"Epitaph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 into the dust of the churchyard. In the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and at the suggestion of my friend, the Editor of this Series, that I undertook to attempt to help posterity in the difficult business of knowing what to add to Hume's epitaph; and I might, with justice, throw upon him the responsibility of my apparent presumption in occupying a place among the men of letters, who are engaged with him, in their proper function of writing about ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... been beautiful"—"he has been great," "Rome has been powerful," we sigh and say. It is the pitying crust we toss decay, The dirge we breathe o'er some degenerate state, An epitaph for fame's unburied dead. God pity those who live ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to think that fifty years sounded like a long time to live together, but now it seemed to him that they might pass in a flash. Then, with a sudden dart of irony, he wondered if, when their turn came, the same epitaph would be written over him ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... "Nov. 20th." and the figures 16— marking the century, were really tolerably distinct. Accordingly, Sir John wrote a brief notice of Butler's Life, dwelling much upon his well-known poverty, and quoting his epitaph, with the allusion to his indigence underscored, "lest he who living wanted all things, should, when dead, want a tomb," and placed these remarks opposite the letter of our starving poet, which was registered ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... examining with much interest the monuments, statues, and tablets, erected in honor of celebrated English poets, artists, soldiers, naval heroes, and statesmen, and seeking out the famous epitaph of the noble architect, and the great and good man, Sir Christopher Wren. This is in Latin, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... concluded Hippy, "and the habit became so firmly fixed with him that he even rose and chased them in his sleep. He lost flesh at an alarming rate, and three months after his wedding day they laid him to rest in the quiet churchyard, with the touching epitaph over him, 'Things are not what ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... down any old volume of chemical research you will find occasionally words to this effect: "The reaction resulted in nothing but an insoluble resin which was not further investigated." Such a passage would be marked with a tear if chemists were given to crying over their failures. For it is the epitaph of a buried hope. It likely meant the loss of months of labor. The reason the chemist did not do anything further with the gummy stuff that stuck up his test tube was because he did not know what to do with it. It could not be dissolved, it could not be ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... great figure; if I go to pieces, those who know me will say: 'He was an upstart; he was a thief.' Or perhaps they may say that I was a poor sort, because men who have the ambition to be social forces never get an unprejudiced epitaph." ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... 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 her ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... plates. Beneath these appeared the rent-roll of his estates, written in various colours on white vellum, and beneath that, scratched on the marble in faint irregular characters, was no less an object than his own epitaph, composed by himself. It may ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... have chiseled on my stone the words: "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him That nature might stand up and say to all the world, This was a man." Those who knew me smile As they read this empty rhetoric. My epitaph should have been: "Life was not gentle to him, And the elements so mixed in him That he made warfare on life In the which he was slain." While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph Graven by ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... brought up in the provinces and never parted from her mother. Pious, though far from sanctimonious, she had no other education than that given to women by the Church. Judged, by ordinary standards, she was an accomplished wife, yet her ignorance of life paved the way for great misfortunes. The epitaph on the Roman matron, "She did needlework and kept the house," gives a faithful picture of her simple, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... pile; cremation. funeral, funeral rite, funeral solemnity; kneel, passing bell, tolling; dirge &c. (lamentation) 839; cypress; orbit, dead march, muffled drum; mortuary, undertaker, mute; elegy; funeral, funeral oration, funeral sermon; epitaph. graveclothes[obs3], shroud, winding sheet, cerecloth; cerement. coffin, shell, sarcophagus, urn, pall, bier, hearse, catafalque, cinerary urn[obs3]. grave, pit, sepulcher, tomb, vault, crypt, catacomb, mausoleum, Golgotha, house of death, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Wren must have had, and what a monument to his genius this gigantic pile is. No wonder he wanted this epitaph put on his tomb: ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... beloved 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 left there, as was intended. Let the world still keep ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... discoveries by letting go that clue of conformity