"Epitaph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my time, as soon it must, shall come, My epitaph perhaps might thus begin well: "He 'did his bit' upon the Indian drum; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... subject,[668] though not quite among his best, yet ring truer than the verse of Statius. And Martial's epitaphs and epicedia at their best have in their slight way an almost unique charm. We must go to the best work of the Greek Anthology to surpass the epitaph on Erotion (v. 34): ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... The Soldier's Consolation Genial Impulse Neither this nor that The way to behave The best As broad as it's long The Rule of Life The same, expanded Calm at Sea The Prosperous Voyage Courage My only Property Admonition Old Age Epitaph Rules for Monarchs Paulo post ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... these words engraven, as epitaph meet, O willow, willow, willow! 'Here lies one drank poison for potion most sweet,' O willow, willow, willow! O willow, willow, willow! Sing, O the green ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... moderate exercise of ill fortune might have corrected and reformed, and which was by the hande of heaven strangely punished, by bringinge his destruction upon him, by two thinges, that he most despised, the people, and S'r Harry Vane; In a worde, the Epitaph which Plutarch recordes, that Silla wrote for himselfe, may not be unfitly applyed to him; That no man did ever passe him, ether in doinge good to his frends, or in doinge mischieve to his enimyes, for his Actes of both kindes were ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... when at Jehovah's summons, heaving to the comet's mass, the pure and mighty sea rises indignant from its bed, by drowning to cleanse the foul and mighty land—how easy an engulfing of the corpses; how awful that universal burial; how apt their monumental epitaph written in water, "The wicked are like the troubled sea that cannot rest;" how dread the everlasting requiem chanted for the whelmed race by the waves roaring above them: yea, roaring above them still! for in that chaotic ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... himself his own nothingness; most of all, to annihilate pride; for the loftiest soul can comprehend that an atom,—say, of hydrogen,—which is proud of its personality, will never merge in a molecule of water. The familiar verse: "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" echoes Adam's epitaph to this day:— ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... honour. When the nation voted half a million to build that hideous mass of stone, the irregular and unsightly piling of which caused Walpole to say that the architect 'had emptied quarries, rather than built houses,' and Dr. Evans to write this epitaph for ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... westernmost of the two, again, has been held to be the burial-place of Thomas Cure, a local benefactor in the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, who is commemorated by a tablet within it. The Latin epitaph (1588) is a string of punning allusions to his name. The most recent theory, and the most probable, respecting the recesses, is that they mark the tombs of Priors belonging to the Tudor period. The easternmost now contains the effigy of a supposed Crusader, which, after ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... When he saw this epitaph, Angus's hair really stood on end with fright, and on the day he found that the boat was gone, leaving no trace, he became absolutely terror-stricken. He sought for it behind every rock and in every likely nook about the lake, consuming days in the quest, and was appalled on his next trip thither ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... "For many years we have been celebrating this day and looking at ourselves through Yankee eyes. To-night it is to be given us to see ourselves as others see us. We have with us one of whom it may be said, to paraphrase the epitaph in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Septimius,—a thoughtful preacher of God's word, taking severe but conscientious views of man's state and relations, a heavy-browed walker and worker on earth, and, finally, a slumberer in an honored grave, with an epitaph bearing testimony to his ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... member of the House having the slightest participation in his lordship's fears. Law remained for about four years in England, and then proceeded to Venice, where he died in 1729, in very embarrassed circumstances. The following epitaph was written at the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... epitaph," he declared. "Many a man has gone up to Heaven with a worse. Cheer up, my little Marguerite. A year or two more or less in a man's life is no great matter, and after all it was not one warning which this rash man received. You have not yet read ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from first to last wanting in sympathy, it is improbable that either the slender mention of her in the will or the barring of her dower was designed by Shakespeare to make public his indifference or dislike. Local tradition subsequently credited her with a wish to be buried in his grave; and her epitaph proves that she inspired her daughters with genuine affection. Probably her ignorance of affairs and the infirmities of age (she was past sixty) combined to unfit her in the poet's eyes for the control of property, and, as an act of ordinary prudence, he ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... told her that the mob had repented when they learnt the news. He had heard them cry: "Honour him!" and "A statue in the theatre!" and "Bring his body back,[106:1] bury him in Piraeus—Thucydides shall make his epitaph!" ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... have asked you to bury me in that pit at the top of Quill's Window,—that it was my whim, if you like. Close it up after you have placed me there and cover it with great rocks, so that Edward and I may never be disturbed. I want no headstone, no epitaph. Just the stones as they were hewn ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... success. The heroic Hernan Tello de Porto Carrero was killed in a sortie during the defence of the place which he had so gallantly won, and when the city was surrendered to the king on the 19th of September it was stipulated in the first article of the capitulation that the tomb, epitaph, and trophies, by which his memory was honoured in the principal church, should not be disturbed, and that his body might be removed whenever and whither it seemed good to his sovereign. In vain the cardinal had taken the field with an army of eighteen thousand foot and fifteen hundred light cavalry. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Oehlenschlager are the three dramatic luminaries of Denmark. The best production of Samsoe is the play of Dyveke, produced a few days after his death. Such was the enthusiasm it excited, that the following epitaph was proposed to be inscribed on his tomb, in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, 80 And hear the ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... To the left is the valley-side—that valley of the Resurrection—covered with tombs—flat, sturdy, short stones, each bearing a semblance, at least, of some short Hebraic epitaph, unmoved through heaven knows how many centuries! apparently immovable; the place, in this respect, being very unlike our more ornamental cemeteries. On his right was the Mount of Olives; a mount still of olives, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the dormitories. But perhaps underneath a board in No. 1 double dormitory there still repose that identical lemonade bottle and the roll-book with its blue cover, now sadly faded and its leaves turned up with age, to serve as Gordon's epitaph, when all his other deeds have perished ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... from an American woman's pen we must rely on Hannah F. Gould, who wrote many verses that were rather graceful and arch than witty. But her epitaph on her friend, the active and aggressive Caleb Cushing, is as good ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Erskine are said to have been the vainest men of their time. At a dinner some years since, Dr. Parr, in ecstasies with the conversational powers of Lord Erskine, called out to him, though his junior, "My Lord, I mean to write your epitaph." "Dr. Parr," replied the noble lawyer, "it is a temptation to ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... for Beth's sake. Laurie dug a grave under the ferns in the grove, little Pip was laid in, with many tears by his tender-hearted mistress, and covered with moss, while a wreath of violets and chickweed was hung on the stone which bore his epitaph, composed by Jo while she struggled with ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... said he, as Clarian came in, "how are you at this present writing? You look as if you had been dieting on Gamboge and Flake White. Take care, young man, or you'll put us students to the cost of a tombstone with a Latin epitaph for you, yet,—beginning, Interfecit se.—How comes on the Art? You've given the go-by to Ego and Non-Ego, I suppose, and have resolved to achieve the very [Greek: kudos] upon a ten-foot whitewashed wall, eh? Soit,—but what results? Can you say yet, as Correggio ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Carlsruhe, the capital of Baden, that Baron Edelsheim has composed his own epitaph, in which he claims immortality, because under his Ministry the Margravate of Baden ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... what thou reads, At Edinburgh lie our bodies, here our heads; Our right hands stood at Lanark, these we want, Because with them we signed the Covenant.' Epitaph on a Tombstone at ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... informed by the vicar of the parish, stood till about 1798. If so, however, it is very remarkable that the writer of an account of Horton in the Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1791, who speaks of Milton with veneration, and transcribes his mother's epitaph, does not allude to the existence of his house. Its site is traditionally identified with that of Berkyn Manor, near the church, and an old pigeon-house is asserted to be a remnant of the original building. The elder Milton was no doubt merely the tenant; his landlord is said to have been the Earl ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... The epitaph of John Kline is read without a doubt ever springing up in the mind of any one who knew him. We saw him, not as Elisha saw Elijah in sight, ascend to heaven; but with the eye of faith we saw him clothed in a celestial body; and with the ear of faith we heard the welcome: "Enter thou ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... piling of the barrow, which sometimes took whole days, as the size of many existing grass mounds assure us; the funeral feast, where an immense vat of ale or mead is drunk in honor of the dead; the epitaph, like an ogham, set up on a stone ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the Polar Seas; and twice subsequently he went again, venturing in small, ill-equipped vessels of thirty or forty tons into the most dangerous seas. These voyages were as remarkable for their success as for the daring with which they were accomplished, and Davis' epitaph is written on the map of the world, where his name still remains to commemorate his discoveries. Brave as he was, he is distinguished by a peculiar and exquisite sweetness of nature, which, from many little facts of his life, seems to have affected ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... England was to remain with the soil where Thomas Hodges fell, how many thousand stout bodies and brave hearts would again be laid in Flemish earth, and how many true soldiers would in my own day deserve my forbear's epitaph. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the bones of Venerable Bede." We know the old story how the pupil who was writing his dear master's epitaph could not find the right word, as it has happened to many a one for the time being; and how he slept and awoke to find the word supplied ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... resulted, embracing, as I say, the nearly contemporaneous settlement of Virginia,—what has resulted from the planting upon this continent of two or three slender colonies from the mother country? Gentlemen, the great epitaph commemorative of the character and the worth, the discoveries and glory, of Columbus, was, that he had given a new world to the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Gentlemen, this is a great mistake. It does ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... caesus videtur,' to prove, jestingly, that trial by jury was as old as the time of the first Caesar.—A newspaper panegyric on Fox, apparently from the pen of Dr. Parr, having been presented to his royal highness, he said that it reminded him of Machiavel's epitaph, 'Tanto nomini nullum Par eulogium.'—A cavalry officer, at a court ball, hammered the floor with his heels so loudly, that the prince observed, 'If the war between the mother country and her colonies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... of Merdon was judged worthy of a Latin epitaph, probably the work of a chaplain or of a Winchester scholar to whom ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... reproaches and pities him for his behavior. After this, we lose sight of Licentius in history, but a discovery made at S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura in December, 1862, tells us the end of the tale. A marble sarcophagus was found, containing his body, and his epitaph. This shows that Licentius died in Rome in 406, after having reached the end of his desires, a place in the Senate; and that he died a Christian, and was buried near the tomb of S. Lorenzo. This sarcophagus, ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... truth of which I am to refute upon his own authority. It is told, that, when a child of three years old, he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the eleventh of a brood, and killed it; upon which, it is said, he dictated to his mother the following epitaph: ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... gruel of acid Which she very obligingly ate, And at once with a touchingly placid Demeanor succumbed to her fate. With affection that passed the platonic They buried her under the moss, And her epitaph wasn't ironic In stating, "We mourn ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... if mine be better or be worse: Read and pronounce! The meed of praise is thine; But still let his be his and mine be mine. I say no more; but how can you for- swear Outspoken Jonson, he who knew me well; [106] So, too, the epitaph which still you read? Think you they faced my sepulchre with lies — Gross lies, so evident and palpable That every townsman must have wot of it, And not a worshipper within the church But must have smiled to see the marbled fraud? Surely this touches you? But if by chance My reasoning ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rifle. Which they shore does thin out them contestants plenty rapid! Boggs goes down before 'Theery,' spellin' it with a extra 'e.' Tutt lasts through three fires, but is sent curlin' like a shot jack-rabbit by 'Epitaph,' which he ends with a 'f.' Texas dies on 'Definite,' bein' misled by what happens to Tutt into introdoocin' tharin ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... And in her humble fortunes dwell secure. Indeed, what was she?—a poor soldier's girl, Merely a tenant's daughter. Times were changed, And life's bright web had sadder colors in 't: That most sweet gentle lady—rest her soul!— Shrunk to an epitaph beside her lord's, And six lines shorter, which was all a shame; Gaunt Richard heir; that other at earth's end, (The younger son that was her sweetheart once,) Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance; And all dear old-time uses ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... others, it is quite natural that a man, himself a phantom at the present day, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favor before history; this deposition, whatever else it may be, is evidently and above all things, entirely disinterested; an epitaph penned by a dead man is sincere; one shade may console another shade; the sharing of the same shadows confers the right to praise it; it is not greatly to be feared that it will ever be said of two tombs in exile: "This one flattered ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... finished his life by violence, or whether mere distaste of life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his epitaph, and the consistency of his end; dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind: and some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his place of burial, where the vast sea might weep for ever upon his grave, as ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford, on the 18th of September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where on a monument, for which, as the "last piece of human vanity," he left five hundred pounds, is engraven this epitaph:- ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... parched Argos whence kings...', and then the "Epigoni" in seven thousand verses beginning: 'And now, Muses, let us begin to sing of men of later days'; for some say that these poems also are by Homer. Now Xanthus and Gorgus, son of Midas the king, heard his epics and invited him to compose a epitaph for the tomb of their father on which was a bronze figure of a maiden bewailing the death of Midas. He ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of seventy-eight, while dwelling in a little house that he had bought in Carraia di San Francesco during his long sojourn there. This house he left at his death to his daughter; and, mourned by the whole city, he was honourably buried in the Campo Santo, with the following epitaph, which is ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... before its consummation; her second, the Infante of Spain, died immediately after their union; and her third, the duke of Savoy, left her again a widow after three years of wedded life. She was a woman of talent and courage; both proved by the couplet she composed for her own epitaph, at the very moment of a dangerous accident which happened during her journey into Spain to join ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... all pecuniary dealings. He had given deep offence to the royal family by venturing to entertain the hope that he might win the heart and hand of the Princess Anne. Disappointed in this attempt, he had exerted himself to regain by meanness the favour which he had forfeited by presumption. His epitaph, written by himself, still informs all who pass through Westminster Abbey that he lived and died a sceptic in religion; and we learn from the memoirs which he wrote that one of his favourite subjects of mirth was the Romish superstition. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... again erased that ever-recurring epitaph over Bryan's political grave. It was evident at once that nothing could prevent him from being again the candidate in 1908. Again he was defeated, and again the epitaph was jubilantly rewritten. He was extinguished, he would never again be an influence in the party; ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... there be one so stupid as not to know who built it, and what a great heart he had, and how he struggled to achieve a fortune, but always mastered that fortune, and never allowed the fortune to master him? What is a monument of Aberdeen granite beside a monument of intellect and souls? What is an epitaph of a few words cut by a sculptor's chisel beside the epitaph of coming generations and hundreds writing his praise? Beautiful and adorned beyond all the crypts and catacombs and shrines of the dead! But the superfluous and inexcusable ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... more devoted to animals than the rest of the family: the beautiful Angora, Kitty, died when Marty was five, from an abscess in her cheek, where she'd been bitten by a strange bull-terrier; and Marty tearfully wrote her epitaph ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... the church-yard, and when he saw his poor dog quit this world, he thought so wise a beast ought not to be without a grave, so he dug a hole near the door of his house, and in the church-yard, and there buried his dog. I do not know if he gave the dog a monument and an epitaph, I only know that the news of the good dog's death spread over the village, and at last reached the ears of the Bishop, together with the report that his master had ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... declared Mercy. "And at that, they say that somebody wished to change the epitaph on his tomb to read: 'Here lies George Washington—for ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... end of the Kappa, and my gallant friend, Commander Stephan. His best epitaph was in a corner of the same paper, and was headed "Mark ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... heart's content; Gatacre deserves well of his country. Had he dashed recklessly into this hornet's nest he would have sacrificed four-fifths of his gallant officers and a host of his men. Had I to write his military epitaph to-day I should say that "he won with brains what most generals would ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... this road, with you to lean upon—whom I see, when I would turn to look behind on that which I once was: it is another being, defunct and buried; and when I say to myself, 'that being did so and so,' it is like reading an epitaph on a tombstone. So, at last, solitary and hopeless, I came back to my own land; and I found you,—a blessing greater than I had ever dared to count on. And how was I to maintain you, and take you from that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... myself merry with this epitaph upon such a fool's tomb thus a—thus, thus: plague brought this man—foh, I have forgotten—O, thus, plague brought this man (so, so, so), unto his burial, because, because, because (hem, hem)—because he would not buy an urinal. Come, come, Auditus, shall we hear ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... theirs to triumph yet; but, where they stood, Falling, to dye the earth with brave men's blood For England's sake and duty. Be their name Sacred among us. Wouldst thou seek to frame Their fitting epitaph? Then let it be Simple, as that which marked Thermopylae:— "Tell it in England, thou that passest by, Here faithful to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... Read by Moonlight At a house in Hampstead A Woman's Fancy Her Song A Wet August The Dissemblers To a Lady Playing and Singing in the Morning "A man was drawing near to me" The Strange House "As 'twere to-night" The Contretemps A Gentleman's Epitaph on Himself and a Lady The Old Gown A night in November A Duettist to her Pianoforte "Where three roads joined" "And there was a great calm" Haunting Fingers The Woman I Met "If it's ever spring again" The Two Houses On Stinsford Hill at Midnight The ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... melancholy and her mournful memories. She talks to you about her last wishes, follows her own funeral, is buried, plants over her tomb the green canopy of a weeping willow, and at the very time when you would like to raise a joyful epithalamium, you find an epitaph to greet you all in black. Your wish to console her melts away in ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... low-spirited now, I was much pleased with your continuation of the "Essay on Epitaphs," [1] It is the only sensible thing which has been written on that subject, and it goes to the bottom. In particular I was pleased with your translation of that turgid epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a test. But what is the reason we have no ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... tomb, in St. Louis cemetery, with its epitaph of barely two words—'Adieu, Chapdelaine.' Who supplied ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... London, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence in the strength and number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in their numerous castles and manors of the west; their ample revenue was appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the epitaph of Edward, surnamed from his misfortune, the blind, from his virtues, the good, earl, inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... was behind now—always. He leaned his back against a bank, and felt that it stood above him, visibly out against the cold night-sky. He threw himself upon the road—on his back upon the road. At his head it stood, silent, erect, and still—a living grave-stone, with its epitaph in blood. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... asks us to curtail our consumption of bread by one-fourth. Here, at least, non-combatants have an opportunity of showing themselves to be as good patriots as the Germans and of earning the epitaph: "Much as he loved the staff of life, he loved his ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... be given as an example of a punning epitaph. It is found in St. Anne's churchyard, in the Isle of Man, and is said to have been written by Sir Wadsworth Busk, who was for many years ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... was mortally wounded. He called his successor and his associates to him, and at last, having omitted no detail of counsel or information that might enable them to carry out his far-seeing plans, he roused himself to dictate his own immortal epitaph: ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... sad story! Her epitaph in our cemetery is pathetic. With all her woe she was quick at repartee. A man once asked her, "Shall you ever marry, Sally?" "Well, yes, if you and I can make ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... And conquered,—and their spirits turned to clay: Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave, Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, 'We only truly live, but ye are dead.' Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace A dead soul's epitaph in every face! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that once glowed with the same passion that consumes themselves, they build a white marble tomb, or a green grass grave, and forget much they ought to remember—all profounder thoughts—while gazing on the epitaph of letters or flowers. 'Tis a vision to their senses, with which Imagination would fain seek to delude Love. And 'tis well that the deception prospers; for what if Love could bid the burial-ground ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Jests," printed in 1630, tells of one travelling through Stratford, "a town most remarkable for the birth of famous William Shakespeare." In the same year is said to have been written Milton's memorable epitaph (printed 1632), a noble testimony from the Puritan genius to the ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... The two April Mornings The Fountain, a conversation Nutting Three years she grew in sun and shower, &c. The Pet-Lamb, a Pastoral Written in Germany on one of the coldest days of the century The Childless Father The Old Cumberland Beggar, a Description Rural Architecture A Poet's Epitaph A Character A Fragment Poems on the Naming of Places, Michael, a Pastoral Notes to the Poem of The Brothers Notes ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... make so great a shew of Zeale. But let my fauours hide thy mangled face, And euen in thy behalfe, Ile thanke my selfe For doing these fayre Rites of Tendernesse. Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heauen, Thy ignomy sleepe with thee in the graue, But not remembred in thy Epitaph. What? Old Acquaintance? Could not all this flesh Keepe in a little life? Poore Iacke, farewell: I could haue better spar'd a better man. O, I should haue a heauy misse of thee, If I were much in loue with Vanity. Death hath not strucke so fat a Deere to day, Though many dearer ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of his own readers; and had gained transatlantic meed, in Tennyson's declaration that he was "the sonneteer of America!" And the yearning sorrow in all eyes that looked upon the fresh mound, above what was mortal of tender Henry Timrod, was more eloquent of worth than costly monument, or labored epitaph. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... rheumatism, and tears uncounted—are all asleep at present, but in graves how widely divided! One near London; one near Seringapatam; and the young lady, we suppose, in Ottery churchyard, but her offence, though beyond the power of Philosophy to pardon, is not remembered, we trust, in her epitaph! ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... despite certain objections on the score of temperance by that corrupt Radical, her father. From looking up to me too much she contracted an affection of the spine, and died about nine months ago. Now, sir, be good enough to run your eye over this Epitaph, which I have composed for the monument now erecting to ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... still stands the residence of General Prescott, who was carried away prisoner by his opponents, they having rowed down in whale-boats from Providence for the attack. Rochambeau, our French ally, lodged lower down in Mary Street. In the tower of Trinity, one can read the epitaph of the unfortunate Chevalier de Ternay, commander of the sea forces, whose body lies near by. Many years later his relative, the Duc de Noailles, when Minister to this country, had this simple tablet repaired and made a ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... had not some sense worth attending to. For one being asked to go and hear a person who imitated the nightingale to perfection, answered, "I have heard the nightingale herself." Another said, upon reading this epitaph, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... him in a manner that showed his desire that both should perish. Their corpses were taken out about a quarter of a mile down the river. As Balfour's grasp could not have been unclenched without cutting off his hands, both were thrown into a hasty grave, still marked by a rude stone and a ruder epitaph. