Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
Source identified
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
Read & copy the quotation
“Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.”

Mark Twain

Download image (JPG)

Source
Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Date
1894
Local voice
Epigraph / fictional source voice · Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Meaning

Meaning of “Why is it that we rejoice at a…”

Twain uses dark comedy to overturn conventional emotional assumptions, forcing the reader to notice that birth begins the difficulties of life while death ends them for the person concerned.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter IX epigraph; a darkly comic Calendar maxim about birth and death.

Primary / edition source ↗

Speaker context

Why the local voice matters

Twain presents this wording as a chapter-epigraph Calendar maxim. The Calendar is a fictional framing device / source voice rather than uncomplicated autobiography by Twain.

Customize your imageTen designs · Square or portrait · Preview and share
Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

DeepFunnyLifeLife Is ShortDeathPerspectiveWisdom About Life
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
They come weeping and go weeping—you only come laughing and go laughing.
Read & copy

“They come weeping and go weeping—you only come laughing and go laughing.”

Kahlil Gibran · The Madman · 1918
Meaning & context

The grave-digger’s observation uses dark humor to contrast conventional responses to death with a narrator who approaches the cemetery from another perspective.

Source details

The Madman, “The Grave-Digger”; the line is spoken by the grave-digger to the narrator.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
Read & copy

“As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.”

Publilius Syrus · The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus · 1856 translation
Meaning & context

Death strips away rank and status, emphasizing a condition shared by every person regardless of position or wealth.

Source details

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 1, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.
Read & copy

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.”

Walt Whitman · Song of Myself · 1855
Meaning & context

Death becomes continuity with nature rather than simple disappearance, connecting mortality with renewal, earth, and the lives that follow.

Source details

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 56 (Wikisource scan page 62). The line belongs to the poem’s final movement, later numbered section 52; the 1855 record remains tied to the unnumbered first edition rather than inheriting later section structure.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
Read & copy

“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”

George Santayana · Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies · 1922
Meaning & context

Mortality cannot be eliminated, so the practical answer is to make conscious use of the finite span between beginning and end.

Source details

Soliloquies in England, “War Shrines”; the sentence follows a contrast between strained worldliness and a more festive acceptance of life.

↓ Download image (JPG)