Maurice Ravel Quotes

Someone told me just recently that poets are eulogists. It's their job, to eulogize. I didn't know that, but it makes sense. Because in almost every poem of mine there is a loss.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

The elegy does the work of mourning; it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into remembrance, and it delivers an inheritance.

There's something really unnatural about losing a child, and there's something unnatural about having to write an elegy for your child, but I felt that I wanted people to know what he was like.

'In Memoriam' has been my companion for all my grownup life.

A piece of each of us died.

A requiem is meant to bring comfort.

Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead.

Now, we have inscribed a new memory alongside those others. It's a memory of tragedy and shock, of loss and mourning. But not only of loss and mourning. It's also a memory of bravery and self-sacrifice, and the love that lays down its life for a friend-even a friend whose name it never knew.

I have lost a brother and a best friend. The world has lost one of the greatest actors of all time.

And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and three red-headed men were grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry grabbed Hermione's hand as they staggered and stumbled over stone and wood. 'No - no - no!' someone was shouting. 'No! Fred! No!' And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

Can one make works which are not works of 'art'?

I was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, 'Susy was peacefully released today.' It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.

Anne, are you killed?' shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. 'Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and tell me if you're killed.

It's kinda hard to be optimistic, When your homies lying dead on the pavement twisted.

[after the death of a loved one] It is when there is nothing more to be done that the reality of the loss often hits with full force.

The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.

The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere following Gandhi's assassination.

The bastards murdered half my family.

And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never! Pray you, undo this button.

Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

Alas, how can we help but mourn When hero bosoms yield their breath! A century itself may bear But once the flower of such a death.