"Cremation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kings cremation was an honourable form of burial, but in Babylon the Jews came to regard fire as a sacred element which ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... series of furnaces which convert the copper and superincumbent enamel into one common body—fuse the one into the other. An unwary step soon warns us that we are too near the furnace, unless we want to run the risk of a premature cremation, and in the interests of the readers of this journal we step back to a respectful and proper distance, and watch ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... him speak, but could not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, "Your associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died." Then came the monks in large numbers, and when they saw that he was "dead," they lifted him up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided itself before them. Then said some, "We must go to the left," but others said, "It is to the right that we must ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... herself worthy of my mother's entire confidence. Acting under the guidance of my arisen mother, she at once, without hesitation, took charge of all business arrangements, especially those of preparing for the cremation of my mother's body, in accordance with her often expressed wish. She telegraphed the sad news to my father in Alaska, asking for instructions. He replied at once that the body must be cremated, as my mother had directed in her will. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... facilities within itself! At last I became desperate. "Ellen," I exclaimed, "just bring in that cheese and burn it. It comes high, too high. I can not endure it." She opened the top of the range and, as the cremation was going on, I continued my comments. "Why, in all my life, I never knew anything like it; wherever I put it—in pantry, swing cupboard, on the cellar stairs, in a tin box, on top of the refrigerator—way out on that—" Just then Tom opened the ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... Parker illustrated her skill One of Miller's Franklin Syndicate Receipts. Ammon's deposit slips and a receipt signed by Mrs. Ammon. A group of H. Huffman Browne's forgeries Last page of the forged Rice will of 1900 The forged cremation letter Forged assignment and Rice signatures First page of the "Black Hand" letter written ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... of most of the higher-caste Hindus to cremate their dead; while many of the lowest castes and outcasts resort to burial. Cremation would doubtless be the more sanitary method, if the fire were not so inadequate in many instances. The Hindu burning-ground is a place ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the spirit of the dead person may still be attracted to it, and consequently remain earthbound; but when the corpse is cremated, and the ashes scattered abroad, then the spirit is set free. And, for this reason alone, I advocate cremation as the best method possible of ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... is clear and strong; but it does not necessarily presuppose an absolute distinction of race. It is not improbable that towards the end of the Mycenaean period, to which in any case the connection with the Homeric poems would belong, cremation was beginning to supersede the older practice of interment. In late Mycenaean graves at Salamis evidences of cremation are found, and at Mouliana, in Crete, there are instances of uncremated bones being found along with bronze swords ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... the body. On Malabar Hill itself, in the very heart of the favourite residential quarter whence the Europeans are being rapidly elbowed out by Indian merchant princes, the finest site of all still encloses the Towers of Silence on which, contrary to the Hindu usage of cremation, the Parsees, holding fire too sacred to be subjected to contact with mortal corruption, expose their dead to be devoured by vultures. Calcutta has no such conspicuous landmarks of the East to disturb the illusion produced by most of one's surroundings that this ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... CREMATION A means of disposing of the dead likely to become very popular, especially with women who are so fond of having the ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... often no human foresight can prevent it. Louisa Alcott supposed that she was nearly well of her fever when inflammatory rheumatism set in. The worst of this was the loss of sleep which it occasioned. Long continued wakefulness is a kind of nervous cremation, and resembles in its physical effect the perpetual drop of water on the head with which the Spanish inquisitors used to torment their heretics. Any mental agitation makes the case very much worse, and it requires great self-control to prevent this. It was melancholy ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... forehead of each showed that self-destruction and cremation had seemed a better choice than the gallows ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... a case is to exhume and burn the body, thus depriving the creature of his point d'appui. When the grave is opened the body usually appears quite fresh and healthy, and the coffin is not infrequently filled with blood. Of course in countries where cremation is the custom vampirism of ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... truthfulness. The painter (born in 1843, and a pupil of Piloty) secured a wide renown through his painting of "The Living Torches of Nero." From