in his thinking which he had kept fast hold of in his tailoring and manners. He regarded heterodoxy as a power in itself, and took his inacquaintance with doctrines for a creative dissidence. But his epitaph needs not to be a melancholy one. His benevolent disposition was more effective for good than his silent presumption for harm. He might have been mischievous but for the lack of words: instead of being astonished at his inspirations in private, he might have clad his addled originalities, disjointed ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... permitted a wretch such as we have described, to be for a long period master of her destiny. Blood was his element, like that of the other terrorists and he never fastened with so much pleasure on a new victim; as when he was at the same time an ancient associate. In an epitaph, of which the following couplet may serve as a translation, his life was represented as incompatible with the existence of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... you choose, my hearty, but don't disseminate germs! If the athletic display doesn't come off, I'll break my heart, and you can write an epitaph over me: ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... their day contributed to the decoration of "the Father's House." Great men lie buried under its shadowy arches, and their memory lives on in sculpture, in paintings and wonders of wrought iron. In a chapel dedicated to St. Wenceslaus rests that princely martyr; you may see his epitaph and the shirt of mail he wore. In the bronze gates of this chapel you are shown a ring to which the saint is said to have clung when his murderers hacked him down. The walls of the chapels are inlaid ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... watch, and in my haste I slew the saviour of my house and joy. Poor Gelert! thou shalt have such recompense As man may pay unto the dead—Thy name Henceforth shall stand for Faithfulness, and men For evermore shall speak thine epitaph. ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... "I send him away ship" is the epitaph of not a few, his majesty paying the exile's fare to the next place of call. For instance, being passionately fond of European food, he has several times added to his household a white cook, and one after ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brass That held their glories moulders in its turn. Hard granite rots like an uprooted weed, And ever on the palimpsest of earth Impatient Time rubs out the word he writ. But one thing makes the years its pedestal, Springs from the ashes of its pyre, and claps A skyward wing above its epitaph— The will of man ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... sod." What a place for meditation! How quiet, how solemn! No one should visit New York without allotting at least half a day to these holy grounds. How I wander from grave to grave! Here I am struck with the text of an impressive epitaph, and there I see the delicate and elaborate workmanship of a skillful master. Here my heart is touched by the sweet simplicity of a simple slab bearing some touching lines, there I stand in silent admiration before the magnificent proportions of a towering monument, or sit ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... the pathetic ones; and those of a miscellaneous character were divided amongst a number of amateur bards. No importunities, even of his friends, could induce Pope to attend any of these assemblies. He was prevailed on to write an epitaph for a young creature whom he had seen, and who was known by the name of Clarinda: favoured by the great, if she had not been attached to the life of a ballad-singer, she might, with her accomplishments, have risen to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... always trying to write poetry, but it was so hard to find rhymes. When the cat killed the big pink begonia, she did manage to find a rhyme; and she thought the epitaph looked beautiful printed in violet ink on a ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... it doesn't matter if you were not successful in a business way. No one has yet had the courage to memorialize his wealth on his tombstone. A dollar mark would not look well there. The best epitaph proclaims simple old Scripture virtues, like honesty and diligence and patience. And you will observe that when the meanest skinflint or the most disgracefully avaricious millionaire dies, his tombstone never refers to his most notorious characteristics. His friends speak not of his ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... with splendour. The body, having been conveyed, in compliance with Sir Robert's last directions, to Dublin, was there laid within the ancient walls of St. Audoen's Church—where I have read the epitaph, telling the age and titles of the departed dust. Neither painted escutcheon, nor marble slab, have served to rescue from oblivion the story of the dead, whose very name will ere long moulder from ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... anticipation my own sympathetic historian, to joy with my joys yet to come, and sorrow with my sorrows, to bear disaster like a man, and at last to close my own dear eyes, and with a swelling heart write my own epitaph. The pleasure remained with me until I reached the end. How admirably I strutted in front of myself! And I and the better self of me that was flourishing about in the book—we pretended not to know each other for what we were. He was myself with a ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... that he is gone 'Tis so no longer. You may read his verse, And judge 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 ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... feel a little uncomfortable (uncomfortably proud, it may be) in the process. We are likely to avoid the locution altogether and to say "Who was it you saw?" conserving literary tradition (the "whom") with the dignity of silence.