Tombs Quotes

The church was old and grey, with ivy clinging to the walls, and round the porch. Shunning the tombs, it crept about the mounds, beneath which slept poor humble men: twining for them the first wreaths they had ever won, but wreaths less liable to wither and far more lasting in their kind, than some which were graven deep in stone and marble, and told in pompous terms of virtues meekly hidden for many a year, and only revealed at last to executors and mourning legatees. ~ Charles Dickens

References to all works of art, tombs, tunnels, and architecture in Rome are entirely factual ~ Dan Brown

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

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

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

The shameless Chloe placed on the tombs of her seven husbands the inscription, "The work of Chloe." How could she have expressed herself more plainly? ~ Martial

All that glitters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life has sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold Had you been as wise as bold, Your in limbs, in judgment old, Your answer had not been in'scroll'd Fare you well: your suit is cold.' Cold, indeed, and labour lost: Then, farewell, heat and welcome, frost! ~ William Shakespeare

For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old OCtober and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. FOr these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. THe spider-web hears them, trembles--breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them. ~ Ray Bradbury

Never go in, miss. Never say a prayer at its door. If you are angry, do not seek revenge by the Laughing Maiden stone, or at the threshold of the Tombs. There be those who listen for oaths and vows, and them that takes it quite to heart. What may be said in innocence and ire becomes flesh and blood should it be uttered in such places. ~ Douglas Clegg

Aidan: "From the moment I laid eyes on her she was trouble to my concentration, my libido, and my mental health. After six weeks of pursuit, I'd trapped her between my upraised arms against a book case, somewhere betwixt Shakespeare and Voltaire. "I want the witchcraft in your lips," I'd whispered. Instead of arguing, she grabbed me by the ears. She'd been soft lips, liberal tongue and nipping teeth. I'd contributed a willing body and a vulgar groan. She'd drawn away, licked her lips and ducked underneath my arms. When she was about three yards from me, she's tilted her head up like a siren on the bow of a ship and pursed a devil-may-care smile at me before she bowed. She'd challenged me to pursue her, and I'd intended to, but when I pushed off, the bookcase fell backwards. I tumbled into a heap of literary tombs. I could still hear her laughing when the library's elevator door chimed closed. ~ Elizabeth Marx

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

The hospital is the antechamber to the tomb ~ George Orwell

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

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

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame
a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones. ~ Evelyn Waugh

THE BARROW

In this high field strewn with stones
I walk by a green mound,
Its edges sheared by the plough.
Crumbs of animal bone
Lie smashed and scattered round
Under the clover leaves
And slivers of flint seem to grow
Like white leaves among green.
In the wind, the chestnut heaves
Where a man's grave has been.

Whatever the barrow held
Once, has been taken away:
A hollow of nettles and dock
Lies at the centre, filled
With rain from a sky so grey
It reflects nothing at all.
I poke in the crumbled rock
For something they left behind
But after that funeral
There is nothing at all to find.

On the map in front of me
The gothic letters pick out
Dozens of tombs like this,
Breached, plundered, left empty,
No fragments littered about
Of a dead and buried race
In the margins of histories.
No fragments: these splintered bones
Construct no human face,
These stones are simply stones.

In museums their urns lie
Behind glass, and their shaped flints
Are labelled like butterflies.
All that they did was die,
And all that has happened since
Means nothing to this place.
Above long clouds, the skies
Turn to a brilliant red
And show in the water's face
One living, and not these dead."