a long list of notable pictures by Siemiradski, we select for mention "Phryne at Eleusis," "The Sword Dance," and "The Cremation of a Russian ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... and with the deeps of my loneliness opening beneath me, I came out of that room and down into the world again, a bright-eyed, active world, very noisy, happy, and busy with its last preparations for the mighty cremation of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... curiously like the celebrated dog of nursery lore, who appertained to the ancient and far-famed Mother Hubbard. All the doctors gave him up, all the secularists prepared mourning garments, the printers were meditating black borders for the 'Idol-Breaker,' the relative merits of burial and cremation were already in discussion, when the dog we beg pardon the leader of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... and Good read the Burial Service over him in the presence of Nyleptha and myself; and then his remains were, in deference to the popular clamour, accorded a great public funeral, or rather cremation. I could not help thinking, however, as I marched in that long and splendid procession up to the Temple, how he would have hated the whole thing could he have been there to see it, for he ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... games for Murmex and his more spectacular cremation, the eighth day before the Kalends of January, was nominally the last racing day of the year. The weather was fair and mild. The Circus Maximus was crowded, the Imperial Pavilion blazed with the retinue about the Emperor, he and all of us enjoyed the thirty races of four four-horsed ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... crowds, from the Punjab, Rajpootana, and other extensive districts in India. The Sikhs, who are a reformed Hindoo sect, hold Hurdwar in especial reverence. To this spot was conveyed, in order that it might here be cast into the sacred water of the Ganges, what remained, after its cremation, of the body of the great Sikh Chief, the Maharaja of Puttialla, whom Lord Canning placed in ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... might have helped to proscribe, or to burn—had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation—even the great pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered our composure, and bad leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one, after ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the impression that a 'beat' meant the death, cortege and cremation of the newspaper that fell behind in the race," he smiled. "Boys, I'm afraid you'll have to stand it for a while. Do the best you can and get beaten as little as possible. By the way, Jolter, I want to see you a minute," and the mournful delegation of three, no whit ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... watch its every man and the wide world write its history as the fabric of its destiny flowed on. At last, when the citizen died, would come the last entry of all, his age and the cause of his death and the date and place of his cremation, and his card would be taken out and passed on to the universal pedigree, to a place of greater quiet, to the ever-growing galleries of the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... some facts (others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. Nevertheless, these are all, properly speaking, biography. What is not biography is the detail of the accident of the manner of his death, the detail of his cremation. Or if it was to be told—told briefly—it was certainly not for marble. Shelley's death had no significance, except inasmuch as he died young. It was a detachable and disconnected incident. Ah, that was a frost of fancy and of the heart that used it so, dealing with an insignificant fact, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... and Giles call this the "Ashes" tope. I also would have preferred to call it so; but the Chinese character is {.}, not {.}. Remusat has "la tour des charbons." It was over the place of Buddha's cremation. ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... gibbet that bore all three. The father of our aged informant, and two or three others of the cottagers near by, seeing a glare of light, went up the hill, and there they saw the sickening spectacle of the three bodies blazing away in the darkness. So thoroughly did the tar aid this cremation that the next morning only the links of the iron remained on the ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... dressed, by one of the slaves who was skilled in all operations connected with wounds; and he slept, without once waking, until Cuitcatl came to him in the morning and bade him arise, as all was ready for the ceremony of Cacama's cremation. ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... the time of our author, meant, the place of cremation. In the third book, sl. 1, 2, Yajnavalkya says:—A child under two years of age is to be buried, nor shall water be offered; every other deceased, being followed by his relatives to the place for disposal of the dead, shall ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... present to us the admissible, or the valuable, or the indispensable. Clearly these masses, and such as these, ought to be selected first for what I will not scruple to call interment. It is a burial; one, however, to which the process of cremation will never of set purpose be applied. The word I have used is dreadful, but also dreadful is the thing. To have our dear old friends stowed away in catacombs, or like the wine-bottles in bins: the simile is surely lawful until the use of that