These burial quotes will inspire you. Burial is the action or practice of interring a dead body or a ceremony at which someone’s body is interred; a funeral.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging burial quotes, burial sayings, and burial proverbs.
Inspirational Burial Quotes
- “There is nothing so good as a burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.” ~ Alfred Hitchcock
- “All places are alike, and every earth is fit for burial.” ~ Christopher Marlowe
- “Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self.” ~ Richard Leakey
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“The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
- “Nature is honest, we aren’t; we embalm our dead.” ~ Ugo Betti
- “A cemetery saddens us because it is the only place of the world in which we do not meet our dead again.” ~ Francois Mauriac
- “On a day of burial there is no perspective–for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was–to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than is dung.” ~ Heraclitus
- “So long as there is one pretty girl left on the stage, the professional undertakers may hold up their burial of the theater.” ~ George Jean Nathan
- “HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that” ~ Ambrose Bierce
- “The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.” ~ Thomas Browne
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“I always have one or two, sometimes more, Navajo or other tribes’ cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time, I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead, respect for burial sites.” ~ Tony Hillerman
- “It is death that goes down to the center of the earth, the great burial church the earth is, and then to the curved ends of the universe, as light is said to do” ~ Harold Brodkey , Burial quotes death
- “By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here – the Infinite” ~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- “Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci
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“Everything ends this way in France — everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs — everything is a pretext for a good dinner.” ~ Jean Anouilh
- “The earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers, waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, it stops to listen, and goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows, like a savage on the trail.” ~ Charles Dickens
- “Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust, The horns of glory blowing above my burial?” ~ Conrad Aiken
- “Since graveyards are often built over older burial grounds, I assume Dolores Park was probably an Indian, (an Ohlone) graveyard before that. I think the fact that it has so many layers underneath the contemporary one intrigues me.” ~ Stephen Vincent Benet
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“The burial of feelings has begun.” ~ Mark Strand
- “”Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is ‘prisoners'”” ~ Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
- “Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.” ~ Edward Abbey
- “We start… imitation of Christ with Holy Baptism, which symbolizes the Lord’s Burial and Resurrection. Virtuous living and conduct in accord with the Gospel are its intermediate stage, and its perfection is victory through spiritual struggles against the passions, which procures painless, indestructible, heavenly life.” ~ Gregory Palamas
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“He (Aneurin Bevan) enjoys prophesying the imminent fall of the capitalist system, and is prepared to play a part, any part, in its burial, except that of mute.” ~ Harold MacMillan
- “The difference between the Pyramids in Egypt and the ones in Mexico is there is nothing inside the Mexican Pyramids. In the African Pyramids, the whole inside is a burial chamber. So they were really gravesites to nobility.” ~ John Henrik Clarke
- “Safe-breaking and vault-breaking are at least as old as the pyramids and burial chambers of Egypt. Poking holes in vaults and safes for profit appears to be as durable as greed.” ~ James Chiles
- “I would say the 1980s, most importantly, there’s been a witnessing of the bankruptcy of the liberal philosophy and the anti-moral and amoral philosophies that were so prevalent in the 1960s and ’70s, the rebellion of young people, which brought about the drug epidemic in so many to break down the family. Particularly during this decade, the spiritual rebirth. I’m an evangelical, and I’ve watched the evangelical church here and around the world preaching Christ, the death, burial, resurrection of the savior, receiving more receptivity everywhere, and that growth.” ~ Jerry Falwell
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“One cannot conceive of grander burial than that which mighty mountains bend, crack and shatter to make. Or a nobler tomb than the great upper basin of Denali.” ~ Hudson Stuck
- “Basically, I don’t ever move too far past the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, because it’s of first importance. And I make sure it’s of first importance with anyone I’m talking to. It all comes down to that, really, when you get right down to it. So it’s not complex. Jesus removed our sins and guarantees we can be raised from the dead.” ~ Phil Robertson
- “Every colonized people-in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality-finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards.” ~ Frantz Fanon
- “I don’t go out and preach because of my desire as much as I go out to fulfill the command of Christ. He said, “Go!” to all of His disciples, and we’re to go and witness to Christ by the way we live and by our verbal witness about the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and about the need to repent and believe. I’ve never had any doubts about my call.” ~ Billy Graham
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“Yesterday in Egypt, archaeologists discovered the burial site for the 50 children of Ramses II…Fifty children! What I want to know is, who decided to name a condom after this guy?” ~ Conan O’Brien
- “Funerals cost so much money, and are likely to be an additional source of stress in this recession – it’s sad that we don’t have a more humane, less commercialized way to approach burial.” ~ Meghan O’Rourke
- “To plot is to live. […] We start out lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that’s not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. – (WN 292)” ~ Don DeLillo
- “Cry “havoc!” and let loose the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial.” ~ William Shakespeare
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“As a member of Congress and a parent, I understand the importance of ensuring that families are able to provide a meaningful and proper burial for their loved ones.” ~ Jon Porter
- “Death is not rare, alas! nor burials few, And soon the grassy coverlet of God Spreads equal green above their ashes pale.” ~ Bayard Taylor
- “As we cleared the passage we found mixed with the rubble broken potsherds, jar seals, and numerous fragments of small objects; water skins lying on the floor together with alabaster jars, whole and broken, and colored pottery vases; all pertaining to some disturbed burial, but telling us nothing to whom they belonged further than by their type which was of the late XVIIIth Dyn. These were disturbing elements as they pointed towards plundering.” ~ Howard Carter
