Tomb Quotes

And as on Tullia's tomb one lamp burned clear,
Unchanged for fifteen hundred year ... '
He repeated the lines to himself, and was desolated to think of all the murdered past. ~ Aldous Huxley

I am his tomb. The earth is nothing. Dead. Staves and orchards issue from my mouth. His. Perfume my chest, which is wide, wide open. A greengage plum swells his silence. The bees escape from his eyes, from his sockets where the liquid pupils have flowed from under the flaccid eyelids. To eat a youngster shot on the barricades, to devour a young hero, is no easy thing. We all love the sun. My mouth is bloody. So are my fingers. I tore the flesh to shreds with my teeth. Corpses do not usually bleed. His did. ~ Jean Genet

Lastly, his tomb shall list and founder in the troughs of grass. And none shall speak his name. ~ Karl Shapiro

The world cannot bury Christ. The earth is not deep enough for His tomb, the clouds are not wide enough for His winding-sheet; He ascends into the heavens, but the heavens cannot contain Him. He still lives
in the church which burns unconsumed with His love; in the truth that reflects His image; in the hearts which burn as He talks with them by the way. ~ Edward Thomson

EPITAPH OF JALALUDIN RUMI
When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men. ~ Idries Shah

A secret too long kept can kill a soul by inches. I watched a secret almost destroy a man once, the finest man ever made. Such a secret is like keeping treasure in a tomb. Little by little, poison eats away at the gold. By the time the door is opened, there may be nothing left but dust. ~ Cassandra Clare

Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

He could describe walking towards the Taj Mahal – ho-hum, thinks the reader, immediately in the realm of the tacky postcard – and still give you a wholly fresh impression of the exact scale and actual presence of that white tomb; delicate but powerful, compact and yet boundlessly imposing. Epic grace. With those two words he encapsulated it, and you knew exactly what he meant. ~ Iain Banks

They tell a story, probably not true, about a cap trooper who was sight-seeing in Paris. He visited Les Invalides, looked down at Napoleon's coffin, and said to a French guard there: "Who's he?"
The Frenchman was properly scandalized. "Monsieur does not know? This is the tomb of Napoleon! Napoleon Bonaparte! The greatest soldier who ever lived!"
The cap trooper thought about it. Then he asked, "So? Where were his drops? ~ Robert A. Heinlein

It's more eerie to be alone in a city that's lit up and functioning than one that's a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards. ~ Isaac Marion

Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things. ~ Oscar Wilde

Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Exile: A tomb in which you can get mail. ~ Madame De Stael

The seeds of life - fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they are weighed down by the bodies' ills or dulled by limbs and flesh that's born for death. That is the source of all men's fears and longings, joys and sorrows, nor can they see the heaven's light, shut up in the body's tomb, a prison dark and deep. ~ Virgil

Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian Tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in one of them. ~ Oscar Wilde

The tomb of ancient Egyptian Great Chief of the Oryx, Baqet III (2500 B.C.) ~ Jessie Perault

Full circle from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb we come, an ambiguous, enigmatical incursion into a world of solid matter that is soon to melt from us like the substance of a dream. ~ Joseph Campbell

Matthias examined the posters. "One hundred thousand kruge!" He shot a disbelieving glower at Kaz. "You're hardly worth taht."
The hint of a smile tugged at Kaz's lips. "As the market wills it."
"Tell me about it," said Jesper. "They're only offering thirty thousand for me."
"Your lives are at stake," said Wylan. "How can you act like this is a competition?"
"We're stuck in a tomb, merchling. You take the action where you find it. ~ Leigh Bardugo

For God so loved the world, that whosoever believes in him will, from that point on, be considered weired by the rest of the world, which means the church should be more like a zoo than a tomb of identical mummies. ~ Mike Yaconelli

There are wise ways to enter a tomb cavern. Falling is not one of them. ~ Jenna Burtenshaw

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

It's too late to fall in love with Sharon Tate / But it's too soon to ask me for the words I want carved on my tomb. ~ Jim Carroll

I always wondered why it took "three days" for significant things to happen in the Bible--Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale, Jesus spent three days in the tomb, Paul spent three days blind in Damascus--and now I know. From earliest times, people learned that was how long they had to wait in the dark before the sliver of the new moon appeared in the sky. For three days every month they practiced resurrection. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

