Writings: Recommended Quotes

Here are some great quotes on the topic of funerals, memorials, and death.

"Words seem so feeble in moments like these. Life is so precious, and death such a thief. The depth of your pain I cannot comprehend, but I'll stand alongside you in the darkness, my friend. Love is a bond that death cannot part. Gone from your arms, but still held in your heart." 

-John Mark Green

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes

the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim." 

- Vicki Harrison

"Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be." 

- Sonia Ricotti

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived,

and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”

  - Buddha

"A great soul serves everyone all the time.  A great soul never dies.  It brings 
us together again and again."
    - Maya Angelou

"I have heard it said that winter, too, will pass, that spring is a sign that summer 
is due at last.  See, all we have to do is hang on."
    - Maya Angelou

"When words are most empty, tears are most apt."
    - Max Lucado

"I think of Heaven as a garden where I shall find again those dear ones who 
have made my world."
    - Minnie Aumonier

"That we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love
 deeply becomes part of us."
    - Helen Keller

"In one of the stars I shall be living In one of them I shall be laughing
 And so it will be  As if all the stars  were laughing  when you look
at the sky at night"
     - The Little Prince  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"I have passed the mountain peak and my soul is soaring in the firmament of 
Complete and unbounded freedom; I am in comfort, I am in peace."
     - Kahlil Gibran

"And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?  I did.
And what did you want?  To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth."
     - Raymond Carver

"Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come."
     - Rabindranath Tagore

"Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul."
     - Longfellow

"To sleep; perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause."
     - William Shakespeare. Hamlet

"The dead don't die. They look on and help." 
     - D.H. Lawrance

"The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open: this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude."
     - Washington Irvine

"In one sense there is no death. The life of a soul on earth lasts beyond departure. You will always feel that life touching yours, that voice speaking to you. He/She lives on in your life and in the lives of all others that knew him/her." 
     - Angelo Patri
    
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." 
     - Henry David Thoreau Walden

"For every end no matter how tragic, there will be a new beginning." 
     - Anonymous

"Whoso is compassionate is everywhere beloved. By the kind and good he is prized as a friend, and at death his heart is full of peace." 
     - Namu Amida Butsu

"To die or not to die ... we really don't have a choice. We can therefore only take care of our life-body, until the fullness of time and being ends our existence on earth." 
     - Taitesu Unno

"Gone, gone, gone beyond. Gone utterly beyond. Oh what an awakening." 
     - Heart Sutra.

"The song is ended, but the melody lingers on..."
     - Irving Berlin

"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man." 
     - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us."             
- Helen Keller

"Grieve not, nor speak of me with tears, but laugh and talk of me as if I were beside you there."             
- Isla Paschal Richardson

"To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die." 
     - Thomas Campbell

“Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men”
     - Quintus Ennius 

“I can't think of a more wonderful thanksgiving for the life I have had than that everyone should be jolly at my funeral”
     - Admiral (Lord) Louis Mountbatten