Body Quote by Emily Carr

“Left to their own devices, human bodies rot, decompose, come apart, and sink gloriously back into the earth from whence they came. Using embalming…

— Caitlin Doughty

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. . . . How beautifully they go to their graves!…

— Henry David Thoreau

Nothing is more detestable to the physical anthropologist than... the wretched habit of cremating the dead. It involves not only a prodigal waste of…

— Earnest Hooton

Nature is honest, we aren't; we embalm our dead.

— Ugo Betti

“Every culture has death rituals with the power to shock the uninitiated and challenge our personal web of significance—from the Wari’ roasting the flesh…

— Caitlin Doughty

The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.

— Philip Sheridan

“There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unkown, secret place. The old…

— Luther Standing Bear

The Indian idea is that the soul is formless. Whatever is form must break some time or other.

— Swami Vivekananda

The great mistake these people make is that they go to looking after the spiritual welfare of the Indians before securing their physical.

— George Crook

“Dead people look very, very dead. It is difficult to grasp what that means, since it’s unlikely that any of us will stumble across…

— Caitlin Doughty

“People have rituals for communing with the dead, rituals that depend more on the idiosyncrasies of the individual than on the influence of culture.…

— Barry Eisler

“If you really try to know the Hindus you will observe that all castes have several very formal ceremonies. Three are most important. Twelve…

— Sam Wellman