Quotes about Epitaphs

Lucius Cornelius Sulla

No better friend, no worse enemy

Mario Cuomo

People asked me what I want as an epitaph: "He Tried".

J. M. Edmonds

When you go home, tell them of us and say, “For tomorrow these gave their today.”

William H. Herndon

Now let it be written in history and on Mr. Lincoln's tombstone: 'He died an unbeliever.’

Historians have different as to the extent of Lincoln’s religiosity. He was a deist but did not involve himself as a parishioner in any organized church. There are those who believe that once into the Presidency, in order to garner support he concealed his true feelings about organized religion. See {586289} for example. Others take him literally at his word in his more religious statements.

Honore de Balzac

Let a man rise to power, and he has as many virtues as will furnish an epitaph. Let him fall from power, and he has more vices than the Prodigal Son.

Ambrose Bierce

R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of "requiescat in pace", attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than "reductus in pulvis".

William Shakespeare

No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth

Edward Abbey

Epitaphs for a gravestone: 'Please: no hooliganism'; or 'Es prohibe se hace agua aqui'; or 'No comment'.

Robert G. Ingersoll

It is almost impossible to overtake, and kill, and bury a lie. If you do, some one will erect a monument over the grave, and the lie is born again as an epitaph.

Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.

Paul Eldridge

Reading the epitaphs, our only salvation lies in resurrecting the dead and burying the living.

Benjamin Franklin

Lies here food for the worms yet the work shall not be lost.

Mark Twain

Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more.

William Shakespeare

Either our history shall with full mouth
Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipped with a waxen epitaph.

Mark Twain

If you take epitaphs seriously, we ought to bury the living and resurrect the dead.

Ouida

Histories in blazonry and poems in stone.

Mary Wilson Little

The tombstone is about the only thing that can stand upright and lie on its face at the same time.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!

Benjamin Jowett

Nowhere probably is there more true feeling, and nowhere worse taste, than in a churchyard - both as regards the monuments and the inscriptions. Scarcely a word of true poetry anywhere.

Thaddeus Stevens

I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: "Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color.

This was not what was inscribed on his gravestone when he died. See {639151} for the actual text.

Octavio Paz

Poet: gardener of epitaphs.

Epitaphs Quotes