Yes, she might have managed to lift the portcullis - with concentration, an unprecedented bout of luck, and the absence of a hangover. Oh, and if she were in mortal danger.
Unfortunately, her power was adrenaline-based, making it as infinite as it was uncontrollable.
"You think I use magick like mine to open a tomb?" Mari asked in a scoffing tone. Mistress of bluffing, working it here. ~ Kresley Cole

Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb? ~ Khalil Gibran

I look into mother's stomach, wonder if you are a boy or a girl
Turnin' this woman's womb into a tomb
But she and I agree, a seed we don't need
You would've been much more than a mouth to feed
But someone I would've fed this information I read
To someone my life for you I would've had to leave
Instead I led you to death. ~ Common

Then - in the dark - is when he sneaked inside her heart. When all of her defenses were down, and he'd asked her about her dreams and wishes. Things she'd never shared with anyone.
The one and only man she'd ever said "I love you" to. ~ Jennifer Kacey

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired,' said Maxie.
'I know how that feels,' said Blue.
'I think some Pharaoh had that carved on his tomb,' Maxie added.
'Yeah? Times don't change much, do they? ~ Charlie Higson

The game may have ended and the tomb have glided away,
But the impressions on the heart are growing brighter;
Oh, how I understood you: both the warmth's insinuation and
The splendor of flowerbeds where decay is showing through...

("August") ~ Innokenty Annensky

Then came a volley of colorful abuse, delivered in such an imperious voice, at at such a volume, that Terentia's distant ancestor, who had commanded the Roman line against Hannibal at Cannae a century and a half before, must surely have sat bolt upright in his tomb. ~ Robert Harris

So El Dorado is no' a man."
In a soft tone, Lucia said, "She's La Dorada, the Gilded Woman. History had it wrong.
Really wrong."
"Makes sense."
"What do you mean?"
"Say you were a conquistador, hunting for the Gilded One's gold, yet the native was clever enough to keep a tomb full of it hidden. A native - a woman native - somehow outwits you?" He shook his head. "Back in the day, I met a few gold-hungry conquistadors, and let's put it this way - the fragility of conquistador ego canna be overstated. ~ Kresley Cole

The hospital is the antechamber to the tomb ~ George Orwell

Martin Luther King (Jr.) during the civil rights movement used to exclaim that he looked forward to heaven where he would be "Free at last." That is the inscription on his tomb in Atlanta. ~ Billy Graham

It is one thing to look at a mistreated boat and another to look at a tomb. The silence of the bay seemed more intense. And I could see the glint of the carrion flies. ~ John D. MacDonald

One day after laying a wreath at the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr., President Bush appoints a federal judge who has built his career around dismantling Dr. King's legacy. ~ Hillary Clinton

I … There is no one I want more; there is nothing I want more than to be overwhelmed by you."
"But you don't want to kiss me?"
He inhaled slowly, trying to bring order to his thoughts. This was all wrong. "In Fjerda - " he began. "We're not in Fjerda." He needed to make her understand. "In Fjerda," he persisted, "I would have asked your parents for permission to walk out with you."
"I haven't seen my parents since I was a child."
"We would have been chaperoned. I would have dined with your family at least three times before we were ever left alone together."
"We're alone together now, Matthias."
"I would have brought you gifts."
Nina tipped her head to one side. "Go on."
"Winter roses if I could afford them, a silver comb for your hair."
"I don't need those things."
"Apple cakes with sweet cream."
"I thought drüskelle didn't eat sweets."
"They'd all be for you," he said.
"You have my attention."
"Our first kiss would be in a sunlit wood or under a starry sky after a village dance, not in a tomb or some dank basement with guards at the door. ~ Leigh Bardugo

When the women went to the tomb they met someone else and in the half light they thought it was Jesus himself. Answer: they would have noticed soon enough. ~ N. T. Wright

The Egyptians would sacrifice red-headed men on the tomb of Osiris because red was the colour associated with Set, the Egyptian version of Satan. ~ David Icke

Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness God brings us, the newness God asks of us. We are like the apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God's surprises. ~ Pope Francis

This is the epitaph I want on my tomb: Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the earth. ~ Benito Mussolini

the features that made the Church of the Holy Sepulcher different from any cathedral he had ever visited. For under the ornate dome of the rotunda, surrounded by massive marble columns, was a self-contained rectangular building, modest in proportions, with a fancy onion-domed cupola. "The Edicule," Neti said, drawing their attention. "That's where the tomb is. That's where we're going." They set the equipment and Grail box down on the marble floor. ~ Glenn Cooper

The final notes of the funeral march dropped like violets onto the tomb of the hero ~ Jose Saramago

Tomb dust in my tears and skin
The living avoid me, the dead
Deny me.
-Lies of the Living ~ Vanessa Wolf

This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls,
what declaimers! ~ Victor Hugo

Even the death won't be an end of our dreams.Take your dreams to the tomb ~ Mohammed Sekouty

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb? ~ Matthew Arnold

[...] the thought of entering that stale, tomb-like house again caused my skin to break out into braille. ~ Ronald Malfi

But, in the Trump aftermath, I've measured the costs

And benefits of loving those who don't love
Strangers. After all, I'm often the odd one -

The strangest stranger - in any field or room.
"He was weird" will be carved into my tomb. ~ Sherman Alexie

I don't understand how God can use bad things for good. I don't understand a lot of things about God. But when we can fully explain God, He ceases to be God. All I know is that He took a bloodstained cross and turned it into an empty tomb, and a God who can do that is worthy of my worship and trust. ~ Perry Noble

Just then a word floated out through the buzz saw of Zapata-speak: Nefertari. Dan tuned back in.
"...the most beautiful tomb in Egypt," Ms. Zapata was saying. "You probably know the queen because there's a famous bust of her."
A photo flashed on the screen.
Dan raised his hand. "That's Nefertiti," he said. "Different queen."
Ms. Zapata frowned. She looked at her notes. "You could be right, Dan. Uh...let's move on."
Another slide flashed on-screen. "Now, this is the inner chamber of the tomb, where she was laid to rest."
Dan's hand rose again. Ms. Zapata closed her eyes.
"Actually? That's the side chamber."
"Really." Ms. Zapata's lips pressed together. "And how do you know this, Dan?"
"Because..." Dan hesitated. Because I was there. Because I was locked inside the tomb with an ex-KGB spy, so I got to know it pretty well.
"Especially since the tomb is closed for conservation," Ms. Zapata said.
Yeah. But we had this connection to an Egyptologist? Except he turned out to be a thief and a liar, so we captured him. I came this close to smashing him with a lamp... ~ Jude Watson

They're still building and testing / But what can we do / Condemning the seas and the land and the trees to a tomb ~ Kim Wilde

And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb. ~ James Beattie

Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead, to live? And we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb ... ~ Socrates

If we're stuck on one world, we're limited to a single case; we don't know what else is possible. Then - like an art fancier familiar only with Fayoum tomb paintings, a dentist who knows only molars, a philosopher trained merely in NeoPlatonism, a linguist who has studied only Chinese, or a physicist whose knowledge of gravity is restricted to falling bodies on Earth - our perspective is foreshortened, our insights narrow, our predictive abilities circumscribed. By contrast, when we explore other worlds, what once seemed the only way a planet could be turns out to be somewhere in the middle range of a vast spectrum of possibilities. When we look at those other worlds, we begin to understand what happens when we have too much of one thing or too little of another. We learn how a planet can go wrong. ~ Carl Sagan

Does one love a statue?" she demanded. "Shall I caress a picture? Shall I rain tears or kisses over the mere semblance of a life that does not live, shall I fondle hands that never return my clasp? Love! Love is in my heart -yes! like a shut-up fire in a tomb,but you hold the key, and the flame dies for want of air. ~ Marie Corelli

Why was it that the females of the species were always the ones left to tidy up, she wondered? I expect Jesus came out of the tomb...and said to his mother, "Can you tidy it up a bit back there? ~ Kate Atkinson

The phantom of the burning house faded, I found myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy who had followed me to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in torrents, and upon the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that had so lately passed over our heads. My ~ H.P. Lovecraft

