graves quotes

As a rule Corde avoided cemeteries and never went near thegravesof hisparents.Hesaidit wasjustaseasy for your dead tovisit you, only by now he would haveto hire a hall.

- Saul Bellow
  The Dean's December, ch.15.

   Jesus, whenhehad cried againwith a loud voice, yielded up theghost. And behold, the veil of thetemple wasrent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 27:50^2.

Ah, sunflower, weary of time, Who countest the steps of the sun, Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveller's journey is done; Where the youth pined away with desire And the pale virgin shrouded in snow Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my sunflower wishes to go.

-William Blake
  Songs of Experience,'Ah! Sunflower'.

And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be; And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And blinding with briars my joys and desires.

-William Blake
  Songs of Experience,'The Garden of Love'.

If I were a Mexican, I would tell you,'Have you not enough room in your own country to bury your dead men? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands and hospitable graves.'

-Thomas Corwin
  Speech to the Senate against the  American^Mexican War,11 Feb.

In this decayed hole among the mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  The Waste Land, pt.5,'What the Thunder Said'.

Some doubt the courage of the Negro.Go to Haiti and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they thinkof the Negro's sword.

-Wendell Phillips
Address onToussaint l'Ouverture, referring to theWar of Haitian Independence,1804.

   What is our life? a play of passion; Our mirth the music of division; Our mothers' wombs the tiring-houses be Where we are dressed for this short comedy. Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is, That sits and marks still who doth act amiss; Our graves that hide us from the searching sun Are like drawn curtains when the play is done. Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest, Only we die in earnestthat's no jest.

- Sir Walter Raleigh
  'On the Life of Man'.

You have heard the sound of the white soldier's axe on the Little Piney. His presence here is†an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we to give up their sacred graves to be ploughed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war.

-Red Cloud original name Mahpiua Luta
  Speech before war council at Fort Laramie,Wyoming.

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying, Blows the wind on the moors to-dayand now, Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, My heart remembers how!

- Robert Louis Stevenson
  Songs ofTravel (published1896), no.45,'To S.R. Crockett (in reply to a dedication)', stanza1.

Be it granted to me to behold you again in dying, Hills of home! and to hear again the call; Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peeweets crying, And hear no more at all.

- Robert Louis Stevenson
  Songs ofTravel (published1896), no.45,'To S.R. Crockett (in reply to a dedication)', stanza 3.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

- Harriet (Elizabeth) ne  e Beecher Stowe
  Little Foxes, ch.3.

Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.

-Thornton Niven Wilder
  OurTown, act 2.