- Anthony Thwaite, from The Owl In The Tree ~ Anthony Thwaite

We have no way to quantify the damage done by telling tens of millions of children that masturbation will make them blind, or that impure thoughts will lead to an eternity of torment, or that members of other faiths including members of their own families will burn, or that venereal disease will result from kisses. Nor can we hope to quantify the damage done by holy instructors who rammed home these lies and accompanied them with floggings and rapes and public humiliations. Some of those who "rest in unvisited tombs" may have contributed to the good of the world, but tho who preached hatred and fear and guilt and who ruined innumerable childhoods should have been thankful that the hell they preached was only one among their wicked falsifications, and that they were not sent to rot there. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Civil wars leave nothing but tombs. ~ Alphonse De Lamartine

I wanted to pull away, remind him that I was a big girl, a highly trained operative, a spy - that I'd been training for this mission my entire life, and I wasn't going to be left on the sidelines. But in the dim space with Zach pressed tightly against me, only one thought came to mind. I kissed him - longer and deeper than I ever had before. The school was not watching us this time. There was nothing playful in the tone. We were just two people kissing as if for the first time, as if it might be the last.
And then I broke away. "So," I asked, as if I got kissed like that all the time (which, believe me, I don't), "where is it you're taking me again?"
"The tombs. ~ Ally Carter

Wise books For half the truths they hold are honored tombs. ~ George Eliot

Absentmindedly, I started doodling in the margins of my paper.
Renee, I wrote in cursive, and then again in bubble letters and then in the loopy handwriting of the mystery note. I drew a tiny picture of the moon above the lake. And then stick figures of people swimming in it. And then for some reason, I wrote Dante. First in print, and then in large, wavy letters, and then in all caps. Dante. Dante. DANTE. I had just finished writing, when I heard someone say my name.
"Renee."
I shook myself out of my daze to discover that Mr. B. and the entire class were staring at me.
"Earth to Renee. The most primitive tombs. What were they called?" he repeated.
I glanced at my notes for the answer, but they were covered in doodles.
"Dante," I blurted out, reading the first word I saw. Immediately my face went red. "No, sorry, I meant . . . I meant dolmen."
I winced, hoping I was right so that I would be saved from further embarrassment. Thankfully, Dante wasn't in my class.
Mr. B. smiled. "Correct," he said, returning to the board. He drew a diagram of a stonelike lean-to, which I recognized from the reading. I took notes and kept my head down for the rest of class. ~ Yvonne Woon

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

The graveyard was at the top of the hill. It looked over all of the town. The town was hills - hills that issued down in trickles and then creeks and then rivers of cobblestone into the town, to flood the town with rough and beautiful stone that had been polished into smooth flatness over the centuries. It was a pointed irony that the very best view of the town could be had from the cemetery hill, where high, thick walls surrounded a collection of tombstones like wedding cakes, frosted with white angels and iced with ribbons and scrolls, one against another, toppling, shining cold. It was like a cake confectioner's yard. Some tombs were big as beds. From here, on freezing evenings, you could look down at the candle-lit valley, hear dogs bark, sharp as tuning forks banged on a flat stone, see all the funeral processions coming up the hill in the dark, coffins balanced on shoulders.
("The Candy Skull") ~ Ray Bradbury

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

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.

Spending time with you is like watching paint dry." Lassiter's voice echoed up to the stalactites hanging from the Tomb's high ceiling. "Except without the home improvement - which is a tragedy, given how this place looks. Do you guys always go for the gloom and doom? You never hear of Pottery Barn?"

-Lassiter to Tohr ~ J.R. Ward

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

A book is like a large cemetery upon whose tombs one can no longer read the effaced names. On the other hand, sometimes one remembers well the name, without knowing if anything of the being, whose name it was, survives in these pages. ~ Marcel Proust

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

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

Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets. ~ Edmund Burke

Let there be no inscription upon my tomb; let no man write my epitaph: no man can write my epitaph. ~ Robert Emmet

When you travel and go sight seeing you imagine seeing castles, lakes etc but you would not normally have a cemetery at the top of your to see list! Cimitero Monumentale is an old cemetery and, in a way, can also be considered a museum. Many people think of it as one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world, because of its monumental mausoleums, impressing sculptures and tombs. ~ Blether Travel Guides

