George Mikes Quotes

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can't go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones?

Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.

Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.

It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.

Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than is dung.

It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant. They hold that the souls of all who perish in battle or by the hands of the executioner are immortal. Hence a passion for propagating their race and a contempt for death. They are wont to bury rather than to burn their dead

Many people are surprised to hear that we have comedians in Russia, but they are there. They are dead, but they are there.

Our first stop was red square, the heart of Moscow - if Moscow has one.

Even if I wanted, I cannot do anything. When they die, we always send for their co-religionists. Muslims take the Muslim's body to bury it, Hindus come and take away the dead to be cremated and Christians come and bury their dead.

It is great fun dying in the United States of America. It is great fun first of all for the undertakers who make a wonderful living out of it but also for the deceased who suddenly becomes the centre of attention and fuss.

in the place I am from ... a grave is topped off with a huge mound of loose earth - carelessly, as if piled up in child's play, not serious at all - because death is just another way of being, and the dead will not stay put, and sometimes the actions of the dead are more significant, more profound, than their actions in life, and no structure of concrete or stone can contain them.

Death is the least civilized rite of passage.

Mr. Gorbachev has apparently stumbled onto one of the best-kept secrets in recent Soviet history: Communism doesn't work.

The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.

At my age I'm envious of a stiff wind.

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead?

People's clothes ought to be buried with them.

It was to be a short visit for the G-shevs. More than four days in the U.S. and Raisa's VISA card bill would shatter the fragile Soviet economy.

It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation.

There is no income tax in Russia. But there's no income.

I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead.... Tis well.