- “Let the Unions become engines for the working people to right their wrongs. Not benefit societies or burial clubs. Let the Unions become civilian regiments to fight in the cause of the people.” ~ Richard Llewellyn
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“A family is a burial mound of its own doings and sayings.” ~ Han Suyin
- “I realized with grief that purposeless activities in language arts are probably the burial grounds of language development and that coffins can be found in most classrooms, including mine.” ~ Mem Fox
- “Give me an adventure. I’m not talking about some massive adventure. Just something that would make getting fired seem small. Something that I might remember when I’m old.” “I can’t predict the future,” I said, “but based on what little I know so far, I’m afraid it has to be a massive adventure or nothing.” “Great!” “Probably the kind of adventure that ends in a mass burial.” ~ Neal Stephenson
- “Probably the undertaker thinks less of death than almost any other man. He is so accustomed to it that his mind must involuntarily turn from its horror to a contemplation of how much he makes out of the burial.” ~ Clarence Darrow
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“Let us clear a little space, And make Love a burial-place. He is dead, dear, as you see, And he wearies you and me.” ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- “Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.” ~ Amiri Baraka - “An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;
Give him a little earth for charity!” ~ William Shakespeare - “I endeavor to drink deep of philosophy and to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended, and patient where there is no redress. The mighty can do no more, and the wise seldom do as much. … I am resolved to make the best of all circumstances around me, that this short life may not be half lost in pains … Between the periods of birth and burial, I would fain insert a little happiness, a little pleasure, a little peace: to-day is ours, yesterday is past, and to-morrow may never come.” ~ Elizabeth Montagu
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“O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written–Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.” ~ Herman Melville
- “The death, and the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus happened over three days. Friday was the day of suffering and pain and agony. Saturday was the day of doubt and confusion and misery. But Easter, that Sunday, was the day of hope and joy and victory. You will face these three days over and over and over in your lifetime. And when you do, you’ll find yourself asking, as I did, three fundamental questions: Number one, what do I do in my days of pain? Two, how do I get through my days of doubt and confusion? Three, how do I get to the days of joy and victory? The answer is Easter.” ~ Rick Warren
- “Without the knowledge of the true number of the people, as a principle, the whole scope and use of keeping bills of birth and burials is impaired; wherefore by laborious conjectures and calculations to deduce the number of people from the births and burials, may be ingenious, but very preposterous.” ~ William Petty
- “All I desire for my own burial is not to be buried alive; but how or where I think, must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature.” ~ Lord Chesterfield
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“In the end maybe what marriage offered was the determination of one’s burial site.” ~ Jane Hamilton
- “I have a deep and ongoing love of Iceland, particular the landscape, and when writing Burial Rites, I was constantly trying to see whether I could distill its extraordinary and ineffable qualities into a kind of poetry.” ~ Hannah Kent
- “All things that we ordained festival
Turn from their office to black funeral–
Our instruments to melancholy bells,
Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse;
And all things change them to the contrary.” ~ William Shakespeare - “All my favorite artists are downtempo – Portishead, Burial, a lot of 1990s trip-hop. Some people are saying that I’m trying to help with the trip-hop revival that’s possibly going on, but I’m not aware of other artists that are necessarily doing that. But if they are, that’s fantastic. It’s a great medium of electronic music. There’s a lot of emotion – it’s good for soundtracking a late-night drive.” ~ Mister Lies
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“It’s great that after 700 years William Wallace has finally had a proper burial. He did so much for the country. You should be proud of what you have achieved through devolution.” ~ Mel Gibson
- “One day anyone died I guess (and no one stooped to kiss his face) busy folk buried them side by side little by little and was by was” ~ e. e. cummings
- “Cremation has become the most popular form of burial in the United States… People used to want a big, thick granite stone, their names carved into with a chisel. I was here dammit! Cremation is like you’re trying to cover up a crime. Burn the body. Scatter the ashes around. As far as anyone’s concerned this whole thing never happened.” ~ Jerry Seinfeld
- “I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls The burial-ground God’s-Acre! It is just; It consecrates each grave within its walls, And breathes a benison o’er the sleeping dust.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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“I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls, The burial-ground God’s-Acre.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “As president, Clinton sold burial plots in Arlington Cemetery and liberals shrugged it off. What really gets their goat is the autopen. Evidently, the important thing was that every one of those pardons Clinton sold for cash on his last day in office was signed by Bill Clinton personally.” ~ Ann Coulter
- “… knowledge must continually be renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of marble which stands in the desert and is continually threatened with burial by the shifting sand. The hands of service must ever be at work, in order that the marble continue to lastingly shine in the sun. To these serving hands mine shall also belong.” ~ Albert Einstein
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“Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial.” ~ Seneca the Younger
- “On Easter or Christmas Day, my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.” ~ Barack Obama
- “Having always observed that most of them who constantly took in the weekly Bills of Mortality made little other use of them than to look at the foot how the burials increased or decreased, and among the Casualties what had happened, rare and extraordinary, in the week current; so as they might take the same as a Text to talk upon in the next company, and withal in the Plague-time, how the Sickness increased or decreased, that the Rich might judg of the necessity of their removal, and Trades-men might conjecture what doings they were likely to have in their respective dealings.” ~ John Graunt
Burial is the act of putting a dead body into the ground, or the ceremony performed when this is done.