Even if the disciples had believed in the resurrection of Jesus, it is doubtful they would have generated any following. So long as the body was interred in the tomb, a Christian movement founded on belief in the resurrection of the dead man would have been an impossible folly. ~ William Lane Craig

Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks in between. In the inexplicable, invisible turns and decisions. A person saying no instead of yes. …It is not that they had lived…but how. ~ Sarah Blake

The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried is the character of a man. This is true. What a man is survives him. It can never be buried. -J. R. MILLER ~ John C. Maxwell

Christianity has no shrines to visit, no dusty remains to venerate, no tombs at which to worship. ~ Billy Graham

It waited for her. Standing resolute in the moonlight, it had stood for a hundred years. Yet it waited just for her. Shadows passed across the moon, a cool breeze ruffled the leaves around it. Yet still it waited for her. Ancient tombs glowed in shimmery moonlight, row upon row of cold silent witnesses. ~ Grace Willows

When King Mark heard of the death of these two lovers, he crossed the sea and came into Brittany; and he had two coffins hewn, for Tristan and Iseult, one of chalcedony for Iseult, and one of beryl for Tristan. And he took their beloved bodies away with him upon his ship to Tintagel, and by a chantry to the left and right of the apse he had their tombs built round. But in one night there sprang from the tomb of Tristan a green leafy briar, strong in branches and in the scent of its flowers. It climbed the chantry and fell to root again by Iseult's tomb. Thrice did the peasants cut it down, but thrice it grew again as flowered and as strong. They told the marvel to King Mark, and he forbade them to cut the briar any more. ~ Joseph Bedier

And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women.
Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable.
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who life faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. Middlemarch ~ George Eliot

I broke into shakespeare's tomb and stole his remains, grinded the bones, smoked it, then got in the game ~ Nas

I myself have seen this woman draw the stars from the sky; she diverts the course of a fast-flowing river with her incantations; her voice makes the earth gape, it lures the spirits from the tombs, send the bones tumbling from the dying pyre. At her behest, the sad clouds scatter; at her behest, snow falls from a summer's sky. ~ Tibullus

If what is known as the Christian Religion is true, nothing can be more wonderful than the fact that Matthew, Mark and Luke say nothing about "salvation by faith;" that they do not even hint at the doctrine of the atonement, and are as silent as empty tombs as to the necessity of believing anything to secure happiness in this world or another. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

The last loud trumpet's wondrous sound, Shall thro' the rending tombs rebound, And wake the nations under ground. ~ Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl Of Roscommon

Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived ... I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

~Often in the music of the wind in some stony place recalled to mind neglected tombs that now are seldom traced hold celtic knots and swirls upon its face.~ ~ Aine MacAodha

My father's body lies in a stone tomb high on a hill. People walk by, pause, think their own thoughts about him and move on, back to their own lives. I can never move on. He is everywhere. ~ Patti Davis

She imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? ~ Virginia Woolf

If anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I've no problem shooting them, ~ Angelina Jolie

A man crawls into a tomb to die. A boy crawls in to live. You think that's chance? ~ Michelle Paver

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet
("Oil and Blood") ~ W.B.Yeats

Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God. ~ Frederick Buechner

Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose, And shook within their pyramids to hear A new Cambyses thundering in their ear; While the dark shades of forty ages stood Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood. ~ Lord Byron

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. (Moby Dick; Chap 7 p36) ~ Herman Melville

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. ~ Henry David Thoreau

For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth ... Such are the autumn people. ~ Ray Bradbury

The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you ~ Bob Dylan

When you think about the scale of human populations all over the world and the fact that there's so much here, really, the only way to be able to visualize that is to pull back in space ... It allows us to see hidden temples and tombs and pyramids and even entire settlements. ~ Sarah Parcak

At its very core the story of Easter has nothing to do with angelic announcements or empty tombs. It has nothing to do with time periods, whether three days, forty days, or fifty days. It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension. ~ John Shelby Spong

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that gray vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.

