Quotes for a eulogy or funeral

Tennyson, grieving the sudden death of his closest friend, decides that the pain of losing someone is better than never having loved them. It was written about friendship and death, not a breakup.

Caesar tells his wife that cowards suffer death over and over in their fears, while the brave face it only once. He says it on the morning he is murdered.

Even while being executed, Jesus asks God to forgive the people responsible, because they do not understand what they are doing.

The last words of the Gettysburg Address, spoken at a cemetery for Union soldiers. Lincoln turned a funeral into a promise that the war was being fought to keep democracy itself alive.

The greatest love a person can show is to give up their life for others. Jesus says it at the Last Supper, the night before his death.

Part of a poem praising a wise, hard-working, generous woman. Her children and husband honor her because her life has blessed them.

Dickinson pictures hope as a small bird that lives in the soul, sings without stopping through every storm, and never asks for anything in return.

The last words reported of a 21-year-old American spy hanged by the British. They were written down years later, and they echo a line from a popular play of the time.

Thoreau explains why he moved to Walden Pond: to strip life down to its essentials and find out what it really has to teach, so that he would not reach death and discover he had not lived.

The dead of the First World War speak from their graves among the poppies, asking the living to carry on their cause and not break faith with them.

Paul describes the kind of love that should hold a community together: patient, kind, humble and enduring. It was written to a quarreling church, not a couple.

Treat even people who hate you with goodwill, wish them well and pray for them, just as God sends sunshine and rain on good and bad people alike.

Latin for “remember that you must die.” It is a reminder that life is short, meant to make you humble and to push you to spend your days on what matters.

Donne, seriously ill and hearing a funeral bell, reflects that every person is part of humanity, so every death diminishes us all. The same passage ends with “for whom the bell tolls.”

A prayer to understand how short life is, so that we spend our days wisely.

The best part of a good person's life is not their big achievements but the small, everyday kindnesses that nobody records and they themselves forget.

A promise that justice wins in the long run, even when progress is slow. King's compact wording condenses a longer image from an abolitionist sermon of 1853.

Life moves through opposite seasons, birth and death, weeping and laughing, and each has its proper time. The passage is both comforting and a reminder that we do not control the timing.

Spoken weeks before the Civil War ended and six weeks before Lincoln was killed. He asked the winning side to heal the nation without revenge.

Jobs urges graduates to follow their own judgment rather than other people's expectations, because life is short. He spoke from the experience of a recent cancer diagnosis.