commodity shall have been prohibited by ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... Such cremation he would dare if that Standard he might bear To the dust, and upraise there one more Silvery. For this Argent Knight, though pale, was right sure he could not fail, He was proud of his white mail, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... eases of advanced pulmonary disease the sooner the better. The French custom of speedy interment may be defended as more wholesome than our own. On the other hand, I admit that it has its weak points. Cremation is, perhaps, the best and only method of removing the dead which is open to no objections except one. I mean, of course, the chance that the deceased may have met with his death by means of poison. But ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... this subject, and he came to the conclusion that the cinerary urns were heathen, but that the whole interments were Christian. His observations were made chiefly in the old mother country, which lies between the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Main. He identified the change from cremation to inhumation with that from heathenism ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... pestilence was in the air. The bodies of dead animals lay in the streets; the waters of the bay and gulf were thick with the dead. All the disinfectants in the city were quickly consumed. An earnest appeal for more was sent to Houston and other places. Tuesday a general cremation of the dead began. Trenches were dug and lined with wood. The corpses were tossed in, covered with more wood, saturated with oil, and set on fire. Later, bodies were collected and placed in piles of wreckage, and ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... how pleasant they were to look at. The day was the antithesis of its predecessor—the mildest we had had for a long, long time. It was a relief to find that the "hottest day of the year" was a figurative expression used to denote the middle of summer. Our fears of cremation were entirely dissipated—as sometimes happens in the case of passengers to the Cape who, sweltering in a broiling sun outside the tropics, marvel how they ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... they would plunge outside its zone, fall crushed and mangled. Not far enough, and they would meet cremation. It was a fearful hazard, either way, but it had ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... mother were prostrated by this sudden calamity; but there is no time to be lost in hot weather. Calling in three or four neighbours, they had the body carried to Nimtala Ghat for cremation. Sufficient money was given to the Muchis (low-caste men who serve as undertakers) for purchasing an abundant supply of fuel and ghi (clarified butter) with which a chilla (pyre) was constructed. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... in the Cultural Club. She went too; she always crowded up close to Eleanore, but she could not attract her attention. One time she sat right next to Eleanore. A strolling pastor delivered a lecture on cremation. Philippina took out her handkerchief, and pressed it to her eyes as though she were weeping. Eleanore, somewhat concerned, turned to her, and asked her what was the matter. She said that it was all so sad what the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... elements to pass into the still coarse bodies of the masses and help forward ordinary souls by the powerful influence of the magnetic potency with which they were charged. It is also for this reason that the body of a Yogi, in India, is interred, whilst in the case of other men cremation is the rule. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... have interment and cremation in one and the same tribe; a circumstance which should guard us against exaggerating their value as ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... on funerals by the sexton's wife was a new phase of life to Mr. Penrose. He had never before met with anyone who took an interest in the matter. It was true that in the city from which he had lately come the question of wicker coffins and of cremation was loudly discussed; but the choice between a hearse and 'carrying' as a means of transit to the tomb never dawned on him as being anything else than a question of utility—the speediest ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... cremation of the dead was found, either at Awatobi or Sikyatki, nor have I yet detected any reference to this custom among the modern Hopi Indians. They have, however, a strange concept of the purification of the breath-body, or shade of the dead, by fire, which, although ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Beyond the crops and plantations which surround the town lies a flaming desert of gravel or rock. The architectural features of Leh, except of the palace, are mean. A new mosque glaring with vulgar colour, a treasury and court of justice, the wazir's bungalow, a Moslem cemetery, and Buddhist cremation grounds, in which each family has its separate burning place, are all that is noteworthy. The narrow alleys, which would be abominably dirty if dirt were possible in a climate of such intense dryness, house a very mixed population, in which ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... Reform? Oh! just a fad,— Its advocates, in fact, as bad As those who want Cremation. A set of foolish, fussy fools Whose misplaced ardour nothing cools— A ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... plans had matured, he died of small-pox, in 1654, at the age of twenty-two, having accomplished nothing except the restoration and improvement of certain Court ceremonials, the enactment of a few sumptuary laws, and the abandonment of cremation in the case ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... advantages of cremation—apart from all sanitary conditions—lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the physical elements composing the dense and ethereal corpses, brought about by the burning. Instead of slow and gradual decomposition, swift dissociation ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... on the subject is the next step needed. It will be attended by men and women who, no longer believing that they can live for ever, are seeking for some immortal work into which they can build the best of themselves before their refuse is thrown into that arch dust destructor, the cremation furnace. ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... interesting, and contain the solemn and memorable scene of the cremation of Shelley's remains—one of the most vivid and impressive narratives I know. Then there are the chapters of Leigh Hunt's Autobiography which deal with Shelley, a little overwrought perhaps, but real biography for all that, and interesting as bringing out the contrast between ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Why Spuyten Duyvil is so Named The Ramapo Salamander Chief Croton The Retreat from Mahopac Niagara The Deformed of Zoar Horseheads Kayuta and Waneta The Drop Star The Prophet of Palmyra A Villain's Cremation The Monster Mosquito The Green Picture The Nuns of Carthage The Skull in the Wall The Haunted Mill Old Indian Face The Division of the Saranacs An Event in Indian Park The Indian Plume Birth of the Water-Lily Rogers's Slide The Falls at Cohoes Francis ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... London. Ordinary furnaces, built mostly by dust contractors, began to come into use in London and in the north of England in the second half of the 19th century, but they were not scientifically adapted to the purpose, and necessitated the admixture of coal or other fuel with the refuse to ensure its cremation. The Manchester corporation erected a furnace of this description about the year 1873, and Messrs Mead & Co. made an unsatisfactory attempt in 1870 to burn house refuse in closed furnaces at Paddington. In 1876 Alfred Fryer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... churches of pale Istrian stone, and where the Campo Santo has for centuries received the dead into its oozy clay. The cemetery is at present undergoing restoration. Its state of squalor and abandonment to cynical disorder makes one feel how fitting for Italians would be the custom of cremation. An island in the lagoons devoted to funeral pyres is a solemn and ennobling conception. This graveyard, with its ruinous walls, its mangy riot of unwholesome weeds, its corpses festering in slime ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... bronze-age people burn instead of burying their dead? Why did they anticipate the latest fashionable mode of disposal of corpses, and go in for cremation with such thorough conviction? They couldn't have been influenced by those rather unpleasant sanitary considerations which so profoundly agitated the mind of 'Graveyard Walker.' Sanitation was still in a very rudimentary state in the year five ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... to his ancestors began with the death of his father. He had at Athens to carry out the corpse, provide for the cremation, gather the remains of the burnt bones, with the assistance of the rest of the kindred,(37) and show respect to the dead by the usual form of shaving the head, wearing mourning clothes, and so on. Nine days after the funeral he must perform ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... noticed funeral processions on their way to this place. The remains are borne on open litters. A granite platform is the base of the funeral pyre, and the bodies wait their turn to be reduced to ashes; and the cremation is far more repulsive than that in ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... numerical value of the gods—The arrangement of the temples, the local priesthood, festivals, revenues of the gods and gifts made to them—Sacrifices, the expiation of crimes—Death and the future of the soul—Tombs and the cremation of the dead; the royal sepulchres and funerary rites—Hades and its sovereigns: Nergal, Allat, the descent of Ishtar into the infernal regions, and the possibility of a resurrection The invocation of the dead—The ascension ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Benares upon the memory is the burning of the dead at a ghat by the Ganges. This ghat is reserved exclusively for the cremation of Hindoo dead. No Mussulman can use it. It was about eight o'clock in the morning when my boat reached this burning ghat. Already one body had been placed on a funeral pyre of wood. The guide said this body ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... other treatises of antiquity, rather for curiosity than use; for it is of small importance to know which nation buried their dead in the ground, which threw them into the sea, or which gave them to birds and beasts; when the practice of cremation began, or when it was disused; whether the bones of different persons were mingled in the same urn; what oblations were thrown into the pyre; or how the ashes of the body were distinguished from those of other substances. Of the uselessness of these inquiries, Browne seems not to have been ignorant; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... had since studied, and which would be the result of the chase on the lake. Then the dead man must have