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that this was writing his own epitaph, and it would appear so from the notices of the man in most of the biographies; but nothing could be further from the fact. Caleb Colton managed to KEEP his gambling fortune, and what is more, devoted ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... despite its unreason, in the way he accepts the inevitable, and later, after the discovery of the gold, spurns away both the chance of wealth and the human jackals whom it attracts. The same lordly scorn persists after him in the epitaph which he ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... all these depressing circumstances that Mr. Gladstone rose to defend himself and his colleagues. In a fine passage he thus described what the position of the Cabinet would have been if they had shrunk from their duty: "What sort of epitaph would have been written over their remains? He himself would have written it thus: Here lie the dishonored ashes of a ministry which found England at peace and left it in war, which was content to enjoy the emoluments of office and to wield the sceptre ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... who receive their incomes from railways or electric lighting plants; and the odor of gas stocks is unmistakable. Even the land, once the retreat of high birth and serene dignity, is beginning to exhale a miasma of corruption. "Enriched by unearned increment"—who wishes such an epitaph? A convention is to be held in a western city in this very year, to announce to the world that the delegates and their constituencies—all honest lovers of mankind—will refuse in future to recognize any ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the untimely demise of the Leghorn cock. She was a lady of secret enthusiasms which sheltered themselves behind habits of the most business-like severity. Her books were models of order, and as she neatly inscribed the Leghorn cock's epitaph, "Killed by hounds," she could not repress the compensating thought that she had never seen Freddy's dark eyes and olive complexion look so well as when he had tried on his ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... were uncovered in various parts of the grounds. The owner of the property, Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark, caused all the bones to be collected and buried at the foot of the mound. Some years afterward she marked the mound with the granite slab and its inscribed epitaph. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... canvas covering, and the wind roars in our rude log chimneys, while the jests go around and the song arises, thoughts of the battle fields of the past cross our minds—we recall the incidents of fierce conflicts—we say, there and there fell——, no nobler fellows ever lived! A blunt and hasty epitaph, but the desultory vicissitudes of a soldier's life permit no other—we expect no other for ourselves when our turn to follow you shall come. So we break out into ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... our wills."} (After these reflections we made ready to pay the last rites to the corpse,) and Lycas was burned upon a funeral pyre raised by the hands of enemies, while Eumolpus, fixing his eyes upon the far distance to gain inspiration, composed an epitaph ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Sapsea, a pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit at their wine, expecting a third guest. Mr. Sapsea reads his absurd epitaph for his late wife, who is buried in a "Monument," a vault of some sort in the Cathedral churchyard. To them enter Durdles, a man never sober, yet trusted with the key of the crypt, "as contractor ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... anecdotes of George Selwyn, Lafayette, and others. I saw them arrive in a coach-and-four and chaise-and-pair—two footmen, a page, and two maids. He said (what is true) that there is hardly such a thing in the world as a good house or a good epitaph, and yet mankind have been employed in building the former and writing the latter since the beginning almost. Came to town on Thursday, and in the afternoon heard the news of Huskisson's horrible accident, and yesterday morning got a letter from Henry with the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the dried-up, cauterized, wizened soul, taught by dread experience to be reticent and cautious, and to allow splendid opportunities to pass unutilized rather than risk the chances of one defeat. And the epitaph on these dead souls is: Foris ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... treacherous lamp. The day was unmarked therefore by anything to interest her imagination beyond the sight of a very elegant monument to the memory of Mrs. Tilney, which immediately fronted the family pew. By that her eye was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of the highly strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her by the inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other her destroyer, affected her even ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... that Michael Chamillard, the Minister of War, introduced billiards into France by the way of Versailles. He played with Louis XIV and pleased him greatly, but Chamillard was no statesman, as history and the following lines from his epitaph ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... poet is sunken to the level of the common earth, and is only marked by the quaintly lettered, simple stone bearing the famous epitaph. While at Rome I heard talk of another and grander monument which some members of the Keats family were to place over the dust of their great kinsman. But, for one, I hope this may never be done, even though the original stone should also be ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of his fellows, and in his own manners ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... hundred; but the oldest, best, and most celebrated of these is the inscription that was placed on their altar-tomb, written by the poet SIMON'IDES, of Ce'os. It consists of only two lines in the Original Greek. [Footnote: The following is the original Greek of the epitaph: O xeiu hangeddeiy Dakedaimouiois hoti taede keimetha, tois keiuoy hraemasi peithomeuoi.] All Greece for centuries had them by heart; but in the lapse of time she forgot them, and then, in the language ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... first person of quality to eat cheese-cakes in Spring Garden. There you have our epitaphs, if we in truth have earned an epitaph who have ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... forgotten it, as I have reason to remember. His mind lived ever among the dead. His tongue was pickled in maxims; his heart sunk in the brine of recollection; his humour not less unconscious and familiar than that of an epitaph; his name was Lemuel Framdin Force. To the public of his native city he had introduced Webster one fourth of July—a perennial topic of ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... days are up. The most I can hope is to beat him on this suit. That will make my Tecolote stock more valuable and maybe I can borrow the money to pay off the debt at the bank. But I'm busted, right