Selected funeral quotes

1. I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it.

2. I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.

3. In the city a funeral is just an interruption of traffic; in the country it is a form of entertainment.

4. To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high, we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.

5. Bury the Great Duke With an empire's lamentation; Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation; Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall, And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

6. Lead out the pageant: sad and slow, As fits an universal woe, Let the long, long procession go, And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.

7. Speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him, God accept him, Christ receive him!

8. She was a soprano of the kind often used for augmenting grief at a funeral.

9. My grandfather died last week, and we buried him at sea. Well, I say we buried him at sea; it was actually a village in north Wales at the time.

10. Fay: You've been a widower for three days. Have you considered a second marriage yet? McLeavy: No. Fay: Why not? McLeavy: I've been so busy with the funeral.

11. Truscott: Why aren't you both at the funeral? I thought you were mourners. Fay: We decided not to go. We were afraid we might break down. Truscott: That's a selfish attitude to take. The dead can't bury themselves, you know.

12. I hate going to funerals because I'm not a mourning person.

13. I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.

14. Ah, that must be George Best's cremation.

15. Saw the superb funeral of the Protector:...but it was the joyfullest funeral that I ever saw, for there were none that cried, but dogs, which the souldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise; drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went.

16. What softer voice is hushed over the dead? Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? What form leans sadly o'er the white death - bed, In mockery of monumental stone, The heavy heart heaving without a moan?

17. My uncle was a clown for Ringling Bros. Circus, and when he died, all his friends came in one car.

18. That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. And that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. And that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. And that nobody is wished to see my dead body. And that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. And that no flours be planted on my grave. And that no man remember me.

19. So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.

20. The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse Suggested that, at the final funeral, The music halted and the horse stood still.

21. [advertising for McCreedy Funeral Services] Bodies that look so good, you're gonna wanna talk to it!

22. Bury me smilin' with G's in my pocket/have a party at my funeral/let every rapper rock it/let tha hoes that I usta know/from way before/kiss me from my head to my toe

23. I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly

24. 'Maradona good; Pele better; George Best' (A banner near the Best family home in the Cregagh Estate on the day of Best's funeral)

25. Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician's corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

26. You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the only earthly object of my affection.... I have now one request to make,... deny me not. Afford me the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before internment.

27. I asked if I got sick and died, would you With my black funeral go walking too, If you'd stand close to hear them talk or pray While I'm let down in that steep bank of clay.

28. And as for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight.