Epitaphs Quotes and Quotation

are the inscriptions on headstones.

As many epitaphs are not written by the person who is being honoured, the format shall be as follows:

• Honouree (by author) - Year of birth - Year of Death
  • Text of Epitaph
    • More explanation text

Sorted alphabetically by lastname.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Unknowns

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= A =

• John Quincy Adams (by himself) - -
  • "This is the last of Earth! I am content!"

• Alexander the Great (unknown) -
  • "A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough"

• Gracie Allen and George Burns (themselves) -
  • "Together again."

• Duane Allman (unknown) -
  • "I love being alive and will be the best man I possibly can. I will take love wherever I find it and offer it to everyone who will take it. I will seek knowledge from those wiser and teach those who wish to learn from me."

• Susan B. Anthony (unknown) -
  • "Liberty, Humanity, Justice, Equality"

=B=

• Jakob Bernoulli (by himself) - -
  • "Eadem mutata resurgo"
    • Though changed I shall arise the same

• Billy the Kid (unknown) -
  • "Truth and History.
    21 Men.
    The Boy Bandit King
    He Died As He Lived
    William H. Bonney 'Billy the Kid'"

• Mel Blanc (by himself) -
  • "That's all, folks!"

• William Bligh (unknown) -
  • "Sacred
    To The Memory Of
    William Bligh, Esquire F.R.S.
    Vice Admiral Of The Blue,
    The Celebrated Navigator
    Who First Transplanted The Breadfruit Tree
    From Otahette To The West Indies,
    Bravely fought The Battles Of His Country
    And Died Beloved, Respected, And Lamented
    On The 7th Day Of December, 1817
    Aged 64"

=C=

• Al Capone (by himself) -
  • "My Jesus, mercy"

=D=

• Bette Davis (unknown) -
  • "She did it the hard way"

• Jefferson Davis (unknown) -
  • "At Rest
    An American Soldier
    And Defender of the Constitution"

• Emily Dickinson (herself) -
  • "Called back"

• Arthur Conan Doyle -
  • "Steel-true and blade-straight
    The great artificer
    Made my mate."

=E= =F=

• W.C. Fields (unknown) -
  • "W. C. Fields 1880 - 1946"
  • In a 1925 article in Vanity Fair Fields had proposed the epitaph "Here lies W.C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia." because of his long standing jokes about Philadelphia, and the grave being one place he might actually not prefer to be (he was actually born there). This is often repeated as "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia." which he might have stated at other times, and sometimes is distorted into a last dig at Philadelphia: "Better here than in Philadelphia." His actual tomb at Forest Lawn in Glendale, California simply reads "W. C. Fields 1880 - 1946".

• F. Scott Fitzgerald (himself; from The Great Gatsby) -
  • "So we beat on, boats, against
    the current, borne back
    ceaselessly into the past."

• Benjamin Franklin (himself) -
  • "The Body of
    B. Franklin, Printer
    Like the Cover of an old Book
    Its Contents turn out
    And Stript of its Lettering & Guilding
    Lies here. Food for Worms
    For, it will as he believed
    appear once more
    In a new and more elegant Edition
    corrected and improved
    By the Author

• Robert Frost (himself) -
  • "I had a lover's quarrel with the world"

=G=

• (unknown) -
  • "For God And His Country
    He Raised Our Flag In Battle
    And Showed A Measure Of His
    Pride At A Place Called "Iwo Jima"
    Where Courage Never Died"

• Jackie Gleason (himself) -
  • "And away we go!"

=H=

• Winifred Holtby (by herself) - -
  • "God give me work while I may live, and life till my work is done."

=I= =J=

• George Johnson (unknown) -
  • Here lies George Johnson
    Hanged by mistake, 1882
    He was right
    We was wrong
    But we strung him up
    And now he's gone

• Carl Jung (unknown) -
  • "VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS
    DEUS ADERIT"
    • Invoked or not invoked, God will be present.

=K=

• John Keats (by himself) - -
  • "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

• Kent (by himself) -
  • "Grim death took me without any warning
    I was well at night and dead at nine in the morning"

=L=

• Jack Lemmon (30's/40's Hollywood Comedian) (by himself) -
  • "In"

• Charles Lindbergh and Anne Lindbergh (Psalm 139:9) -
  • "If I take the wings of the morning
    and
    dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea"

• Jack London (unknown) -
  • "The Stone the Builders Rejected"

• Howard Phillips Lovecraft (unknown) -
  • "I am Providence"

• Bela Lugosi (his children) -
  • "Beloved father"

=M=

• Rob Roy MacGregor (unknown) -
  • "Despite them"
    • At the time of Rob Roy's fame, the MacGregor name became banned and was never allowed to be heard or seen by law. The epitaph phrase in full, "Rob Roy MacGregor, despite them" is a last standing testament to defy that law.

