quotations about funerals
Never joke at funerals, or during business transactions.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Israel Potter
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
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
Enemies always attend each other's funerals. I guess it is a way of knowing they won.
M.C.V. EGAN
Defined by Others
Funerals are pretty compared to death. Funerals are quiet, but deaths not always.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
A Streetcar Named Desire
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