Khalil Gibran Quotes

The Egyptian contribution to architecture was more concerned with remembering the dead than the living.

The death industry markets caskets and embalming under the rubric of helping bodies look 'natural,' but our current death customs are as natural as training majestic creatures like bears and elephants to dance in cute little outfits, or erecting replicas of the Eiffel Tower and Venetian canals in the middle of the harsh American desert.

In Egypt, the living were subordinate to the dead.

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

Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self.

To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.

The Egyptian tomb was the outcome of the Mesopotamian influence and followed from the religious crisis the country had undergone.

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

Reflective of the deep sense of gratitude and respect Mongolians reserved for wolves, there was a belief that only through wolves could the spirit of a deceased human be set free to go to Heaven.

It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant. They hold that the souls of all who perish in battle or by the hands of the executioner are immortal. Hence a passion for propagating their race and a contempt for death. They are wont to bury rather than to burn their dead

Japanese feel an intimacy with the dead, at least for people up to my generation.

If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!

What about King Tut’s tomb?” I protested. “That boy king?” Zia rolled her eyes. “Boring. You should see some of the good tombs.

There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.

To close the eyes, and give a seemly comfort to the apparel of the dead, is poverty's holiest touch of nature.

Grief is fantastical, and loves the dead, And the apparel of the grave.

The difference between the Pyramids in Egypt and the ones in Mexico is there is nothing inside the Mexican Pyramids. In the African Pyramids, the whole inside is a burial chamber. So they were really gravesites to nobility.

The grave is a crucible where memory is purified; we only remember a dead friend by those qualities which make him regretted.

in the place I am from ... a grave is topped off with a huge mound of loose earth - carelessly, as if piled up in child's play, not serious at all - because death is just another way of being, and the dead will not stay put, and sometimes the actions of the dead are more significant, more profound, than their actions in life, and no structure of concrete or stone can contain them.

We placed the wreaths upon the splendid granite sarcophagus, and at its feet, and felt that only the earthly robe we loved so much was there. The pure, tender, loving spirit which loved us so tenderly, is above us - loving us, praying for us, and free from all suffering and woe - yes, that is a comfort, and that first birthday in another world must have been a far brighter one than any in this poor world below!

The dead are celebrated. The dead are loved. They give something to the living. Once you put something into the ground, Doctor, you always know where to find it.

We see a hearse; we think sorrow. We see a grave; we think despair. We hear of a death; we think of a loss. Not so in heaven. When heaven sees a breathless body, it sees the vacated cocoon & the liberated butterfly.

While you are living, part of you has slipped away to the cemetery.

Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?