#funeral

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung. ↗

— Henry Ward Beecher

#bell #conservative #funeral #men #nation

An obituary should be an exercise in contemporary history, not a funeral oration. ↗

— Peter Utley

#contemporary history #exercise #funeral #history #obituary

Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar. ↗

— George Eliot

#ancestral #city #funeral #gathered #hemisphere

Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends. ↗

— Mason Cooley

#asleep #during #fall #friends #funerals

I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral. ↗

— John Burroughs

#feeling #funeral #go #history #i

Put no inscription over the grave, except the date of my birth and my death; and, wherever I am buried, let the funeral be perfectly private, with as few persons attending, and as little show and expense as possible. ↗

— Isaac Butt

#attending #birth #buried #date #death

THE BARROW In this high field strewn with stones I walk by a green mound, Its edges sheared by the plough. Crumbs of animal bone Lie smashed and scattered round Under the clover leaves And slivers of flint seem to grow Like white leaves among green. In the wind, the chestnut heaves Where a man's grave has been. Whatever the barrow held Once, has been taken away: A hollow of nettles and dock Lies at the centre, filled With rain from a sky so grey It reflects nothing at all. I poke in the crumbled rock For something they left behind But after that funeral There is nothing at all to find. On the map in front of me The gothic letters pick out Dozens of tombs like this, Breached, plundered, left empty, No fragments littered about Of a dead and buried race In the margins of histories. No fragments: these splintered bones Construct no human face, These stones are simply stones. In museums their urns lie Behind glass, and their shaped flints Are labelled like butterflies. All that they did was die, And all that has happened since Means nothing to this place. Above long clouds, the skies Turn to a brilliant red And show in the water's face One living, and not these dead." — Anthony Thwaite, from The Owl In The Tree ↗

— Anthony Thwaite

#burial #death #funeral #grave #living

Pa said, "Won't you say a few words? Ain't none of our folks ever been buried without a few words." Connie led Rose of Sharon to the graveside, she reluctant. "You got to," Connie said. "It ain't decent not to. It'll jus' be a little. The firelight fell on the grouped people, showing their faces and their eyes, dwindling on their dark clothes.All the hats were off now. The light danced, jerking over the people. Casy said, It'll be a short one." He bowed his head, and the others followed his lead. Casy said solemnly, "This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now his dead, an' that don't matter. Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an' he says 'All that lives is holy.' Got to thinkin', an' purty soon it means more than the words says. An' I woundn' pray for a ol' fella that's dead. He's awright. He got a job to do, but it's all laid out for'im an' there's on'y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an' they's a thousan' ways, an' we don' know which one to take. An' if I was to pray, it'd be for the folks that don' know which way to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy straight. An' now cover 'im up and let'im get to his work." He raised his head. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#death #funeral #last-words #life #death

What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral. ↗

— James Russell Lowell

#even #funeral #men #most #mourner

Saying, 'I'm sorry' is the same as saying, ' I apologize.' Except at a funeral. ↗

— Demetri Martin

#except #funeral #i #same #saying