I commend thy soul to God, and thy body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men.

If I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the Lord's hand made me of this dust, and the Lord's hand shall re-collect these ashes; the Lord's hand was the wheel upon which this vessel of clay was framed, and the Lord's hand is the urn in which these ashes shall be preserved. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul. And being so, the breath of God, I may breathe back these pious expostulations to my God:

I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul.

God's love claims him whose heart is reduced to ashes for Him.

Some, finding many fragments of skulls in these urns, suspected a mixture of bones; in none we searched was there cause of such conjecture, though sometimes they declined not that practice. — The ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia; of Achilles with those of Patroclus. All urns contained not single ashes; without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn, and touch but in their manes. And many were so curious to continue their living relations, that they contrived large and family urns, wherein the ashes of their nearest friends and kindred might successively be received, at least some parcels thereof, while their collateral memorials lay in minor vessels about them.

As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.

This is very pretty," said Elizalde...
"It's morbid," snapped Sullivan. "Burying a bunch of dead bodies, and putting a fancy marker over each one so the survivors will know where to go and cry. What if the markers got rearranged? You'd be weeping over some stranger. Not some stranger, even, some cast-off dead body of a stranger, like a pile of fingernail clippings or old shoes, or the dust from inside an electric razor. What's the difference between coming out here to think about dead Uncle Irving, and thinking about him in your own living room? Okay, here you can sit on the grass and be only six feet above his inert old body. Would it be better if you could dig a hole, and sit only one foot above it?" He was shaking. "Everybody should be cremated, and the ashes should be tossed in the sea with no fanfare at all."
"It's a sign of respect," said Elizalde angrily. "And it's a real, tangible link. Think of the Shroud of Turin! Where would we be if they had cremated Jesus?"
"I don't know—we'd have the Ashtray of Turin.

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.

May make my heart as a milestone, set my face as a flint, cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.

Vulcan, the god who had forged his armour,
had fired his body to ashes; all that remained of Achilles
the great was a small amount of material, barely sufficient
to fill an urn. But his fame lives on to fill the expanse
of the whole wide world. His glory measures up to the man;
it matches his noble self, untouched by shadowy Hades.

There existed long ago in Tibetan, Indian, and partly also in Chinese Buddhism the idea that the religious practice of meditation serves the goal of producing within the still-living and mortal body the diamond body into which you move, so to speak. Already in this lifetime you use your diamond body more and more as a dwelling place, so that at the moment of death, like a skin which falls off from a fruit, this mortal body falls away and the glorified body -or in Eastern language, the diamond body- is already there. The glorified body, a sort of immortal substance as carrier of the individual personality, is already produced by religious practice during one's lifetime. This same idea, which is strange to official Christian teaching, does come up vigorously in alchemical philosophy. The alchemists, too, strove from the beginning to produce such a glorified or diamond body, and Christian alchemists from the beginning identified it with the glorified body. In order to build up this glorified body, called the philosopher's stone, you must repeat the whole process of creation.

Beneath, a sleeping infant lies, </br> To earth whose ashes lent, </br> More glorious shall hereafter rise, </br> Though not more innocent. When the arch-angel's trump shall blow, </br> And souls and bodies join, </br> What crowds will wish, their lives below </br> Had been as short as thine!

To thee, to thee, my fire! Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years. If my life were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of ashes.