Funeral services throughout the ages have often included quotations, sayings, poetry and other readings to comfort the living and memorialize the dead. These sayings range from quotes from religious texts to ancient proverbs to poetry to classic literature readings and beyond. There is essentially no limit on where funeral quotes can come from—some particularly memorable funeral quotes are even extracted from song lyrics! Funeral quotes can also be used in a variety of ways during a funeral service. They can be said during a eulogy, used as an epitaph for a headstone, or even included in memorial cards or sympathy cards directed toward the family and friends of the deceased. Regardless of how you intend you use a funeral quote, you are no doubt looking for one that suits the mood and feeling of the funeral service and the person that has passed. The following are some of the more memorable and meaningful funeral quotes gleamed from proverbs, books, famous artists and more.
Quotations and proverbs
Quotations are an excellent way of providing comfort, memory and even joy to the grieving. Quotations can make us think of the times we had with our loved ones, give us the comfort that they are at peace, and remind us to live life to its fullest.
Remember sadness is always temporary. This, too, shall pass.
-Chuck T. Falcon
Say not in grief: “He is no more”, but live in thankfulness that he was.
-Hebrew Proverb
Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names.
-Proverbs
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
-Cherokee Proverb
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, not touched, but are felt in the heart.
-Helen Keller
God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
-Revelation 21:4
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Home is the wallpaper above the bed, the family dinner table, the church bells in the morning, the bruised shins of the playground, the small fears that come with dusk, the streets and squares and monuments and shops that constitute one’s first universe.
-Henry Anatole Grunwald
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
-Mark Twain
To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.
-Samuel Butler
Poetry
Poetry can be a beautiful addition to a eulogy or any speech given at a funeral service. Beautifully crafted poetry reminds us of the fragility of life, but also of the importance of remembering the deceased with joy.
There is no death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
-Henry W. Longfellow
If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will paradise be found!
-James Montgomery
That best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
-William Wordsworth
