Memoriam Quotes & Sayings

I think the hardest thing about writing is writing.
[Interview clip in the In Memoriam section of the 85th Academy Awards ceremony, Feb. 24, 2013] — Nora Ephron

I half expected cathedral bells to ring out across the city in memoriam, a carillon of joyous bells that said Someone is free at last, and simultaneously a monody of heavy bells, iron bells, as solemn as those rung for heroes and for statesmen, bells that said He is gone who was much loved. But the night was empty of all bells. There were no bells for such as us, no funerals, no crowd of mourners around our graves. — Dean Koontz

IN MEMORIAM: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
She whom we love, our Lady of Compassion,
Can never die, for Love forbids her death.
Love has bent down in his old kindly fashion,
And breathed upon her his immortal breath.
On wounded soldiers, in their anguish lying,
Her gentle spirit shall descend like rain.
Where the white flag with the red cross is flying,
There shall she dwell, the vanquisher of pain. — Joyce Kilmer

In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman. — Neal Stephenson

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let darkness keep her raven gloss: Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with death, to beat the ground. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. — Cassandra Clare

It [In Memoriam] expressed exactly the nature of her own shock and sorrow, the very structure and slow process of pain, and the transformations and transmutations of grief, like rot in the earth-mould, like roots and other blind things moving in the grave. — A.S. Byatt

'In Memoriam' has been my companion for all my grownup life. — A. N. Wilson

A beam in darkness: let it grow. — Alfred Tennyson

Paul looks like he'd rather just go home and make out in the kitchen; I would agree, except that I know my Dad is likely to be in there with his laptop, listening to the Beatles music as he catches up on all the Facebook "in memoriam" posts in his honor. Total mood-killer. — Claudia Gray

The dead leave us starving with mouths full of love." from "Memoriam — Anne Michaels

The greatest regret of my military career was as Commanding General of the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, he later wrote of the decision he made. I lost 169 soldiers during that year-long deployment. However, the monument we erected at Fort Hood, Texas, in memoriam lists 168 names. I approved the request of others not to include the name of the one soldier who committed suicide. I deeply regret my decision. — David Finkel

My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;


This round of green, this orb of flame,
Fantastic beauty such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.


What then were God to such as I?
'Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A tattle patience ere I die;


'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease. — Alfred Tennyson