Eulogies

A eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person(s) or thing(s), especially one who recently died or retired or as a term of endearment.

Quotes

• EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• How is one to explain the contradiction illustrated by that orator? Is it because Abraham had a prescriptive right to be a great man, so that what he did is great, and when another does the same it is sin, a heinous sin? In that case I do not wish to participate in such thoughtless eulogy. If faith does not make it a holy act to be willing to murder one's son then let the same condemnation be pronounced upon Abraham as upon every other man.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, "Problemata:Preliminary Expectoration", pp. 41, (published in 1843; Princeton University Press 1973 Edition).

• Memory, about the futile struggle to remember. It’s a eulogy to all the people who flee the terrible conditions in their home countries, desperately hoping for a better life here, and never make it.
  • Achy Obejas, on her story “The Collector” in the short story collection The Tower of the Antilles in "Q&A: ACHY OBEJAS ON BEING CUBAN-AMERICAN, SEXUALITY, EXILE, AND HER SHORT STORIES" (August 3, 2017).

• La satire ment sur les gens de lettres pendant leur vie, et l'éloge ment après leur mort.
  • Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
  • Voltaire, Lettre à Bordes (10 January 1769).

• The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question “Is what she says true?”
  • Simone Weil, Letter to her parents, 1943.