• Roger Maris (unknown) -
  • "61/61
    Against all Odds"

• Karl Marx (unknown) -
  • "Workers of all lands unite. The philosophers have only
    interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

• George McDonald (Scottish Children's Writer) (by himself) -
  • "Here lie I Martin Elginbrodde.
    Have mercy on my soul Lord God
    As I would do were I Lord God
    And ye were Martin Elginbrodde"

• H. L. Mencken (by himself) - -
  • "If after I depart this vale you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wink your eye at some homely girl"

• Spike Milligan (by himself) - -
  • "I told you I was ill!"
    (written in Irish, Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite, to avoid offending sensitive readers, at least those who don't read Irish)

• Lester Moore (unknown) -
  • HERE LIES
    Lester Moore
    four slugs
    from a 44
    no less
    no more

• Audie Murphey (unknown) -
  • "MEDAL OF HONOR
    DSC - SS & OLC
    LM - BSM & OLC
    PH & 2 OLC"

=N= =O= =P=

• Dorothy Parker (by herself) -
  • "Excuse my dust"

• Penn and Teller (by themselves) -
  • "Is this your card?" and a graphic of a card of the 3 of clubs.
    • From the Book "Penn and Teller's How to play in traffic" ISBN 1572972939 - Penn and Teller bought an Epitaph without a grave and placed it in the Hollywood Cemetary. They invite people touring there to use it to surprise their friends as a punchline for a card trick.

• Fernando Pessoa (himself) -
  • "I was that which I am not" (in original Portuguese: "Fui o que não sou")

• Allan Pinkerton (unknown) -
  • "A friend to honesty and a foe to crime"

• Edgar Allan Poe (himself) -
  • "Fly
    Quoth the Raven,
    'Nevermore.'"
    • From his poem "The Raven"

• Fritiof Nilsson Piraten (by himself) - -
  • "Här under är askan av en man som hade vanan att skjuta allt till morgondagen. Dock bättrades han på sitt yttersta och dog verkligen den 31 januari 1972."
    • Text in Swedish, roughly translated "Here lies the dust of a man who had the habit to postpone everything. He bettered at last and died really 31st of January 1972."

=Q= =R=

• Will Rogers (himself) -
  • "If you live life right
    death is a joke
    as far as fear is concerned"

• Babe Ruth (Cardinal Spellman) -
  • "May
    That Divine Spirit
    That Animated
    BABE RUTH
    to Win the Crucial
    Game of Life
    Inspire the Youth
    of America"

=S=

• William Shakespeare - baptized April 26, - April 23,
  • "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
    To dig the dust enclosèd here.
    Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
    And cursed be he that moves my bones."
    • It was not unusual, at the time of Shakespeare's death, for corpses to be removed from graves and burnt allowing for the reuse of the grave site. Shakespeare's grave remains undisturbed.

• Robert Louis Stevenson (by himself) - -
  • "Here he lies where he longed to be;
    Home is the sailor home from the sea,
    and the hunter home from the hill."

• Jonathan Swift (unknown) -
  • "Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift,
    Professor of Holy Theology, for thirty
    years Dean of this cathedral church,
    where savage indignation can tear his
    heart no more. Go, traveller, and if you
    can imitate one who with his utmost
    strength protected liberty. He died in the year 1745, on the 19th of October,
    aged seventy-eight"

• Lucius Cornelius Sulla (by himself) died
  • "No better friend - No worse enemy"

=T= =U=

• Peter Ustinov (suggested by himself) - -
  • "Do not walk on the grass"
    • According to an obituary in DIE ZEIT, Ustinov's answer to the question what he would like to see written on his headstone.

=V= =W=

• H. G. Wells (himself) - -
  • "I told you so, you damned fools."

• Oscar Wilde (himself) -
  • "And alien tears will fill for him
    Pity's long-broken urn,
    For his mourners will be outcast men,
    And outcasts always mourn."
    • From

• Hank Williams (his wife) -
  • "Thank you for the love you gave me
    There could be nobody stronger
    Thank you for many beautiful songs
    They will live long, and longer

• Christopher Wren (unknown) -
  • LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE
    (Reader, if you seek his monument look around)
    • Wren is buried in St Paul's Cathedral, London, which he designed.

• Virginia Woolf (herself) -
  • "Against you I will fling myself
    unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"

=X= =Y=

• W. B. Yeats (by himself) -
  • "Cast a cold eye
    On life, on death.
    Horseman, pass by!"
    • This epitaph is from Under Ben Bulben, one of Yeats' last poems. The last section of Under Ben Bulben describes Yeats' resting-place-to-be. See W.B. Yeats at Wikisource

=Z= =Unknowns=

• [Unknown] adult's grave in Rome, Italy
  • "Quello che siete fummo, quello che siamo sarete"
    • Translation: "What you are we were and what we are you will become"

• [Unknown] child's grave in Miami, FL (by Edmund Waller)
  • "What small amount of time they share
    Who are so wondrous sweet and fair"
    • From Waller's poem "Go, Lovely Rose"

• Unknown Infant (unknown author) -
  • "Since I am so quickly done for
    I wonder what I was begun for?"

• Unknown soldiers
  • HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD
    • Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

(See also Famous last words)

You Can Find quotes about Epitaphs, Famous quotes on Epitaphs, Quotation from Epitaphs.

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