First, there was the heaving oil,
heavy as chaos;
then, likea light at the end of a tunnel,

the lantern of a caravel,
and that was Genesis.
Then there were the packed cries,
the shit, the moaning:

Exodus.
Bone soldered by coral to bone,
mosaics
mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow,

that was the Ark of the Covenant.
Then came from the plucked wires
of sunlight on the sea floor

the plangent harp of the Babylonian bondage,
as the white cowries clustered like manacles
on the drowned women,

and those were the ivory bracelets
of the Song of Solomon,
but the ocean kept turning blank pages

looking for History.
Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors
who sank without tombs,

brigands who barbecued cattle,
leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore,
then the foaming, rabid maw

of the tidal wave swallowing Port Royal,
and that was Jonah,
but where is your Renaissance?

Sir, it is locked in them sea sands
out there past the reef's moiling shelf,
where the men-o'-war floated down;

strop on these goggles, I'll guide you there myself.
It's all subtle and sub ~ Derek Walcott

(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

Kugel didn't like attics, he never did. The roofing nails overhead like fangs, waiting to sink into his skull; the cardboard boxes and plastic crates and leather trunks - tombs, sarcophagi - full of ghosts and regret and longing and loss; worse yet was the implication in all this emotional hoarding that the past was preferable to the present, that what came before bests whatever comes next, so clutch it to your chests in mourning and dread as you head into the unknowable but probably lousy future. ~ Shalom Auslander

If you want to feel the life and the body of great men who are long gone, go to their tombs or monuments; if you want to understand the real life and the wisdom of great men who are long gone, go to their libraries! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. ~ Khalil Gibran

The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes - undisturbed in form and position. ~ Josh McDowell

I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter. ~ John Shelby Spong

I am Psmith," said the old Etonian reverently. "There is a preliminary P before the name. This, however, is silent. Like the tomb. Compare such words as ptarmigan, psalm, and phthisis. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The babe is at peace within the womb, the corpse is at rest within the tomb. We begin in what we end. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque and beautiful clusters of arches; broken temples; broken tombs. A desert of decay, sombre and desolate beyond all expression; and with a history in every stone that strews the ground. ~ Charles Dickens

There is nothing illegal in keeping up a tomb; on the contrary, it is a very laudable thing to do. ~ Ryan Lindley

Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often die before us: and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. ~ John Locke

I love to do films of all shapes and sizes and feelings and genres. So for me to go from Tomb Raider straight into Dear Frankie, there's nothing that excites me more than to keep mixing it up. ~ Gerard Butler

That was how history worked, wasn't it? If it wasn't written down it never existed. You might leave behind jewelry and pottery, ornamental tombs, you might leave behind your own bones to be dug up at a later age, but none of those artifacts could express how you felt. ~ Kate Atkinson

Cemetery of al-Baqi in Medina, they utterly destroyed the tombs of the Imams Hasan, Ali ibn Husayn, Muhammed ibn Ali, and Jafar, as well as the tomb of Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. In Mecca, they destroyed the Cemetery of Mualla, where the ancestors of Muhammad and his first wife Khadija were buried. These prominent destructions were part of a pattern of violence that witnessed the Wahhabi Saudis smash buildings, tombs and mosques associated with the history of the Prophet and his family and which were venerated by Shia. ~ Jesse Harasta

Marriage is the tomb of friendship. ~ Hannah Webster Foster

The desert abandons anyone who lies down. From the moment a body is covered in sand, the wind, like memory, begins to exhume it. And so the Bedouin and other desert tribes dig deeper graves for their women, a discretion.
Perhaps this is another reason for the immensity of the desert tombs, the sheer weight and mass of rock hauled and piled- ingeniously piled, yet piled all the same- at the gravesites of the kings.
In the desert we remain still and the earth moves beneath us. ~ Anne Michaels

It is more reasonable to wish for reputation while it may be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they propose to bestow upon his tomb. ~ Samuel Johnson

