stadium sporting events, a night on the town, prayer, a romantic dinner, mothers rocking their infants to sleep ... music is a part of the fabric of everyday life. — Daniel Levitin

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

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

Take a look at my life
its just a handful of memories
From misdemeanours to felonies
Funerals of family
Look at my life
Ain't exactly what i planned it'd be
And life, Is this really what it's all about?
My life, It ain't no mystery to figure out
My life, I got a couple rhymes I scribbled out
Guess i took a different route
Take a look at my life — Ko

I don't do weddings, funerals or Tupperware parties. — Pamela Kay Walker

I have always loved the process of making the music, reading the letters from the fans who get married to my music, have children to my music and play my music at their funerals. — Wynonna Judd

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

Because,' he said - thinking, Because sex is wonderful, and who wouldn't want to do it as much as possible? Because sex is ecstasy, and there's no ecstasy left in this civilization anymore. Because we thought penicillin could cure everything. Because people are looking for Love. Because in this society we can't find support for stable partnerships. Because we're ashamed, and seek out sex with a stranger we don't have to say hello to in the street the next day, much less mention at our funerals. Because, because, because, he thought, and then he turned to her and said. 'Why do you smoke?' (196). — Andrew Holleran

Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we're in trouble. Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake's view. Next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war. Snowman longs to question them - who first had the idea of making a reasonable facsimile of him, of Snowman, out of a jar lid and a mop? But that will have to wait. — Margaret Atwood

See you in Djerholm harbour," Specht called. "No mourners." "No funerals," the others replied. Strange people. — Leigh Bardugo

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

Six bad hombres have tried to kill Ramos. Ramos went to all six funerals, just in case any of the bereaved wanted to take a shot at revenge. None of them did. He calls his Uzi "Mi Esposa" - my wife. He's thirty-two years old. Within hours he has in custody the three policemen who picked up Ernie Hidalgo. One of them is the chief of the Jalisco State Police. Ramos tells Art, "We can do this the fast way or the slow way." Ramos takes two cigars from his shirt pocket, offers one to Art and shrugs when he refuses it. He takes a long time to light the cigar, rolling it so that the tip lights evenly, then takes a long pull and raises his black eyebrows at Art. The theologians are right, Art thinks - we become what we hate. Then he says, "The fast way." Ramos says. "Come back in a little while." "No," Art says. "I'll do my part." "That's a man's answer," Ramos says. "But I don't want a witness. — Don Winslow

No mourners. No funerals. Among them, it passed for 'good luck. — Leigh Bardugo

One of the most important parts of tending our friendships is working our way, over time, into the kind of friendships that can support cataclysm, friendships that are able to move from the office or the playground to hospital rooms and funerals. Some of my married friends are widows now, and some are single, and some have lost parents and had kids who were lost to them for awhile. And even those of us who so far have been relatively unscathed know how important the bonds of love are, how they make a net so we don't hit the ground when we fall from the wire. — Anna Quindlen

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

Funerals cost so much money, and are likely to be an additional source of stress in this recession - it's sad that we don't have a more humane, less commercialized way to approach burial. — Meghan O'Rourke

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days. — Garrison Keillor

-she'd never thought of him while in the tub or flat on her bed- but in his presence she didn't want to talk or eat, she wanted to be nude with him, under a dirty sheet in a borrowed house. She wanted to hold his shoulders; she wanted to go snowshoeing with him; she wanted to go to funerals with him; she wanted him to be the father of her children — Dave Eggers

The three biggest funerals in Alabama history define the state's contending loyalties, I was told: George Wallace's, Martin Luther King's, and Bear Bryant's. — Paul Theroux

After Auschwitz, I no longer cry at funerals. — Charlotte Delbo

Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love. — Suzanne Collins

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

I always thought that funerals were meant for the living to say good-bye to a loved one. I never would have guessed that it's actually the other way around. — Anthony Greer

So many of us have loved ones and people we really care about, and the only time we show affection is when they are gone. I have preached at funerals, and you see loved ones who didn't even say hello to dear ones when they were alive. Give them hugs, kisses while they are alive and need it. — George Foreman