Dirge Quotes

By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung. (William Collins)

This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day; that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter, and the prophecy of coming spring.

Charlotte Brontë

Living, just by itself - what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting - or he'll come along and nibble your brain.[32].

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

[On the lyrics of his songs] They meant a lot to my generation. And it's nice to know you've written songs that mean something to someone rather than some trivial pop dirge. I'm not thriving off a career slagging off the Queen. I think I have something valid to say. My words are my bullets. I like to brag that somehow I got it right.

John Lydon

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Thomas Carlyle

Come! let the burial rite be read - the funeral song be sung! - An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young - A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

Edgar Allan Poe

Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross and hatred is the ballast of the rock which lies upon our necks and underfoot.

Maya Angelou

I'm thinking of being a professional mourner. How hard can it be? Tear at your hair, sing a dirge or two, take the rest of the week off.

Christopher Moore (author)

By fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there!

William Collins

Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Each look'd upon his comrade's face,
Pale as funereal stone ;
Yet none could touch the other's hand,
For none could feel his own.
Like statues fixed, that gallant band
Stood on the dread deck to die ;
The sleet was their shroud, the wind their dirge,
And their churchyard the sea and sky. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon)

Come Grief, and sing a solemn dirge Beneath this midnight shade; From central darkness now emerge, And tread the lonely glade.

Ann Eliza Bleecker

Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

Eric Hoffer