Individualism has taken away the credibility of the Gospel in the western world because we think we can seek our private freedom - independently of others. But genuine evangelization must move forward on two rails. We must simultaneously evangelize individuals, calling them to freedom, and evangelize institutions, nations, and systems, calling them to conversion. If you do the first, you'll be called a saint ; if you do the second, you'll be called a communist or a revolutionary. And for this reason most of us remain safely on the first side. Few of us are ready for full freedom in Christ. We want the freedom of Christ only so long as they don't take our "swine" away from us and we can live comfortably "among the tombs ~ Richard Rohr

No real estate is permanently valuable but the grave. ~ Mark Twain

Carter started down the stairs, but I grabbed his arm.
"Hang on. What about traps?"
He frowned. "Traps?"
"Didn't Egyptian tombs have traps?"
"Well ... sometimes. But this isn't a tomb. Besides, more often they had curses, like the burning curse, the donkey curse - "
"Oh, lovely. That sounds so much better. ~ Rick Riordan

Without at all invalidating what we have just said, we believe that a perpetual remembrance of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die. ~ Victor Hugo

Worms'-Meat, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material. The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Granitarium. Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that houses it, but "this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for himself. The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by contrast the foreknown futility. ~ Ambrose Bierce

In asking for a relic of Descartes, the chevalier de Terlon was standing at the crossroads of the ancient and modern. He was applying to a modern thinker - the inventor of analytic geometry, no less - a primitive tradition that extends back not only to the institutionalization of Christianity in the fourth century, when Christians first broke into the tombs of saints to gather relics, but farther still, beyond the horizon of recorded history. The request is all the stranger for the fact that the man whose remains were treated in this quasisaintlike way would go down in history as the progenitor of materialism, rationalism, and a whole tradition that looked on such veneration as nonsense. ~ Russell Shorto

The moonlight covered the tombstones with an ethereal glow, and the statues
above the tombs stood like silent guards waiting for something to happen. ~ Alan Kinross

Dante, or the hyena that writes poetry in tombs. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

In the middle of the cemetery is a grassy plane, strangely vacant. There are no granite tombs or crumbling concrete, just a sun-washed treeless patch of green known as "No Man's Land." Here 1,500 unidentified bodies are buried. At one time, their skin burned with yellow fever; now they lie in a cool, dark place where long ago their arms and legs, hands and feet, were intertwined for eternity. ~ Molly Caldwell Crosby

Hester shook her head. 'Don't confuse what you do with who you are, dearie. Besides, there's no shame in humble work. Why, Aesop himself, the king of storytellers, was a slave his whole life. Never drew a free breath, yet he shaped the world with just three small words: there once was. And where are his great masters now, hmm? Rotting in tombs, if they're lucky. But Aesop - he still lives to this day, dancin' on the tip of every tongue what's ever told a tale.' She winked at Molly. 'Think on that, next time you're scrubbing floors. ~ Jonathan Auxier

I especially treasured my glimpses of Mother, Queen Cleopatra VII. She sat on a golden throne, looking as resplendent as one of the giant marble statues guarding the tombs of the Old Ones. Diamonds twinkled in a jungle of black braids on her ceremonial wig. She wore a diadem with three rearing snakes and a golden broad collar, shining with lapis lazuli, carnelian, and emeralds, over her golden, form-fitting pleated gown. In one hand, she held a golden ankh of life, while the other clasped the striped crook and flail of her divine rulership. Her stillness radiated power, like a lioness pausing before the pounce. It left me breathless with awe. ~ Vicky Alvear Shecter

Gradually I came to find Herbert West himself more horrible than anything he did - that was when it dawned on me that his once normal scientific zeal for prolonging life had subtly degenerated into a mere morbid and ghoulish curiosity and secret sense of charnel picturesqueness. His interest became a hellish and perverse addiction to the repellently and fiendishly abnormal; he gloated calmly over artificial monstrosities which would make most healthy men drop dead from fright and disgust; he became, behind his pallid intellectuality, a fastidious Baudelaire of physical experiment - a languid Elagabalus of the tombs. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning into a museum. ~ Robert Smithson

У меня в Москве - купола горят!
У меня в Москве - колокола звонят!
И гробницы в ряд у меня стоят, -
В них царицы спят, и цари.

