Sepulchre Quotes

In the gloomy corridor of that sepulchre I had felt Emerson's arms about me for the first time; along the rubble-strewn floor of the wadi we had raced by moonlight to save those we loved from a hideous death. Every foot of the way was familiar to me, and the spot was as fraught with romance as a garden of roses might be to one who had led a more boring life. ~ Elizabeth Peters

When Franz returned to himself, he seemed still to be in a dream. He thought himself in a sepulchre, into which a ray of sunlight in pity scarcely penetrated. He stretched forth his hand, and touched stone; he rose to his seat, and found himself lying on his bournous in a bed of dry heather, very soft and odoriferous. The vision had fled; and as if the statues had been but shadows from the tomb, they had vanished at his waking. He advanced several paces towards the point whence the light came, and to all the excitement of his dream succeeded the calmness of reality. He found that he was in a grotto, went towards the opening, and through a kind of fanlight saw a blue sea and an azure sky. The air and water were shining in the beams of the morning sun; on the shore the sailors were sitting, chatting and laughing; and at ten yards from them the boat was at anchor, undulating gracefully on the water. There for some time he enjoyed the fresh breeze which played on his brow, and listened to the dash of the waves on the beach, that left against the rocks a lace of foam as white as silver. He was for some time without reflection or thought for the divine charm which is in the things of nature, specially after a fantastic dream; then gradually this view of the outer world, so calm, so pure, so grand, reminded him of the illusiveness of his vision, and once more awakened memory. He recalled his arrival on the island, his presentation to a smuggler chief, a subterranean palace full of s ~ Alexandre Dumas

Sunday Morning

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inh ~ Wallace Stevens

Solitude, seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave; a sepulchre in which the living lie, where all good qualities grow sick and die ~ William Cowper

Significant timeless
reflex in sepulchre:
apparitions of immortality
consumed inward,
waiting openmouthed
in the fireless darkness. ~ Allen Ginsberg

It was a glorious morning. The wind had fallen quite, and the sun was shining as if he would say, "Keep up your hearts; I am up here still. I have not forgotten you. By and by you shall see more of me." But Nature lay dead, with a great white sheet cast over face and form. Not dead? - Just as much dead as ever was man, save for the inner death with which he kills himself, and which she cannot die. It is only to the eyes of his neighbours that the just man dies: to himself, and to those on the other side, he does not die, but is born instead: "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." But the poor old lord felt the approaching dank and cold of the sepulchre as the end of all things to him - if indeed he would be permitted to lie there, and not have to get up and go to worse quarters still. ~ George MacDonald

And so, all the night-tide, I lay down the side, of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, in the sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the surrounding sea. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I am apt to think, if we knew what it was to be an angel for one hour, we should return to this world, though it were to sit on the brightest throne in it, with vastly more loathing and reluctance than we would now descend into a loathsome dungeon or sepulchre. ~ George Berkeley

.. The slaughter lasted the best part of two days. When it was over, the crusade leaders went in solemn procession to the church of the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks to God' !! ~ Geoffrey Hindley

I found a brief piece of by Antonio Vivaldi around this time which became my 'Pinhead Mood Music'. Called Al Santo Sepolcro (At The Holy Sepulchre), it opens more like a piece of modern orchestral music, and although it it moves toward Vivaldi's familiar harmonies, there is always the threat that it will fall back into dissonance. The piece progresses in an exquisite agony, poised on a knife edge between beauty and disfigurement, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Perfect. ~ Doug Bradley

The birds of the air die to sustain thee; the beasts of the field die to nourish thee; the fishes of the sea die to feed thee. Our stomachs are their common sepulchre. Good God! with how many deaths are our poor lives patched up! how full of death is the life of momentary man! ~ Francis Quarles

Sad-hearted, be at peace: the snowdrop lies Buried in sepulchre of ghastly snow; ~ George MacDonald