now; I can see my finish. It's just a question of the epitaph the boys will put over my grave, and I want that to be: 'He did his damnedest!' Then I'll get out of town with whatever I have left and begin all over ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... permitted the Children to bury the little Dormouse, and desired one of them to write his Epitaph, and ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... void that can never be filled up by that small circle of men and women who might call themselves his friends. Ten years elapsed after the eventful morning when Slatin pronounced over his remains the appropriate epitaph, "A brave soldier who fell at his post; happy is he to have fallen; his sufferings are over!" before the exact manner of Gordon's death was known, and some even clung to the chance that after all he might have escaped to the Equator, and indeed ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... think, is the moment for the epitaph of anticipation over him, and the exclamation, alas! I would not be premature, but it is necessary to create some interest in him, and no one but a foreigner could feel it at present for the Englishman who is bursting merely to do like the rest of his countrymen, and rise above ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of water has evoked the usual comparison with Venice. Thomas Fuller, who for the sake of his usual sagacity may be forgiven an allusion so unfounded, says: "This mindeth me of an epitaph made on Mr. Francis Hill, a native of Salisbury, who died secretary to the English liege at Venice—'Born in the English Venice, thou did'st die, dear Friend, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... Middle Ages loved punning and playing upon the sound of words. Thus a brass to the memory of Thomas Hylle (or Hill) has some verses beginning "Mons in valle jacet." John Day, the printer, had a very extravagant and jocular epitaph beginning— ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... that sneaks into' [other men's portfolios, perhaps]—'is'—ay, what is he? Why he is, perhaps, a Knight of the Bath, has a sumptuous mansion in St. James's Square, dies full of years and honor, has a pompous funeral, and fears only some such epitaph as this—'Here lies, in a red ribbon, the man who built a great prosperity on the basis of a great knavery.' I complain heavily of Mr. Taylor, the very able unmasker of Junius, for blinking the whole questions B and C. He it is that has settled the question A, so that it will ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... while he lived; having acquired a competency by his labours, he retired to Stratford, and spent the remainder of his life in ease and retirement, like a private gentleman. His income was estimated at L200. The epitaph—not that on his monument, but on the rude stone actually covering his remains is to the following ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... The following epitaph which was placed over his grave was interpreted, according to the prepossessions of those who read it, either as a testimony to his sanctity or as a proof of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a monument in Elmhurst Church to the memory of his wife (a slab with urns and cherubs like illegitimate children of King George the Fourth, and all the rest of it), and had left space for his own epitaph underneath that of his wife. I do not know whether it was written by one of his children, or whether they got some friend to write it for them. I do not believe that any satire was intended. I believe that it was the intention to convey that ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... trees over the river" rather than there, and fell to repeating "Stonewall Jackson's Way,"—a very favorite lyric, which he knew by heart. "'Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God,' ought to be his epitaph. I think he would like that," he said. "I am glad England can claim such a son, however indirectly. Fancy 'Miss Mollie Bangs' leaving a card—and such a card—on old Blue-Light! A decent one might do for Beau Brummel's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Josephine wins me the hearts." These words of Napoleon are the most beautiful epitaph of the Empress Josephine, the much-loved, the much-regretted, and the much-slandered one. Even while Napoleon won battles, while with lofty pride he placed his foot on the neck of the conquered, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... in a letter to Mr. Pulteney: "I will do an unmannerly thing, which is to bequeath you an epitaph for forty years hence, in two words, ultimus Britannorum. You never forsook your party. You might often have been as great as the court can make any man so; but you preserved your spirit of liberty when your former colleagues had utterly sacrificed theirs; and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... railway accident, his remains, recovered without charge from the Hospital, had been buried somewhere in the scrap-heap. From this point of view alone he knew the End of the World; he was worthy of no other. His epitaph was appalling—too horrible to mention really. Tim composed it, but Uncle Felix distinctly said that it never, never must ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... went down to the shore he passed the poor turnip's new tomb. But Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid had taken away the epitaph about talents and precocity and development, and put up one of her own instead which ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... He needs no long and fulsome epitaph carved in marble to tell his worth. Did his memory depend upon that alone, the marble would crumble into dust, mingle with his, and his name pass away with the stone that man vainly thought would preserve it. No; his monument is a world made free, and his memory as lasting as immortal ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... roadside trees. Sitting in his saddle he watched the midnight wanderer, whose eccentric movements continued to cause him surprise. He saw the latter walk on to the little woodland cemetery, take stand by the side of a grave, bending forward as if to read the epitaph on its painted slab. Soon after kneeling down as in prayer, then throwing himself prostrate along