Funerals Quotes

Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.

~ Shannon L. Alder

When someone you love dies, you are given the gift of second chances. Their eulogy is a reminder that the living can turn their lives around at any point. You’re not bound by the past; that is who you used to be. You’re reminded that your feelings are not who you are, but how you felt at that moment. Your bad choices defined you yesterday, but they are not who you are today. Your future doesn’t have to travel the same path with the same people. You can start over. You don’t have to apologize to people that won’t listen. You don’t have to justify your feelings or actions, during a difficult time in your life. You don’t have to put up with people that are insecure and want you to fail. All you have to do is walk forward with a positive outlook, and trust that God has a plan that is greater than the sorrow you left behind. The people of quality that were meant to be in your life won’t need you to explain the beauty of your heart. They already understand what being human is----a roller coaster ride of emotions during rainstorms and sunshine, sprinkled with moments when you can almost reach the stars.

~ Shannon L. Alder

I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.

~ John Green

Everyone was eating, talking softly, glancing at me, hugging me, eating. It was as if someone had turned the volume down. Everything looked normal, but the sound was muted. Death did this, set all this weirdness in motion, made people appear out of nowhere carrying casseroles, saying 'I'm sorry' over and over, death muffled their voices.

~ Joan Abelove

Perhaps because it seems so appropriate, I don't notice the rain. It falls in sheets, a blanket of silvery thread rushing to the hard almost-winter ground. Still, I stand without moving at the side of the coffin.

~ Michelle Zink

Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.

~ J.g. Ballard

All death reminds us that nothing is promised, only that life was worth it.

~ Shannon L. Alder

It's not what I'd want for at my funeral. When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when the pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie.

~ Neil Gaiman

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration.

~ John Steinbeck

Funerals aren't scheduled.

~ Benjamin J. Carey

A sea of red lights, and I slow down. My job now is to gather everyone together and tell them we have to let her go. I won't tell anyone over the phone, because I didn't like hearing the news from the doctor that way. I have maybe a week to handle the arrangements, as the doctor said, but the arrangements are overwhelming. How do I learn how to run a family? How do I say goodbye to someone I love so much that I've forgotten just how much I love her?

~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Most of us cling to life as if our existence were a result of our deed or choice.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Most human beings would have never been pained by the death of a human being if they had never seen a human being or pretending to be pained by that.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

An expensive coffin does not decrease the deceased’s chances of going to hell.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if they truly believed that sooner or later they are also going to die.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We the living are to blame for the painfulness of being dead.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The fact that you have just buried your parent or parents and/or sibling or siblings does not make you less likely to die today.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Death would be an extremely bad thing like most of us paint it, if being dead were painful.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Some people will each start investing more of their salary on ‘their’ house and spending less of it on ‘their’ car or cars only when they start being able to take ‘their’ house to work, funerals, weddings, etc.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.

~ Alexander Cockburn

Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Live in such a way that when you die you leave God in your will for your children.

~ Shannon L. Alder

A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it’s over. Be pleasant but don’t smile too much; be sad but don’t overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don’t let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming.

~ Cecelia Ahern

Funerals aren't for the dead. They're for the living.

~ Gavin Extence

Perspective is as simple as answering this question: If I had 5 months to live would I experience this problem differently?

~ Shannon L. Alder

Funerals are for the living, Jace, not for the dead.

~ Cassandra Clare

God helps everything come to pass. However, he reminds us that nothing comes to stay.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Samson caused the house to collapse, knowing his death would also result. Despite Samson’s deliberate suicide, Samson died faithful after having judged Israel for 20 years. His name rightly appears among men who, through faith, were made powerful. (Jg 15:20; 16:29-31; Heb 11:32-34) We are surrounded by thousands of unseen cruelties, that mostly go unseen. The total amount of suffering each year is beyond comprehension. This world is barbed, dangerous and painful—too painful for some. Give them their space. On any given day, your nod of approval may perpetuate cruelties that rasp away at the soul of another. We are all bound together in this delicate web of consequence. Tread light. Be kind. Many among us make unseen bargains to push ourselves onward—another hour, another day, another week. Occasionally their bargains create a deadly, unstoppable momentum. Consider King Saul: When he realized that he would not survive his final battle against the Philistines, rather than letting his enemy humiliate him, or extort Israel, “Saul took the sword and fell upon it.” –1Sam 31:4pg 75

~ Michael Ben Zehabe

I never saw a dollar bill cry at anyone's funeral.

~ J. Lincoln Fenn

Death says a million words that the heart can't pen.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Do you really think anyone needs some kind of notarized statement saying 'Dear Saint Peter, here's another stiff, pass him through the gates, signed, Father McGonnigill.'...'PS: He once had a hot dog on a Friday, but don't hold that against him.'

~ P.n. Elrod

Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.

~ John Green

People can act so nice, bringing you food and all, but in the end they are nothing but buzzards. Waiting to pick your bones.

~ Lee Smith

We don't plan funerals till the body is dead.

~ Nilesh Rathod

So, my sweet, did it put the fun into funeral?

~ Johnny Rich

This stupidity of sounding a siren and speeding through traffic with a coffin must be an African speciality.

~ Nana Awere Damoah

Yes, it was a beautiful sermon, tugging the emotions and conjuring up pictures of greatness and peace. But were they talking about the decent peppery ordinary old man he knew, or had the subject strayed to the story of some saint of the past? Or were there perhaps two men being buried under the same name? One perhaps had shown himself to Ross, while the other had been reserved for the view of men like William-Alfred. Ross tried to remember Charles before he was ill, Charles with his love of cockfighting and his hearty appetite, with his perpetual flatulence and passion for gin, with his occasional generosities and meannesses and faults and virtues, like most men. There was some mistake somewhere. Oh well, this was a special occasion...But Charles himself would surely have been amused. Or would he have shed a tear with the rest for the manner of man who had passed away?

~ Winston Graham

Perhaps it was as well that she had been unconscious for four weeks. She had missed the aftermath, the SO-1 reports, the recriminations, Snood and Tamworth's funerals. She missed everything...except the blame. It was waiting for her when she awoke...

~ Jasper Fforde