Quotes About Epitaph

“Augie: Does everybody else know?
T.C.: About my epitaph?
Augie: About me being gay, you gink-head hoser-face!
T.C. Not everybody. There's a night watchman at a Dunkin Donuts just outside of Detroit. He doesn't know yet.”

— Steve Kluger

“GERTRUDE (1964) Three men-her husband, a poet, and a young musician-love her, but because none of them will put his love for her before everything else in his live, she rejects them all, preferring to live celibate in Paris and devote herself to the life of mind. In an epilogue, grown old and still alone, she speaks her epitaph: 'I have known love.”

— Steven Jay Schneider

“Coelorum perrupit claustra.
He broke through the barriers of the skies.
[Herschel's epitaph]”

— William Herschel

“She is brave and strong and broken all at once. As she speaks it is as if her existence is no longer real to her in itself, more like a living epitaph to a life that was.”

— Anna Funder

“Of the many million pairs of grieving parents, we will never know how many felt that their sons had died for something noble, and how many felt what one British couple expressed in the epitaph they placed on their son's tombstone at Gallipoli: 'What harm did he do Thee, O Lord?”

— Adam Hochschild

“Live your epitaph”

— Zoe Weil

“I picture my epitaph: 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.”

— Paul Newman

“I hope that the epitaph of the human race when the world ends will be: Here perished a species which lived to tell stories.
We tell stories to strangers to ingratiate ourselves, stories to lovers to better adhere us skin to skin, stories in our heads to banish the demons. When we tell truth, often we are callous; when we tell lies, often we are kind. Through it all, we tell stories, and we own an uncanny knack for the task.”

— Lyndsay Faye

“I knew that I shouldn't have, but I did it all the same; and there you have my epitaph, or one of them, because my grave is going to require a monument inscribed on all four sides with rueful mottoes, in small characters, set close together.”

— Michael Chabon

“Epitaph.
Not next year, not the next one,
Not the year after that. But ages
From here,
Clad in love stained sleeping bags,
Dying with feet wrapped in endless
Shirts and pillow cases,
Crumbling with 99 flakes clutched
Between thumb and palm, dripping
Yellow cream from twig fingers,
Basking our white haired chests on
Green grassed parks under purple
Skies. Laughing over coffee after
Bath tubs of coffee have passed
Through our guts. Huddled, lonely,
Under heaped clothes, here lay us ...”

— Alan C. Martin

“He'd never played in Wrigley Field-the Cubs had still been out at old West Side Grounds when he came through as a catcher for the Cardinals before the First World War. But seeing the ballpark in ruins brought the reality of this war home to him like a kick in the teeth. Sometimes big things would do that, sometimes little ones; he remembered a doughboy breaking down and sobbing like a baby when he found some French kid's dolly with its head blown off. Muldoon's eyes slid over toward Wrigley for a moment. "Gonna be a long time before the Cubs win another pennant," he said, as good an epitaph as any for the park-and the city.”

— Harry Turtledove

“Si monumentum requiris circumspice
(If you seek his monument, look around.)
[Epitaph on Wren's tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral]”

— Christopher Wren

“Curiosity never killed this cat' - that's what I'd like as my epitaph”

— Studs Terkel

“He [Harpo] loved life and lived it joyously and deeply and that's about as good an epitaph as anyone can have.”

— Groucho Marx

“I wouldn't mind that as my epitaph.”

— Julie Andrews Edwards

“It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.”

— Alan Alda

“Well, Alexander thought, any minute now, one of the girls he had carelessly discarded was going to come by the barracks with a gun and blow his brains out and on his tombstone the epitaph would read, Here lies Alexander, who couldn't remember the name of any girl he had fucked.”

— Paullina Simons

“Let there be no inscription upon my tomb; let no man write my epitaph: no man can write my epitaph.”

— Robert Emmet

“Lest when I am gone you may be at a loss for an epitaph for me, let me give you one - He Fed Fevers.”

— Robert James Graves

“When I die, my epitaph should read: She Paid the Bills. That's the story of my private life.”

— Gloria Swanson

“EPITAPH OF JALALUDIN RUMI
When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.”

— Idries Shah

“One shouldn't write one's own epitaph. I hope people will remember me as one who did her best - and who wasn't an anachronism.”

— Margrethe II Of Denmark

“All things considered, the happiest epitaph to have etched on one's headstone is this: 'He never knew what hit him'.”