It is now one hour before dawn on a day in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is open: Muslims are praying. The Wall is always open: the Jews are praying. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is open: the Christians are praying in several languages. The sun is rising over Jerusalem, its rays making the light Herodian stones of the Wall almost snowy - just as Josephus described it two thousand years ago - and then catching the glorious gold of the Dome of the Rock that glints back at the sun. The divine esplanade where Heaven and Earth meet, where God meets man, is still in a realm beyond human cartography. Only the rays of the sun can do it and finally the light falls on the most exquisite and mysterious edifice in Jerusalem. Bathing and glowing in the sunlight, it earns its auric name. But the Golden Gate remains locked, until the coming of the Last Days. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

One cannot always marry the person one loves... ~ Kate Mosse

No-thing less splendid than a golden sepulchre would have suited so noble a heart. ~ Giovanni Boccaccio

Just as Christian came up to the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, fell from off his back, and began to tumble down the hill, and so it continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre. There it fell in, and I saw it no more! ~ John Bunyan

Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

(The pig) hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure - and for such a tomb might be content to die. ~ Charles Lamb

For my own part, I adhere to the maxim of antiquity, that the throne is a glorious sepulchre. ~ Theodora

Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre. ~ Edward Gibbon

A prison! heav'ns, I loath the hated name,
Famine's metropolis, the sink of shame,
A nauseous sepulchre, whose craving womb
Hourly inters poor mortals in its tomb;
By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possess'd,
Ev'n purgatory itself to thee 's a jest. ~ Tom Brown, Jr.

King of the animals
as thou hast described him
I should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest
because thou doest only help them, in order that they give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and I would say still more, if I were allowed to speak the entire truth ... now does not nature produce enough simple (vegetarian) food for thee to satisfy thyself? ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

They were thirsty; this Guillaume brought them water. It was from this well that he drew it. Many drank there their last draught. This well where drank so many of the dead was destined to die itself. After the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies. Death has a fashion of harassing victory, and she causes the pest to follow glory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep, and it was turned into a sepulchre. Three hundred dead bodies were cast into it. With too much haste perhaps. Were they all dead? Legend says they were not. It seems that on the night succeeding the interment, feeble voices were heard calling from the well. This well is isolated in the middle ~ Victor Hugo

Mummy dying with it; Christ dying with it, nailed hand and foot; hanging over the bed in the night-nursery; hanging year after year in the dark little study at Farm Street with the shining oilcloth; hanging in the dark church where only the old charwoman raises the dust and one candle burns; hanging at noon, high among the crowds and the soldiers; no comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief; hanging for ever; never the cool sepulchre and the grave clothes spread on the stone slab, never the oil and spices in the dark cave; always the midday sun and the dice clicking for the seamless coat. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Thus far did I come laden with my sin; Nor could aught ease the grief that I was in, Till I came hither; what a place is this! Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back? Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blest cross! blest sepulchre! blest rather be The Man that was there put to shame for me! ~ John Bunyan

Look on beauty, and you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; which therein works a miracle in Nature, making them lightest that wear most of it: so are those crisped snaky golden locks which make such wanton gambols with the wind upon supposed fairness, often known to be the dowry of a second head, the skull that bred them in the sepulchre. ~ William Shakespeare

The present is the funeral of the past, And man the living sepulchre of life. ~ John Clare

A cloud, hitherto unseen, came upon the moon, and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face.The illusion went with it, and the lights in the windows were extinguished. I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls.
The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection. When I thought of Manderley in my waking hours I would not be bitter. I should think of it as it might have been, could I have lived there without fear. I should remember the rose-garden in summer, and the birds that sang at dawn.Tea under the chestnut tree, and the murmur of the sea coming up to us from the lawns below.
I would think of the blown lilac, and the Happy Valley. These things were permanent, they could not be dissolved.They were memories that cannot hurt. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

