funeral quotes

Her funeral sermon (which was long And followed bya sacred song) Mentioned her virtues, it is true, But dwelt upon her vices too.

-Belloc, (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre
  Cautionary  Tales,'Rebecca'.

The present is the funeral of the past, And man the living sepulchre of life.

-Clare,John
  'The Present is the Funeral of the Past'.

But for his funeral trainwhichthe bridegroomsees in the distance, Would he so joyfully, think you, fall in with the marriage- procession?

-Clough, Arthur Hugh
  Amours de Voyage, canto 3, pt.6.

I've a great fancy to see my funeral before I die.

-Edgeworth, Maria
  Sir Cody to Thady. Castle Rackrent,'History of Sir Conolly Rackrent'.

The Huns†chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious inhis life, invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world.

-Gibbon, Edward
^88  Description of the funeralof  Attila the Hun. TheDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.35.

The only reason so many people showed up at his funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead.

-Goldwyn, Sam(uel) originally  Schmuel Gelbfisz
Of Louis B Mayer.  Attributed.

Mighty victor, mighty lord, Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies.

-Gray,Thomas
  The Bard.  A Pindaric Ode, l.63^6.

But there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

-Jerome,Jerome K(lapka)
  Three Men in a Boat, ch.3.

Avictory should be celebrated with the funeral rite.

-Lao-Tzu   6c
c.250  BC  Tao-te Ching, no.31. Collected in LinYutang (trans and ed)  The Wisdom of China and India (1942).

After the funeral, my father struggled through half a page, and it might as well have been Hottentott. 'And what dun they gi'e thee for that, lad?' 'Fifty pounds, father.' 'Fifty pounds!' He was dumbfounded, and looked at mewith shrewd eyes,asif I were a swindler.'Fifty pounds! An'tha's niver done a day's hard work in thy life.'

-Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)
  Preface to Edward D McDonald (ed)  A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence.

The departed was a 'Roman', and the majority of the town were otherwiseöbut unionism is stronger than creed. Drink, however, is stronger than unionism; and, whenthehearse presentlyarrived, morethantwo-thirds of the funeral were unable to follow.

-Lawson, Henry Hertzberg
  'The Union Buries its Dead', first published in Truth,  Apr.

Art is long, and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

-Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
  'A Psalm of Life', stanza 4. In Knickerbocker or NewYork Monthly Magazine, Sep. Collected in Voices of the Night (1839).

I hate people who play bridge as though they were at a funeral and knew their feet were getting wet.

-Maugham,W(illiam) Somerset
  Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Spare me! You forget nothin'and forgive nothin'. Learn charity, woman. I have gonetiptoe in this house all seven month since she isgone. I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches around your heart.

-Miller, Arthur
  Proctor to Elizabeth. The Crucible, act 2.

[The Red Flag] is the funeral march of a fried eel.

-Shaw, George Bernard
Quoted byWinston Churchill in Great Contemporaries (1937).

The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspen good for staves, the cypress funeral. The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepeth still, The willow worn of forlorn paramours, The ewe obedient to the benders will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platan round, The carver holme, the maple seldom inward sound.

-Spenser, Edmund
  The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto1, stanzas 8^9. plantan=plane tree; holme=holly.

And when they buried him the little port Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.

-Tennyson
  'Enoch Arden', closing words.

If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy†why you itch all over in upward of a thousand places.

-Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens
  TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch.2.

I will teach you my townspeople how to perform a funeral for you have it over a troop of artistsö unless one should scour the worldö you have the ground sense necessary.

-Williams,William Carlos
  Al Que Quiere!,'Tract'.

19 Quotes found. Displaying quotes 1 through 19

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2005 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.