In the last book of the Iliad (24.602ff.), Achilles urges Priam to eat: even Niobe, he says, after all her children had been slaughtered by the gods, took food eventually. Both Priam and Achilles have been bereaved of their dearest, and yet they gather themselves, and eat, and sleep, and go on living. (...) ...there are two early Lucanian vases with mourners by a grave stele with the same inscription "spoken" by the tomb: "On my back I grow mallow and thick-rooted asphodel: / in my bosom I hold Oedipus, son of Laios." Even Oedipus, the great king of Thebes, archetype of tragedy, experienced a catastrophic fall and descended into the deepest pit of horrors; yet ordinary plants grow on his tomb. We are not so different. ~ Oliver Taplin

The dusty tombs of long-dead exorcist priests lay in the alcoves below, surmounted by stone effigies, the features eroded by the passing of time and the reverent caresses of their grateful parishioners, a reminder, she knew all too well, of the brevity of life. ~ Sarah Ash

She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked like Napoleon's tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella. ~ Raymond Chandler

Especially in the Christian cult (wine and bread on the altar-tomb as the mystical body of Him Who Was Crucified, Who died and Who
was resurrected; the sacrament of new life and resurrection through food and drink). In the cultic redaction all elements of the complex appear not in a real but in a sublimated form, and are linked with one another not via a real-life narrative, but through mystic-symbolic links and interrelationships, and the triumph of life over death (resurrection) is accomplished not on a real and earthly plane but on a mystical one. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin

A few nights in the open, my lord, a quiet time and peace. Yes, I admit I am glad. It was good, but it is also good to be alone. We need not hurry. At the end is a tomb. Do we need to rush toward it? It will wait. ~ John Steinbeck

Long have I dwelt forgotten here
In pining woe and dull despair;
This place of solitude and gloom
Must be my dungeon and my tomb. ~ Anne Bronte

My body will not be a tomb for other creatures. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley. ~ Victor Hugo

The moment in Paris where I saluted Napoleon's tomb was one of the proudest of my life. ~ Adolf Hitler

Never draw a gun on a man unless you intend to kill him. And believe me, if you do intend to kill him he will already know it. Then he will feel the cold breath of the tomb. ~ George S. Patton Jr.

Kuwei poked his head out of the huge stone tomb as they approached.
"What did I tell you?" Kaz growled, pointing his cane at him.
"My Kerch isn't very good," protested Kuwei.
"Don't run game on me, kid. It's good enough. Stay in the tomb."
Kuwei hung his head. "Stay in the tomb," he repeated glumly. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Kaz had tapped his crow's head cane on the flagstones of the tomb floor. "Do you know what Van Eck's problem is?"
"No honor?" said Matthias.
"Rotten parenting skills?" said Nina.
"Receding hairline?" offered Jesper. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Meg peered at me over the top of her glasses. "You're the dumbest god ever ~ Rick Riordan

Osiris, to go directly to the important part of this, was not a "dying god," not "life caught in the spell of death," or "a dead god," as modern interpreters have said. He was the hallucinated voice of a dead king whose admonitions could still carry weight. And since he could still be heard, there is no paradox in the fact that the body from which the voice once came should be mummified, with all the equipment of the tomb providing life's necessities: food, drink, slaves, women, the lot. There was no mysterious power that emanated from him; simply his remembered voice which appeared in hallucination to those who had known him and which could admonish or suggest even as it has before he stopped moving and breathing. And that various natural phenomena such as the whispering of waves could act as the cue for such hallucinations accounts for the belief that Osiris, or the king whose body has ceased to move and is in his mummy cloths, continues to control the flooding of the Nile. Further, the relationship between Horus and Osiris, 'embodied' in each new king and his dead father forever, can only be understood as the assimilation of an hallucinated advising voice into the king's own voice, which then would be repeated with the next generation. ~ Julian Jaynes

I think there's really only been one successful video game adaptation, and that was probably 'Tomb Raider.' Whether or not you thought it was a good movie, it was successful financially. ~ David S.Goyer

I am pressed to admit that I don't have the capacity to understand the bloodied horrors of a cross and the wild exhilaration of an empty tomb. But at the point that I think I completely understand God, I have at that very point humanized Him and in that very action I have lost Him. Therefore, I much prefer to simply marvel. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The werewolf pointed at a bench next to the door into the Kirkwoods' tomb. "Sit. Wait."
Did I mention werewolves were chatty? ~ Mindee Arnett

I would like to be able to convey to you the sound of dead voices, to break open this unbearable tomb of sound, to wrest something more than silhouettes from vanished years and by some unimaginable trick let you hear the ha-ha-ha with which Catulle Mendès accompanied the slightest sentence, the muffled voice of Edmond Rostand or the laughter which Proust smeared over his face with his white-gloved hand and his beard. ~ Jean Cocteau

For the greedy there will be no tomb ~ Ptahhotep

When I'm curled up in his arms like this, I can never tell how my body looks to him. I worry that I seem completely ridiculous, but I have the ability to squeeze into any little space he leaves for me. I fold my legs until they take up almost no room at all, and curl in my shoulders until they're practically dislocated. Like a mummy in a tomb. And when I get like this, I don't care if I never get out; or maybe that's exactly what I hope will happen. ~ Yoko Ogawa

Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics - all those profundities which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable ~ Victor Hugo

How can they know
Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,
And there alone, that have no solitude?
So the crowd come they care not what may come.
They have loud music, hope every day renewed
And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb. ~ William Butler Yeats

One day I visited a guy who had made a fortune as a broker. He was sitting in his office with his computer. I hire people from here and make deals from this room, he told me. Then he took me to the trading room. Nobody was talking to anybody else, the place was silent as a tomb, they were all sitting there watching their terminals - a great word, terminal. I tell you, it scares the crap out of me. ~ Studs Terkel

It is normal for me to wake and find myself writing in the dark ... or to be out of my tomb, caught in an unearthly world, alive with the images that haunt me. ~ Kim Elizabeth

History, I believe, brings us to the point where we are bound to say: there really was an empty tomb, and there really were sightings of Jesus, the same and yet transformed. History then says: so how do you explain that? It offers us no easy escapes at that point, no quick side-exits to the question. ~ N. T. Wright

Elegy (1586)

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares;
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain:
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seen:
My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death, and found it in my womb,
I looked for life, and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
The glass is full, and now the glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done. ~ Chidiock Tichborne

Kaz rapped his cane on the stone floor. He was standing in the doorway to the tomb. "If everyone is done cuddling, we have a job to do."
"Hold up," said Jesper, arm still slung around Inej. "We're not talking about the job until we figure out what those things were on the Stave."
"What things?" asked Inej.
"Did you miss half the Stave blowing up?"
"We saw the bomb at the White Rose go off," said Inej, "and then we heard another explosion."
"At the Anvil," said Nina.
"After that," Inej said, "we ran."
Jesper nodded sagely. "That was your big mistake. If you'd stuck around, you could have nearly been killed by a Shu guy with wings. ~ Leigh Bardugo

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

The life-loving, smart,
good-hearted dead
don't want forty days of mourning
or say, "After me the deluge!"
Leaving behind some helpful things
- a few words, a tree, a smile -
each gets up and goes
and does not burden the living
with the darkness of the tomb,
carrying the weight
of his stone all alone.
And because they ask for nothing
from the living,
it's as if they aren't dead...

- Conversation with Dead Nezval ~ Nâzım Hikmet Ran

History was a way to live extra lives, to cheat the limits of flesh and blood, to roll the rock back from the tomb and free the resurrected dead. ~ Tony Hendra

Tancredi and Angelica were passing in front of them at that moment, his gloved right hand on her waist, their outspread arms interlaced, their eyes gazing into each other's. The black of his tail coat, the pink of her dress, combining formed a kind of strange jewel. They were the most moving sight there, two young people in love dancing together, blind to each other's defects, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course of their lives would be as smooth as the ballroom floor, unknowning actors made to play the parts of Juliet and Romeo by a director who had concealed the fact that tomb and poison were already in the script. Neither of them was good, each full of self-interest, swollen with secret aims; yet there was something sweet and touching about them both; those murky but ingenuous ambitions of theirs were obliterated by the words of jesting tenderness he was murmuring in her ear, by the scent of her hair, by the mutual clasp of those bodies of theirs destined to die. . .

