Quotes about epitaphs

Don't pity me now, don't pity me never; I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.

— James Agate

The epitaphs on tombstones of a great many people should read: Died at thirty, and buried at sixty.

— Nicholas Butler

Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.

— Lord Byron

Nor has his death the world deceiv'd than his wondrous life surprise d; if he like a madman liv'd least he like a wise one dy'd.

— Miguel De Cervantes

An epitaph is a belated advertisement for a line of goods that has been discontinued.

— Irvin S. Cobb

Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph -- green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.

— Cyril Connolly

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

— Paul Eldridge

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 rest in obscurity and peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character.

— Robert Emmet

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

— Robert Frost

Oh, write of me, not Died in bitter pains, but Emigrated to another star!

— Helen Hunt Jackson

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

— Samuel Johnson

The most touching epitaph I ever encountered was on the tombstone of the printer of Edinburgh. It said simply: He kept down the cost and set the type right.

— Gregory Nunn

If men could see the epitaphs their friends write they would believe they had gotten into the wrong grave.

— American Proverb

At last God caught his eye.

— Harry Secombe

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

— Gloria Swanson