80 Quotes About Funerals

Robbins, with Dora and Louis on either side, did not speak. A storm came into his head and he missed a good part of the service.

Funerals are for the living. If we have not done for the dead while they were yet in flesh, it is too late; let the matter pass at the grave. Day by day we should live for those who are to die; and live so that we may die for those who are to live. Funerals are for the living.

We do have funerals for the living," Jill said. "They're called birthday parties.

You never remember who came to the funeral, but you never forget who didn’t.

At the funeral the meaning of all funerals was revealed to me: they are the preparation for one's own death. The clerk asked me if four o'clock in the afternoon would be convenient. I said it would. "It's a nice hour," the clerk assured me. It was.

I did not cry then or ever about Finney. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family’s straightlaced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.

Who’s that?” Yngve said, nodding discreetly in the direction of a woman. She wore a hat with a veil that concealed her face. “No idea,” I said. “But all self-respecting funerals have a woman no one recognizes.” We laughed. “Well, the danger’s over now,” Yngve said, and we both laughed again.

There’s something excruciating about this part. Strangers, or, even worse, friends, crouch at the children’s knees, touching them, hugging them, stressed faces one after another pressing into theirs, faces like caricatures. There is the awkwardness of people feeling the need to say something when there is nothing to say. Nothing.

Funerals are for the living, not for the dead.