Quotes for a eulogy

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.

Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.

If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.

There is always light behind the clouds.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.