[131] The folk makes no apology. "Whom did you see?" might do for an epitaph, but "Who did you see?" is the natural form for an eager inquiry. It is of course the uncontrolled speech of the folk to which we must look for advance information as to the general linguistic movement. It is safe to prophesy that within a couple ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... of MARY HAYGARTH, aged 27. Born 1727. Died 1754. This stone has been set up by one who sorroweth without hope of consolation." A strange epitaph: no scrap of Latin, no text from Scripture, no conventional testimony to the virtues and accomplishments of the departed, no word to tell whether the dead woman had been maid, wife, or widow. It was the most provoking inscription for a lawyer or a genealogist, but such as might ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... touching and I think true epitaph has been written in Greek and translated by Professor Jebb, of the University of Glasgow touching ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... Chauncy and Leonard Hoar,—and Thomas Thacher, first minister of the "Old South," author of the earliest medical treatises printed in the country,[A Brief Rule to Guide the Common People in Small pox and Measles. 1674.] whose epitaph in Latin and Greek, said to have been written by Eleazer, an "Indian Youth" and a member of the Senior Class of Harvard College, may be found in the "Magnalia." I miss this noble savage's name in our triennial catalogue; and as there is many a slip ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Conditions Bellona sails Transactions The Shah Hormuzear from Calcutta arrives Information received by her The dholl expended Sickness and death occasioned by the American spirits The Chesterfield sent to Norfolk Island Convicts sell their clothing Two Spanish ships arrive Information Epitaph A Criminal Court The Kitty returns from Norfolk Island Fraud at the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... his time. Her son, E. R. Hoar, was Attorney General of the United States. And her husband was in his day one of the foremost advocates of Massachusetts. So, with a little alteration, the Greek epitaph of the woman who was the daughter, wife, sister and mother of princes, might apply to her, if, as I like to think, a first-rate American lawyer is entitled to as much respect as a petty ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... not excel, Such perfection is rare to be had; A good life is, of course, very well, But good living is also-not bad. And when, to feed earth-worms, I go. Let this epitaph stare from my stone, "Here lies the Right Rev. so and so; "Pass, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the stormy sea with his smooth rhetoric. The Sage of Rotterdam was old and sickly; his day was over. Adrian's head; too; languishes beneath the triple crown but twenty months. He dies 13th Sept., 1523, having arrived at the conviction, according to his epitaph, that the greatest misfortune of his life ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have to be content in death with a shorter epitaph. In life his neighbours and acquaintances knew him as the toughest old sinner in Bursfield; and indeed his office hours (from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. nominally—but he was an early riser) allowed him scant leisure to practice the Christian graces. Yet though many had occasion ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... him, and formerly he used to say he should like to be buried at Langar and to have on his tombstone the subject of the last of Handel's Six Great Fugues. He called this "The Old Man Fugue," and said it was like an epitaph composed for himself by one who was very old and tired and sorry for things; and he made young Ernest Pontifex in The Way of All Flesh offer it to Edward Overton as an epitaph for his Aunt Alethea. Butler, however, ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... chief, whose own bearing on the battlefield was an inspiration, that no tribute to my Greek scholarship I had received or could receive would ever be more cherished, if so much; and I cited the famous epitaph inscribed on the tomb of Aeschylus at Gela. No mention is made of his great tragedies. It is simply recorded that Aeschylus had quitted himself like a man in ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... tremulous toy Of each transient emotion of grief or of joy. But to watch her pronounce the death-warrant of all The illusions of life—lift, unflinching, the pall From the bier of the dead Past—that woman so fair, And so young, yet her own self-survivor; who there Traced her life's epitaph with a finger so cold! 