— Thomas Ligotti

“As when astronaut Mike Mulhane was asked by a NASA psychiatrist what epitaph he'd like to have on his gravestone, Mulhane answered, "A loving husband and devoted father," though in reality, he jokes in "Riding Rockets," "I would have sold my wife and children into slavery for a ride into space.”

— Mary Roach

“The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“Francis stared down at the Duchess of York's letter. He swallowed, then read aloud in a husky voice, "It was showed by John Sponer that King Richard, late mercifully reigning upon us, was through great treason piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this City."
As Margaret listened, the embittered grey eyes had softened, misted with sudden tears.
"My brother may lie in an untended grave," she said, "but he does not lack for an epitaph.”

— Sharon Kay Penman

“I didn't want my epitaph to read 'Here lies John Caudwell, billionaire.' I knew that wasn't enough. I've had a charitable instinct all my life, but working gave me no time for it.”

— John Caudwell

“If there's no sea-gull there's no meeting, Wicklow had said. No sea-gull means abort. That's my epitaph, thought Barley. 'There was no sea-gull, so he aborted.”

— John Le Carré

“Fatal accidents never happen because of just one mistake. It takes a whole chain of stupids lining up just so to put a full stop at the end of an epitaph.”

— Charles Stross

“It had been a bad trip ... fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz' final words from the heart of darkness: The horror! The horror! ... Exterminate all the brutes!”

— Hunter S. Thompson

“I tried to make sense of things. Now that I think about it, I have always tried. It could be my epitaph. LEO GURSKY: HE TRIED TO MAKE SENSE.”

— Nicole Krauss

“Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.”

— A.E. Housman

“If I hadn't decided on cremation and a scattering, I could have used the phrase as an epitaph on a chunk of stone or marble: "Tony Webster-He Never Got It." But that would be too melodramatic, even self-pitying. How about "He's on His Own Now"? That would be better, truer. Or maybe I'll stick with: "Every Day Is Sunday.”

— Julian Barnes

“Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, i remember, which he said should be carved in big letters in a wall of the grand canyon for the flying-saucer people to find was this:
WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT,
BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP.
only he didn't say doggone.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“Pure your gentle name, pure your fragile life,
bees, shadows, fire, snow, silence and foam,
combined with steel and wire and
pollen to make up your firm
and delicate being.
Pablo Neruda's epitaph for Tina Modotti”

— Pablo Neruda

“Once someone asked me, "What do you want to be your epitaph?" So I said, "Paulo Coelho died when he was alive.”

— Paulo Coelho

“Gun-wielding recluse gunned down by local police" isn't the epitaph I want. I am hoping for "Witnesses reported the sound up to two hundred kilometers away" or "Last body part finally located".”

— James Nicoll

“It is my fault, and the fault of everyone of my generation. I wonder what the future generations will say about us. My grandparents suffered through the Depression, World War II, then came home to build the greatest middle class in human history. Lord knows they weren't perfect, but they sure came closest to the American dream. Then my parents' generation came along and f***ed it all up - the baby boomers, the "me" generation. And then you got us. Yeah, we stopped the Zombie menace, but we're the ones who let it become a menace in the first place. At least we're cleaning up our own mess, and maybe that's the best epitaph to hope for. 'Generation Z, they cleaned up their own mess.”

— Max Brooks

“I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world; it is-THE CHARITY OF ITS SILENCE. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my name remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.”

— Robert Emmet

“Lots of people can have girlfriends. But I can throw around guitars onstage! That'll be my epitaph: 'He never had a girlfriend, but you should've seen him smash a Les Paul!'”

— Trent Reznor

“I have only one ambition left: I should like to have a good epitaph.”

— Otto Von Bismarck

“A journalist once asked me what I would like my epitaph to be and I said I think I would like it to be 'He did very little harm'. And that's not easy. Most people seem to me to do a great deal of harm. If I could be remembered as having done very little, that would suit me.”

— Paul Eddington

“I wish to have as my epitaph: 'Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.'”

— Andrew Carnegie

“My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat.”

— Studs Terkel

“Epitaph on a scolding wife by her husband: Here my poor Bridget's corpse doth lie, she is at rest - and so am I!”

— Benjamin Franklin

“At the party, Rob Partridge said to me, "You gave hope to other balding men." My new epitaph: "Co-wrote a couple of decent songs and went bald shamelessly.”

— Brian Eno

“The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: 'If you seek his monument, look around.'”

— Ludwig Von Mises

“After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”

— William Shakespeare

“Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true.”

— Henry David Thoreau