been Ibarra, who had come to die at the tomb of his forefathers, his desire to be cremated being explained by his residence in Europe, where cremation is practised. Then who was the other, the living, this jeweler Simoun, at that time with such an appearance of poverty and wretchedness, but who had now returned loaded with gold and a friend of the authorities? There was the mystery, and the student, with his characteristic ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... distance of the tomb of the Scipios are the most celebrated of all the Columbaria of Rome. Previous to the fifth century of Rome, the bodies of the dead were buried entire, and deposited in sarcophagi; but after that period cremation became the universal custom. The ashes and calcined bones were preserved in ollae, or little jars like common garden flower-pots, made of the same kind of coarse red earthenware, with a lid attached. These jars were deposited in rows of little niches sunk in the brickwork ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Vazir, and died in that charge a week after. A headless body, supposed to be that of the Bhao, was found some twenty or thirty miles off. The body, with that of the Peshwa's son, received the usual honours of Hindu cremation at the prayer of the Nawab Shujaa. Several pretenders to the name of this Oriental Sebastian afterwards appeared from time to time; the last was in captivity in 1782, when ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... by a soft cloth, it would be quite worn to dust before the kalpa would close: or, as some Christians believe, there may be but six thousand years, six days of God in whose sight "a thousand years are as one day," between the creation and the cremation of the world, from when it rose from the waters until it shall be consumed ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... entertainment following a large catch. Near the place where the tents had stood, at the mouth of a small stream not yet dried up or frozen, Dr. Stuxberg discovered some small mounds containing burnt bones. The cremation had been so complete that only one of the pieces of bone that were found could be determined by Dr. Almquist. It was a human tooth. After cremation the remains of the bones and the ash had been collected in ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... of Shelley and Byron; entered the navy as a boy, but deserted and took to adventure; met with Shelley at Pisa; saw to the cremation of his body when he was drowned, and went with Byron to Greece; was a brave, but a restless mortal; wrote "Recollections of the Last Days of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... [Cremation.] Funerals are likewise consecrated by similar offerings, the corpse remaining in the house until a slave can be procured, by purchase or otherwise, whom they design to behead at the time the body is ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... The cremation was a rite in its way, yet required only the saucer and two matches. The letter, when well torn, flamed nicely, only a few scraps holding out against immediate combustion. There was one little fragment on top, observable from ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with satin, with robe, etc.... All necessary service.... A hearse (or open car, as preferred) and four horses, three mourning coaches, with two horses each. Coachmen and attendants in mourning, with gloves. Superintendent, L38.... Estimates for cremation on application.... Broken column, in marble, L70. The same, with less carving, L48.' And so on, and so on; and at the top of every page: 'Hugo, Sloane Street, London. Telegraphic address: "Complete, London." Hugo, Sloane Street, London. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... dead man's use, and balls of rice were ready to be offered to his spirit after his cremation; for the Hindus think that an intermediate body must be formed and nourished, which on the thirteenth day after death is conducted to either heaven or hell, according to the deeds done on earth. The ceremonies were ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... he were to die, he felt that his father, if yet alive, should come forward and weep for him, even as Mrs. Paynter was weeping for Fifi down in the Second Front. He should stand out like a man and take from Buck's hand the solemn ceremonies of cremation. He tried to picture his father weeping near the incinerator, and failed, partly owing to the mistiness surrounding that gentleman's bodily appearance. He felt that his father was dodging his just responsibilities. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... constitutes a man, his body, his speech, his experience, is gone. We did not bring these things with us into the world and probably shall not take them away with us. What the body is, we see with our eyes, especially if we attend a cremation, or if in ancient graves we look into the urns which contain the grayish black ashes, whilst near by there sleeps in cold marble, as in the Museo Nazionale in Rome, the lovely head of the young Roman maiden, to whom two thousand years ago belonged these ashes, as well as the beautiful mansion that ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... of the most important conclusions of Rohde's Psyche, the work which most writers on the ideas of the Greeks and Romans have been content to follow. Mr. Lawson seems to me to have proved that the object of both burial and cremation (which in both peninsulas are found together) was to secure dissolution for the substance of the body, so that the soul might not be able to inhabit the body again, and the two together return to annoy the living (see especially chapters ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... avert the possibility of anything so dear remaining to excite our aversion or disgust, or becoming a pestilential agent, we would cordially encourage. There can be no doubt that use would soon render cremation as little disagreeable to the feelings as consigning the precious remains to slow decay and food for worms; and few will long be pained at the thought of mingling at once with the common earth and air, and returning to usefulness in other forms, after the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... heroes,—their unreturning sons, brothers, and fathers,—lying dead on the field. Then the pacification by Krishna of the wrath of Gandhari distressed at the death of her sons and grandsons. Then the cremation of the bodies of the deceased Rajas with due rites by that monarch (Yudhishthira) of great wisdom and the foremost also of all virtuous men. Then upon the presentation of water of the manes of the deceased princes having commenced, the story of Kunti's acknowledgment of Karna as her ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... preface to the volume, and seems to express a wish that the wonders here recorded could be possibilities of everyday life. But, if so, as Mr. Weller, Senior, observed, a propos of "there being a Providence in it," "O' course there is, SAMMY; or what 'ud become o' the undertakers?" And as to cremation—well, such an utter corporeal extinction would be the only way of putting an end to the terrestrial existence of Phra the Phoenician, who, however, "might rise," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, "like a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... ends! It is a long time since lovers who have ceased to love invented cremation! Nothing is ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Hindus, burn their dead, but the cremations are held only twice yearly, being observed as holidays, like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. If a man dies shortly before the cremation season is due, his remains are kept in the house until they can be incinerated with befitting ceremony—though I imagine that, in view of the torrid climate, the members of his family perforce move elsewhere for the time being—but if he is so inconsiderate as to postpone ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... portrayed in the mural paintings of his funeral chamber. In this scene which is painted immediately over the entrance of the chamber, where is also a life-size representation of his corpse prepared for cremation, the dead warrior is pictured stretched on the ground, his back resting on a large stone placed for the purpose of raising the body and keeping open the cut made across it, under the ribs, for the extraction of the heart and other parts it was customary to preserve. These are seen in ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... whatever else could haul a coffin. The Stock Market went completely mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was called into session early. The President got authority to ration lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation-short supply. State laws were passed against cremation, under heavy lobby pressure. A new ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... directly lead to the achievement of the highest samadhi. The processes of purification and strengthening of the mind continue in this stage also, but these represent the last attempts which lead the mind to its final goal Nibbana. In the first part of this stage the sage has to go to the cremation grounds and notice the diverse horrifying changes of the human carcases and think how nauseating, loathsome, unsightly and impure they are, and from this he will turn his mind to the living human bodies and convince himself that they being in essence the same as the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... mixture of the rational and the monstrous, he had been heard to rave like the utterly distraught. Recollection of some of the things he shouted, was an anguish: A notion came into the poor man, that he was the dead one of the two, and he cried out: 'Cremation? No, Colney's right, it robs us of our last laugh. I lie as I fall.' He 'had a confession for his Nataly, for her only, for no one else.' He had 'an Idea.' His begging of Dudley to listen without any punctilio (putting a vulgar oath before ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of cremation is now exceptionally low," announces a Sunday paper. Inexpensive luxuries are so rare in these days that one is tempted to give ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... teaching, of officiating at sacrifices, and of accepting gifts from others. Whether the Brahmana be cognisant of the Vedas or ignorant of them, whether they be pure or impure, they should never be insulted, for Brahmanas are like fires. As the fire that blazeth up in the place set apart for the cremation of the dead is never regarded impure on that account, so the Brahmana, be he learned or ignorant, is always pure. He is great and a very god! Cities that are adorned with walls and gates and palaces one after another, lose their beauty ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to the burning ghat, and from personal examination of cremation, I am able to express my preference for Christian burial. The business of burning the dead—for in India it is a business like any other, and belongs to a low caste—is carried on in the most heartless manner. A building is erected upon the river-bank, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie |
