quotations about funerals
Funerals are pretty compared to death. Funerals are quiet, but deaths not always.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
A Streetcar Named Desire
They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"Lecture in San Francisco,", Lake Wobegon Days
Death is not extinguishing the light. It is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
attributed, Message of the East
FUNERAL, n. A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
What could be more universal than death? Yet what an incredible variety of responses it evokes ... Funerals are the occasion for avoiding people or holding parties, for fighting or having sexual orgies, for weeping or laughing, in a thousand different combinations. The diversity of cultural reaction is a measure of the universal impact of death.
PETER METCALF
Celebrations of Death
Those who bequeath unto themselves a pompous funeral, are at just so much expense to inform the world of something that had much better been concealed; namely, that their vanity has survived themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon