In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration. Tortilla Flat

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain. The Karamazov Brothers

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch--a rope over an abyss. Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct. Mansfield Park