For them death was purely an intellectual concept, a fact of knowledge as it were and no more, not an experience which pierced the marrow of their bones. Death, oh yes, it existed of course, but it was something that happened to others. The thought occurred to Don Fabrizio that it was ignorance of this supreme consolation that made the young feel sorrows much more sharply than the old; the latter are nearer the safety exit. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

- The Garden of Love ~ William Blake

Three kilometres beneath the camp, sub-glacial Lake Ellsworth, and whatever secret it may hold, is sealed within a frozen tomb. ~ L.A. Larkin

Easter is the final solution to the finality of death. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I would argue that the truth of Easter does not depend on whether there was an empty tomb, or whether anything happened to the body of Jesus ... I do not see the Christian tradition as exclusively true, or the Bible as the unique and infallible revelation of God ... It makes no historical sense to say, 'Jesus was killed for the sins of the world.' ... I am one of those Christians who does not believe in the virgin birth, nor in the star of Bethlehem, nor in the journeys of the wisemen, nor in the shepherds coming to the manger, as facts of history. ~ Marcus Borg

Going where no man has gone before is more difficult than it sounds. Our cousins and ancestors were no less curious than we are, and were perhaps bolder. This world is their tomb.
You should look under the bed. ~ N.D. Wilson

Sometimes we are fixed on an image of Christ in a stable born, but he is not there anymore. Sometimes we are fixed on an image of Christ on a cross dying, but he is not there anymore. Sometimes we are fixed on an image of Christ at an empty tomb, but he is not there anymore. He has ascended and is seated at the right hand of God and is coming again! All parts of the story are important, but this final part is often over looked. Let's not get stuck in a spiritual moment, but make progress instead. Look to Him as He is. ~ David Holdsworth

When I first arrived in Egypt many years ago, I looked at the tombs like a tourist. After being to them all so many times I was treated as a professor. Now when I go to look at a tomb they worry that I am thinking of moving in. ~ G.P. Warren

Now, the atonement of Christ is the most basic and fundamental doctrine of the gospel, and it is the least understood of all our revealed truths.

Many of us have a superficial knowledge and rely upon the Lord and his goodness to see us through the trials and perils of life.

But if we are to have faith like Enoch and Elijah we must believe what they believed, know what they knew, and live as they lived.

May I invite you to join with me in gaining a sound and sure knowledge of the Atonement.

We must cast aside the philosophies of men and the wisdom of the wise and hearken to that Spirit which is given to us to guide us into all truth.

We must search the scriptures, accepting them as the mind and will and voice of the Lord and the very power of God unto salvation.

As we read, ponder, and pray, there will come into our minds a view of the three gardens of God - the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Garden of the Empty Tomb where Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene. ~ Bruce R. McConkie

There is no culture without a tomb and no tomb without a culture; in the end the tomb is the first and only cultural symbol. The above-ground tomb does not have to be invented. It is the pile of stones in which the victim of the unanimous stoning is buried. It is the first pyramid. ~ Rene Girard

Creatures shall be seen on the earth who will always be fighting one another, with the greatest losses and frequent deaths on either side. There will be no bounds to their malice; by their strong limbs the vast forests of the world shall be laid low; and when they are filled with food they shall gratify their desires by dealing out death, affliction, labour, terror, and banishment to every living thing; and then from their boundless pride they will desire to rise towards heaven, but the excessive weight of their limbs will hold them down. Nothing shall remain on the earth or under the earth or in the waters that shall not be pursued, disturbed, or spoiled, and that which is in one country removed into another. And their bodies shall be made the tomb and the means of transit of all the living bodies they have slain.
O earth, why do you not open and hurl them into the deep fissures of thy vast abysses and caverns, and no longer display in the sight of heaven so cruel and horrible a monster? ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

To come to the door and know that she would find no one: to see a house completely empty. It was like coming to her tomb while she was still alive. ~ Iain Crichton Smith

For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war.
[Funeral Oration of Pericles] ~ Thucydides