Burial Quotes

• On a day of burial there is no perspective--for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was--to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Love, Death, Saying Goodbye

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• The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Memories, Men, Needs

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Julian Hawthorne (2015). “Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of “The Scarlet Letter”, “The House of Seven Gables” and “Twice-Told Tales””, p.820, e-artnow

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• A cemetery saddens us because it is the only place of the world in which we do not meet our dead again.

  Francois Mauriac

  World, Cemetery

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• Nature is honest, we aren't; we embalm our dead.

  Ugo Betti

  Honest

  Ugo Betti (1968). “Three Plays”

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• HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that

  Ambrose Bierce

  Night, Doe, Hyenas

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.94, 谷月社

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• Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self.

  Richard Leakey

  Self, Speak, Awareness

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• There is nothing so good as a burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.

  Alfred Hitchcock

  Funny, Simple, Sea

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• All places are alike, and every earth is fit for burial.

  Christopher Marlowe

  Earth, Fit

  Christopher Marlowe (2000). “The Plays”, p.425, Wordsworth Editions

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• Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than is dung.

  Heraclitus

  Death, Fit, Thrown

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• So long as there is one pretty girl left on the stage, the professional undertakers may hold up their burial of the theater.

  George Jean Nathan

  Girl, Long, Literature

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• The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

  Thomas Browne

  Life, Long, Dying

  'Hydriotaphia' (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 5

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• I always have one or two, sometimes more, Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time, I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead, respect for burial sites.

  Tony Hillerman

  Attitude, Two, Mind

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• It is death that goes down to the center of the earth, the great burial church the earth is, and then to the curved ends of the universe, as light is said to do

  Harold Brodkey

  Light, Church, Earth

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• By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here - the Infinite

  Johann Gottlieb Fichte

  Men, Bliss, Infinite

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• Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Kings, Animal, Men

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• Everything ends this way in France — everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs — everything is a pretext for a good dinner.

  Jean Anouilh

  Paris, Dinner, Way

  Jean Anouilh (1958). “Jean Anouilh”

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• POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Pockets, Alive, Sin

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.166, 谷月社

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• A library is but the soul's burial ground; it is the land of shadows. Yet one is impressed with the thought, the labor, and the struggle, represented in this vast catacomb of books. Who could dream, by the placid waters that issue from the level mouths of brooks into the lake, all the plunges, the whirls, the divisions, and foaming rushes that had brought them down to the tranquil exit? And who can guess through what channels of disturbance, and experiences of sorrow, the heart passed that has emptied into this Dead Sea of books?

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Dream, Struggle, Book

  Henry Ward Beecher (1855). “Star Papers: Or, Experiences of Art and Nature”, p.54, New York : Boston : J.C. Derby ; Phillips, Sampson & Company

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• Everything is drive-through. In California, they even have a burial service called Jump-In-The-Box.

  Wil Shriner

  California, Boxes

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• Leisure without literature is death, or rather the burial of a living man -Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Men, Literature

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• Premature burial works just fine as a cure for adolescence.

  George Alec Effinger

  Cures, Fine, Adolescence

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• ... these three witnesses are one, as John said: 'The water, the blood, and the Spirit' (I Jn. 5:8). One in the mystery, not in nature. The water, then, is a witness of burial, the blood is a witness of death, the Spirit is a witness of life. If, then, there be any grace in the water, it is not from the nature of water, but from the presence of the Holy Spirit.

  Ambrose

  Christian, Blood, Water

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• Rumour has it that the gardens of natural history museums are used for surreptitious burial of those intermediate forms between species which might disturb the orderly classifications of the taxonomist.

  David Lack

  Science, Garden, Museums

  David Lack (1947). “Darwin's Finches”, p.23, CUP Archive

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• Royalty is a fine burial shroud.

  Theodora

  Royalty, Fine, Shrouds

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• To the lover of the Lord Jesus Christ there can be nothing legal about baptism. It is simply the glad expression of a grateful heart recognizing its identity with Christ in death, burial, and resurrection. Many of us look back to the moment when we were thus baptized as one of the most precious experiences we have ever known.

  Henry Allen Ironside

  Christian, Jesus, Grateful

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