The quote index

Remembrance

Lines that hold a life through the effect it had on others.

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?”

— Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne

“A life continues in the choices it taught other people to make.”

— ToastBuddy original

“Of the people, by the people, for the people.”

— Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

“I recognize our family in a gesture I make before I have time to think.”

— ToastBuddy original

“Sometimes a recipe brings back a voice as clearly as a recording.”

— ToastBuddy original

“I am glad we saved the small stories, because today they give us somewhere to sit with our grief.”

— ToastBuddy original

“I still catch myself asking the question they would have asked first.”

— ToastBuddy original

“No single speaker can hold a whole life; each of us has brought a piece of it.”

— ToastBuddy original

“Let us make room for these memories next week, too, when there is no service to gather us.”

— ToastBuddy original

See the idea in motion

Speeches about remembrance

A study in compression: Abraham Lincoln turns remembrance into a shared promise in fewer than 300 words.

Whitman’s elegy for Lincoln makes space for public achievement and private grief to exist at the same time.

John McCrae opens remembrance with a precise place and a living detail before revealing the voices of the dead.