the earth. Woodley well knew the grave thus venerated. For he had himself assisted in digging and smoothing down the turf that covered it. He had also been instrumental in erecting the frail ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the midnight bombardment ceased to be the town-talk. The trick was so audacious and on so grand a scale that nobody thought for an instant of connecting us lads with it. Suspicion at length grew weary of lighting on the wrong person, and as conjecture—like the physicians in the epitaph—was in vain, the Rivermouthians gave up the idea of finding out who ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was, in fact, a feminine man—shy, reserved, and wanting in energy,—but thoroughly irreproachable in life and character. The poet's mother maintained the family, after her unworthy husband had deserted her; and, at her death, Gray placed on her grave, in Stoke Pogis, an epitaph describing her as "the careful tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her." The poet himself was, at his own desire, interred beside ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Union, and his love for it had but increased in exile. He stood by Mr. Clay against the Southern Democrats in the angry contest of 1850, declaring that "if the Union must be dismembered" he "prayed God that its ruins might be the monument of his own grave." He "desired no epitaph to tell that he survived it." Against the madness of repealing the Missouri Compromise he entered a protest and a warning. He notified his Southern friends that the dissolution of the Union might be involved in the dangerous step. He alone, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... so died, surrounded by his wife and family. Wild legends grew about his death, but have no foundation. A peasant clod in San Casciano could not have made a simpler end. He was buried in the family Chapel in Santa Croce, and a monument was there at last erected with the epitaph by Doctor Ferroni—'Tanto nomini nullum par elogium.' The first edition of his complete works was published in 1782, and was ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... his duty like the officer and gentleman he was." Could any man have a finer epitaph? It is an extract from a letter written by Private J. Fairclough, Yorkshire Light Infantry, to General A. Wynn, and refers to the death of the General's son, Lieutenant G.O. Wynn, killed in action at Landrecies. The ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... epitaph produced a burst of public indignation that awed for a time even the infamous Kenrick into silence. On the other hand, the press teemed with tributes in verse and prose to the memory of the deceased; all evincing the mingled feeling of admiration for ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... nave of the collegial church of Ecouis, in the cross aisle, was found a white marble slab on which was inscribed this epitaph:— ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... sentence which I heard not long since about a recently deceased friend of the speaker's, and the like of which you have no doubt often heard and perhaps said, 'He is sure to be saved because he has lived so straight.' And at the foundation of that confident epitaph lay a tragical, profound ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... so nauseous[17] that one can only rejoice when, in the sixteenth century, the sponge is thrown up for good, and, abandoning all attempt to create, Europe settles down quietly to imitate classical models. All true creation was dead long before that; its epitaph had been composed by the master of the "Haute Oeuvre" at Beauvais. Only intellectual invention dragged on a sterile and unlucky existence. A Gothic church of the late Middle Ages is a thing made to order. A building formula has ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Review. I like the Americans, because I happened to be in Asia, while the English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers were redde in America. If I could have had a speech against the Slave Trade in Africa, and an epitaph on a dog in Europe (i.e. in the Morning Post), my vertex sublimis [3] would certainly have displaced stars enough to overthrow ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.—Ruskin. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Byron, from the solitude of his exile, turns his eyes again towards England; he sings. What does he sing? What springs from the mysterious and unique conception which rules, one would say in spite of himself, over all that escapes him in his sleepless vigil? The funeral hymn, the death-song, the epitaph of the aristocratic idea; we discovered it, we Continentalists; not his own countrymen. He takes his types from amongst those privileged by strength, beauty, and individual power. They are grand, poetical, heroic, but solitary; they hold no communion with the world around them, unless it ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Brothers. To the end of his life he steadfastly persisted that the rebellion was insidiously fanned, if not actually carried out, by a secret confederacy of all the verse-makers of the Empire, who were distrustful of his superior powers. He spent the years of his exile in composing a poetical epitaph to be carved upon his tomb, but his successor, the practical-minded Liu-yen, declined to sanction the expense of procuring so fabulous a ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... its Westminster Abbey, beneath whose clustered arches statesmen, philanthropists, warriors, and kings repose in a mausoleum, whither men repair to gaze at the monumental bust, the storied urn, and proud epitaph; but where is the mausoleum which preserves the names and virtues of those gentle, unobtrusive women—the heroines and comforters of the frontier home? In the East, the simple slabs of stone which record their names have crumbled ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... President, who had so endeared himself to all parties by his patience, wisdom and fidelity during his long and difficult term of service. Just before the fall of Richmond he uttered those ever-memorable words, his fitting epitaph: "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, and do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer |
