Embalming Quotes

• Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.

  William Hazlitt

  Friendship, Gone, Substance

  William Hazlitt (1889). “William Hazlitt, Essayist and Critic: Selections from His Writings with a Memoir, Biographical and Critical”

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• Nothing is more detestable to the physical anthropologist than... the wretched habit of cremating the dead. It involves not only a prodigal waste of costly fuel and excellent fertilizer, but also the complete destruction of physical historical data. On the other hand, the custom of embalming and mummification is most praiseworthy and highly to be recommended.

  Earnest Hooton

  Hands, Data, Historical

  16 Copy quote

• Paperwork is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists.

  Robert H. Meltzer

  Maintaining, Appearance, Fluid

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• I have one last request. Don't use embalming fluid on me; I want to be stuffed with crab meat.

  Woody Allen

  Meat, Use, Want

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• I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons in such a manner that they may be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to any ordinary death the being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine with a few friends till that time, to be then recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!

  Benjamin Franklin

  Country, Wine, America

  Benjamin Franklin (1815). “The works of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin: consisting of his Life, written by himself. Together with humorous, moral and literary essays, chiefly in the manner of the Spectator. Among which are several not in any American edition”, p.199

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• The Egyptians had a particularly nasty way of getting rid of people they felt had no consequence. Instead of embalming them, they simply constructed a fake mummy made from old strips of linen wrapped around a dummy of mud. If, in our modern world, you feel that there are a lot of "mud mummies" around you, get rid of the mud.

  Perry Brass

  People, Fake, World

  Perry Brass (1998). “The Lover of My Soul: A Search for Ecstasy and Wisdom”, p.27, Perry Brass

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• To waste! You are unknown and unwanted, save by me. This, because you are fairly adept at the various embalming arts and you occasionally compose a clever epitaph.

  Roger Zelazny

  Art, Clever, Waste

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• As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Depression, Sight, Appearance

  P. G. Wodehouse (2015). “Right Ho, Jeeves”, p.76, Booklassic

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• The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.

  William Hazlitt

  Friendship, Corpses

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• Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. the earth welcomes the body-coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption.

  Emily Carr

  Men, Giving, Lovely

  Emily Carr, Doris Shadbolt (1993). “The Emily Carr Omnibus”, University of Washington Press

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• Presidential ambition is a disease that can only be cured by embalming fluid.

  John McCain

  Ambition, Presidential, Disease

  "Not Bad At All". "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren, texags.com. April 26, 2002.

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• The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it.

  Antonin Artaud

  Race, Europe, Law

  Antonin Artaud (1968). “Collected works”, Calder Publications Limited

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