Irvin S. Cobb Quotes

A common defense among obituary-fanciers such as myself is that the obit is not about death at all. It is about life. This is true since an article about the condition of deadness would make for turgid reading at best.

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.

Mourn for me rather as living than as dead.

I always take photographs when I attend a funeral. Most people there know who I am and expect me to be there with my camera.

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

On the fortieth day after his death, we held the ceremony, and I performed for the very first time.

An obituary should be an exercise in contemporary history, not a funeral oration.

It's like obituaries, when you die they finally give you good reviews.

I never go to funerals. To me a person is dead when he breathes for the last time. After that, your memories should be personal.

When a writer dies you get a higher standard of obituary.

A radio show recently did a beautiful eulogy of me.

I know you aren't supposed to speak ill of the dead.

Pass this bill as the memorial to our late beloved President.

Permit me also to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity & appropriateness, at the consecration of the cemetery. I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

Funerals should celebrate a life.

A remembrance can mean nothing to the one remembered; it can only remind the ones left behind how little they did while you were still alive.

I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner.

A requiem is meant to bring comfort.

I think too many obituaries have been written about me.

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.

Marble statues, engraved with public inscriptions, by which the life and soul return after death to noble leaders.

I wanted to completely honor The REV and pay tribute to him and carry on the legacy that he intended with this record.

To us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

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.

The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.