И не знаешь ты, что зарёй в Кремле
Легче дышится - чем на всей земле!
И не знаешь ты, что зарёй в Кремле
Я молюсь тебе - до зари!

И проходишь ты над своей Невой
О ту пору, как над рекой-Москвой
Я стою с опущенной головой,
И слипаются фонари.

Всей бессонницей я тебя люблю,
Всей бессонницей я тебе внемлю -
О ту пору, как по всему Кремлю
Просыпаются звонари…

Но моя река - да с твоей рекой,
Но моя рука - да с твоей рукой
Не сойдутся, Радость моя, доколь
Не догонит заря - зари.

7 мая 1916

At home in Moscow - where the domes are burning,
at home in Moscow - in the sound of bells,
where I live the tombs - in their rows are standing
and in them Tsaritsas - are asleep and tsars.

And you don't know how - at dawn the Kremlin is
the easiest place to - breathe in the whole wide earth
and you don't know when - dawn reaches the Kremlin
I pray to you until - the next day comes

and I go with you - by your river Neva
even while beside - the Moscow river
I am standing here - with my head lowered
and the line of street lights - sticks fast together.

With my insomnia - I love you wholly.
With my insomnia - I listen for you,
jus ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

Faith, amid the disorders of a sinful life, is like the lamp burning in an ancient tomb. ~ Sophie Swetchine

Here it is necessary briefly to consider the question of the cult of ancestors before venturing farther. The spirits of the departed are believed to be possessed of supernatural powers which they did not enjoy in the flesh. They may also be dissatisfied or malignant in consequence of being suddenly deprived of life, and if they are neglected by the living, are apt to be revengeful. Therefore they must be cajoled and propitiated. Fear of beings belonging to a mysterious state or sphere of which he knew nothing continually haunted and terrified primitive man and induced in him what is known as" the dread of the sacred." It was every man's personal duty to attend to the demands or requirements of his deceased ancestors. At first he would succour his own immediate forebears with food and gifts; but it must have been borne in upon him that when his parents joined the great majority, the care of the spirits of their parents likewise devolved upon him... and, by degrees, he might even come to regard himself as responsible for the well-being of a line of spirit ancestors of quite formidable genealogy. These, through his neglect, might starve in their tombs; or, alternatively, they might crave his company. Because of vengeance or loneliness they might send disease upon him, for the savage almost invariably believes illness to be brought about by the action of jealous or neglected ancestors. The loneliness of the spirit-world is the dead man's greatest excuse for desiring the company o ~ Lewis Spence

Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death. ~ Henry MacKenzie

Tell me about mummies.
Mummies exist. The Egyptians mummified people. Mummies that get up out of their cursed tombs and walk around do not exist.
Do cursed tombs exist?
No. Sometimes you get a tomb guarded by a demon.
Zombies?
The voudun kind, yes - the braaaaaaaiiiiinnnnnsss kind, no.
Oh, oh, I've got one. What about a haunted car?
Do you count a demon-powered motorcycle?
No, like, the car talks back and tells you to kill people.
Then no. ~ Cassandra Clare

How tranquil is a coral tomb, and may the heavens grant that my companions and I be buried in no other! ~ Jules Verne

I don't like these outdated traditions.
I don't like this love for tombs,
I don't like this kind of respect,
I don't like it
I don't want this untimely honor,
I'd never change one moment of my life
For thousands of golden deaths.
I'd never change one ounce of respect while alive
For thousands of tombs when I'm dead. ~ Jabir Novruz

Now the Tombs, like the name says, are so horrible that they had to close it down. Today it doesn't exist and people go in the electric chair and all that. ~ Gregory Corso