Quotations for El Día de los Muertos
Beautiful years that can never return;
Beautiful hopes that cannot be banished,
In the heavens of the soul their fires will burn;
Soul speaks to soul through years long departed,
Distance is swept by sweet mem'ry aside,
A word resurrects the long silent-hearted,
We walk once again by dear ones who died.
~Josephine Butterfield Walcott (1840–1906), "Reveries," World of Song, 1878
To live in hearts we leave behind,
Is not to die.
~Thomas Campbell (1777–1844), "Hallowed Ground"
He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels! ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Saint Gilgen," Hyperion, 1839
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again...
~George Eliot
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity. ~William Penn (1644–1718), Fruits of Solitude, in Reflections & Maxims relating to the Conduct of Human Life
Just a thin veil, between this world
And that world of beauty and love,
Just a thin veil that hides the view
Of our Spirit loved ones above!
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "Just a Thin Veil," 1940s
We never bury the dead, son. We take them with us. It's the price of living. ~Sleepy Hollow, "The Golem," 2013, written by Mark Goffman and Jose Molina
The day which we fear as our last is but the birth-day of our eternity; and it is the only way to it. ~Seneca
No hope that ever warmed a human heart
Was lost when that heart crumbled into dust:
The dreams that woke the sunrise of the world are ours—
Our dead walk with us daily, hand in hand.
But every joy we know to give or keep;
By hearts more gentle, and by eyes more true,
They are our own, and undivided still.
In memory! In memory of the dead!
In tenderness and hope for all who live!
Peace with you, ye that lie at rest!
Hope with you, ye that live and yet must face
The pain of living!
In memory, in hope, in tenderness!
~Sharlot Mabridth Hall (1870–1943), "Memoriam," Cactus and Pine: Songs of the Southwest, 1910
On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. Instead of the sympathy, the friendly union, of life and death so apparent in Nature, we are taught that death is an accident, a deplorable punishment for the oldest sin, the arch-enemy of life, etc.... But let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory for, for it never fights. All is divine harmony. ~John Muir (1838–1914), A Thousand-Mile Walk To the Gulf
Paradise —
I see flowers
from the cottage where I lie.
~Yaitsu, death poem, d.1807, quoted from Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death, compiled by Yoel Hoffmann
And with the morn those Angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
~John Henry Newman, "Faith"
[D]eath is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life... Every blade in the field, every leaf in the forest, lays down its life in its season, as beautifully as it was taken up. ~Henry David Thoreau, letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1842
The garment he wore, as a covering,
While he lived on the earth plane, here,
With love and reverence was laid away,
As you grieved at his earthly bier.
He is freed, my dear friend, from all sorrow,
From all disappointments and pain;
And he wants you to know that he's living
And comes to you, time and again.
You cannot see him, as yet, it is true,
Nor hear the voice that was so dear;
But cannot you feel his presence, so close,
And know that your loved one is near?!
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "To One In Sorrow," 1940s
There's nothing that death is e'er able to do
But sever the cord that binds body to you...
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "We Do Not Grow Old," 1940s
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" — a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live. ~Mark Twain
I love your blighted garden bare
With borders Autumn-cold,
For, midmost of it, blossoms there
The burning marigold.
Friend, when October dulls your fire,
And flowers of hope lie dead,
May memories rich in gold attire
Stay round your heart instead.
~Arthur Upson (1877–1908), "Marigold"
The early morn lets out the peeping day
And strew'd his paths with golden marigolds...
~Phineas Fletcher, "The Purple Island"
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. ~Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), The Prophet
...people do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life... ~Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin
Farewell friends! Yet not farewell;
Where I am, ye, too, shall dwell.
I am gone before your face,
A moment's time, a little space.
When ye come where I have stepped
Ye will wonder why ye wept;
Ye will know, by wise love taught,
That here is all, and there is naught.
Weep awhile, if ye are fain—
Sunshine still must follow rain;
Only not at death—for death
Now I know, is that first breath,
Which our souls draw when we enter
Life, which is of all life center.
~Edwin Arnold, "After Death in Arabia," The Light of Asia, or, The Great Renunciation, Being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince of India and Founder of Buddhism (As Told in Verse by an Indian Buddhist), 1880
I learned that memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you wish to never lose. ~The Wonder Years, "Christmas," 1988, written by Bob Brush