'Twas a picture that pain'd his self-love to behold. He himself knew—none better—the things to be said Upon subjects like this. Yet he bow'd down his head: And as thus, with a trouble he could not command, He paused, crumpling ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... time the month Quintiles, in which Julius Caesar was born, was called Julius, whence we have July. Thus this name, placed in the calendar, is become the imperishable record of a great man; it is an immortal epitaph on Time's highway, engraved by the ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... own epitaph, and this, which he, at least, believed to be an accurate summary of his misfortunes and their cause, may fitly close this brief outline of his ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... her cruelly; she knew poverty at its lowest ebb and despair at its bitterest; and yet there was in her a touch of fineness that never yielded, a gallant spirit that faced and fought things through. One thinks, somehow, of the mother of Gounod.... Her son has not forgotten her. His book is her epitaph. He enters into her presence with love and with reverence and with something not far ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... 'Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his,' was the aspiration of that Gentile prophet, whose love of the world obscured even the prophetic illumination which he possessed—and his epitaph is a stern comment on the uselessness of such empty wishes, 'Balaam, the son of Beor, they slew with the sword.' It needs more than a wish to set us at Christ's right hand ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... suspicion killed me; I now need nothing but immortelles, and at dinner I will compose my epitaph. If I am not mistaken, I already smell the ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Christianity, and educated to such extent that he could read and write. He took a great fancy to poetry and became somewhat of a poet himself. His desire was that after his death there should be placed at the head of his grave an epitaph, which he prepared himself, in ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... whom he had left so short a time before, was gone, then, and this was all his epitaph. Jefferson Hope looked wildly round to see if there was a second grave, but there was no sign of one. Lucy had been carried back by their terrible pursuers to fulfil her original destiny, by becoming one of the harem of the ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... person visits that consecrated ground who has not reaped enjoyment from the labors of that man's life. And as the simple epitaph meets the eye, and is read in an audible tone, the heart-felt invocation, "Blessings on his memory!" is ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... an epitaph on one of these Pantomimic actors may be applied to many of them during ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... truly now Camdens Remaines lye there. Vaine Malice! how he mocks thy rage, while breath Of fame shall speake his great Elizabeth! 'Gainst time and thee he well provided hath, Brittannia is the Tombe and Epitaph. Thus Princes honours: but Witt only gives A name which to succeeding ages lives. Singly we now consult our selves and fame, Ambitious to twist ours with thy great name. Hence we thus bold to praise. For as a Vine ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... He was so weary of all amusement and delight, that, by way of change, he would dress like his wives, and spin and embroider with them, and he even offered huge rewards to anyone who would invent a new pleasure. He said his epitaph should be, that he carried with him that which he had eaten, which, said wise men, was a fit motto only for a pig, not a man. At last his carelessness and violence provoked the Babylonians and Medes to rise against him, and ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... an arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely destroyed by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces may be divined as we divine the history of a worthy tradesman when we read the epitaph on his tomb. To complete the mournful and tender impressions which seize the soul, on one of the walls there is a sundial graced with this homely Christian ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... the living. A third cave, or cell, contains a representation of the same hermit's dead body, as it lay in state,—for to the rock the corpse was carried both for exhibition and interment; and finally, we have his grave,—a small heap of stones, with a stone cross erected over them, and an epitaph inscribed on the rock at his feet. I subjoin the original, and give, for the benefit of such as may not be acquainted with the German, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... incomprehensible epitaph is this, which always strikes me afresh, upon each perusal, as ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... bombing attacks. In one of these ARTHUR HEATH was shot through the neck and fell. "He spoke once," Professor MURRAY tells us, "to say, 'Don't trouble about me,' and died almost immediately." His Platoon Sergeant wrote to his parents, "A braver man never existed," and with that epitaph we may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... 