One day the Pope is having a quiet conversation with a German theologian in one of the rooms of the Vatican. Suddenly two French archaeologists burst in, very agitated and nervous, and they tell the Holy Father they have just got back from Israel with some very good news and some rather bad news. The Pope beseeches them to come out with it, and not to leave him in suspense. Talking over each other, the Frenchmen say the good news is they have discovered the Holy Sepulchre. The Holy Sepulchre? says the Pope. The Holy Sepulchre. Not a shadow of a doubt. The Pope is moved to tears. What's the bad news? he asks, drying his eyes. Well, inside the Holy Sepulchre we found the body of Christ. The Pope passes out. The Frenchmen rush to his side and fan his face. The only one who's calm is the German theologian, and he says: Ah, so Jesus really existed? ~ Roberto Bolano

Such things and deeds as are not written down are covered with darkness, and given over to the sepulchre of oblivion. ~ Ivan Bunin

What then is death? If it be a stopping of life, then that is which cannot be. But it may be only a change in the form of life that looks like a stopping, and is not! If Death be stronger than Life, so that he stops life, how then was Life able so to flout him, that he, the thing that was not, arose from the antenatal sepulchre on which Death sat throned in impotent negation of entity, unable to preclude existence, and yet able to annihilate it? Life alone is: nothingness is not; Death cannot destroy; he is not the antagonist, not the opposite of life. ~ George MacDonald

They bright whiten all this sepulchre with powdered chloride of lime. It's a perfectly sanitary war. ~ David Jones

The past is the sepulchre of our dead emotions. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

Like many visitors, they had been unnerved by the inimitable creepiness of the Holy Sepulchre, a grimly gaudy, theopathical Turkish bathhouse where their childhood saints glared like demented spooks from every moldering wall. ~ Robert Stone

For my part, I would rather look toward Rutland than Jerusalem. Rutland,
modern town,
land of ruts,
trivial and worn,
not toosacred,
with no holy sepulchre, but profane green fields and dusty roads, and opportunity to live as holy a life as you can, where the sacredness, if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Keep the Feast of the Resurrection. Be a Peter or a John; hasten to the Sepulchre, running together, running against one another, vying in the noble race (cf. Jn. 20:3-4). And even if you be beaten in speed, win the victory of zeal; not looking into the tomb, but going in. ~ Gregory Of Nazianzus

But O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave. ~ John Milton

In his trip to Bethlehem Mark Twain had reported that all sects of Christians, except Protestants, had chapels under the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. However, he also observed that one group dared not trespass on the other's territory, proving beyond doubt, he noted, that even the grave of the Savior couldn't inspire peaceful worship among different beliefs. ~ David Baldacci

She knew herself the heart of a king buried in a sepulchre (in the land of his love) while the body of the king is elsewhere. My heart lies buried in there like Coeur de Lion (or whoever it was) who had his heart buried at Havre (or wherever it was) and the rest of him buried somewhere else. ~ H.D.

Tree

I dreamt you invisible majesty
hovering above the face of all things.
Rooted in the pain of ash,
mere man, I bore you, sepulchre,
dead father, silently, within,
called out to you the windswept words
of lost millennia, words that kindle rage.
You never answered me. You left me
fearing night, hidden fire, leaping flame,
tree God in the night. ~ Salvador Espriu

It's said that one must sink all execrable things
Closed in a sepulchre, deep in oblivion,
And that by written works, evil brought back to life
Will taint the moral will of our posterity.
But vice is mothered not by Knowledge, not at all,
And Virtue's surely not the child of Ignorance. ~ Théodore-Agrippa D'Aubigné

Rather do what is nothing to the purpose than be idle; that the devil may find thee doing. The bird that sits is easily shot, when fliers scape the fowler. Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all the virtues, and the self-made sepulchre of a living man. ~ Francis Quarles

What is it to bring the man out of his sepulchre if you leave him dead? Why lead him into the light if he is still blind? We thank God, that he who forgives our iniquities also heals our diseases. ~ Charles Spurgeon

How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and her face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulchre, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. ~ George MacDonald