Peter Utley Quotes

On the fortieth day after his death, we held the ceremony, and I performed for the very first time.

Biography is the best history.

Obituaries were among my favorite to write because they have elements no other news stories have - a story from start to finish with a proper conclusion.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

Every memorial in its time has a different goal.

I never go to funerals. To me a person is dead when he breathes for the last time. After that, your memories should be personal.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

A funeral eulogy is a belated plea for the defense delivered after the evidence is all in.

Now you may write the eulogy for my funeral.

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all

Whoever writes on world history, but not as a forensic history, becomes thereby an accomplice.

to participate in the funeral rights for tyranny.

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

I don't think you can erase history.

Funerals should celebrate a life.

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may.

When you build a memorial, you build it not because the person wanted it, but for the future -- for generations who didn't know the man and didn't know the era in which he lived.

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

History is a picture gallery where there are few originals and many copies.

Permit me also to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity & appropriateness, at the consecration of the cemetery. I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

We often do not get the first draft of history right.

Beyond being timely, an obituary has a more subjective duty: to assess its subject's impact.

The Government wants to give young people from every community the chance to learn about the heroism and sacrifice of our great-grandparents, which is why we are organising visits to the battlefields of the Western Front.

A funeral was a great form of entertainment. A wake was a great form of entertainment.