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 again, down ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... standing. It showed a woman seated and stretching out her right arm, which a woman friend was touching. In the background was another, contemplative, woman and a man wearing a chaplet of leaves, his hand lifted to his face. For epitaph there was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the cowl. In the disgraceful chaos after the Fire, the body of Sebba, says Dugdale "was found curiously enbalmed in sweet odours and clothed in rich robes." Here also could be read the unflattering epitaph over the monument of Ethelred the Unready; and hard by the tomb of John of Gaunt, in December, 1641, the corpse of another Fleming by birth was interred. Sir Anthony Van Dyck had spent the last nine years of his life in England at the invitation of Charles, and this great pupil of Rubens was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... Cassell, who stood by with the rest of us, and who had nursed him with the fondest mother's care, broke out into loud sobs of irrepressible grief. We decided upon a broken column as his monument—fit emblem of the life so early broken—and we settled his brief, simple epitaph, which Mr. Cassell drew up:—"Erected by his friends in this colony in testimony of esteem ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... saw me made a bride, The evening witness'd that I died. Those holy lights, wherewith they guide Unto the bed the bashful bride, Serv'd but as tapers for to burn And light my relics to their urn. This epitaph, which here you see, Supplied ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... horse was the emblem of strength in the faith; the hunted hare, of persecution; the peacock and the phoenix stood for signs of the resurrection. Christ, as the good pastor, was also introduced in the epitaph. Even personages of the Pagan mythology were introduced, which the Christians employed in a concealed sense, as Orpheus, enchanting the wild beasts with the music (see page 701) of his lyre, was the secret symbol of Christ as the civilizer ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... inimitable inscription on the Spartans who died at Thermopylae: "Foreigner, tell the Lacedaemonians that we are lying here in obedience to their laws." On the Rhodian lyric poet, Timocreon, an opponent of Simonides in his art, he wrote the following in the form of an epitaph: "Having eaten much and drank much and said much evil of other men, here I lie, Timocreon ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the blot does not overshadow his life. His end was a derision because the animal in him ran him unchained and bounding to it. A stormy blood made wreck of a splendid intelligence. Yet they that pronounce over him the ordinary fatalistic epitaph of the foregone and done, which is the wisdom of men measuring the dead by the last word of a lamentable history, should pause to think whether fool or madman is the title for one who was a zealous worker, respected ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... projected extent, not the nature of his pursuit; and happy would it be for mankind did the love of fame engender no greater evil than that, if any, which may accrue from the Herculean labours of this epitaph collector." ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... highest pleasure. Mr. George Ellis died on the 15th of that month, at his seat of Sunning Hill. This threw a cloud over what would otherwise have been a period of unmixed enjoyment. Mr. Canning penned the epitaph for that dearest of his friends, but he submitted it to Scott's consideration before ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... nowhere else in his work, likens Lincoln to a tree so mighty that its branches reach the heavens and its roots the primal rock and nations of men may rest in its shade; Edgar Lee Masters, whose work is full of the shadow and light of Lincoln, has made his most moving lyric an epitaph upon Ann Rutledge, the girl Lincoln loved and lost; and Vachel Lindsay, in Lincoln's own Springfield, during the World War thought of him as so stirred even in death by the horrors which then alarmed the universe that he could not sleep but walked up and down ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... his pupils we would send this epitaph, and ask them if aught less tributary could be said of one who was and is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... by 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 ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the heart of France, where his career Of conquest ended, let his relics lie! So far no hostile sword attained before. A fitting tomb shall memorize his name; His epitaph the spot whereon ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... expedition, and his first published composition was an article describing it. He speaks of Owen Stanley thus: "Of all those who were actively engaged upon the survey, the young commander alone was destined to be robbed of his just rewards; he has raised an enduring monument in his works, and his epitaph shall be the grateful thanks of many a mariner threading his way among the mazes of the ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... been the English poet, John Gay, (1685-1732) whose best known piece "The Beggar's Opera" was said to have made "The Rich gay and Gay rich"? He was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph was by Alexander Pope, followed by Gay's own mocking couplet, "Life is a jest, and all things show it. I thought so once and now ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... torpid veins. Three boys throbbing with the elixir of early youth were sacrificed in vain. Each boy, says Infessura, received one ducat. He adds, not without grim humor: 'Et paulo post mortui sunt; Judaeus quidem aufugit, et Papa non sanatus est.' The epitaph of this poor old Pope reads like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism: 'Ego autem ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... when the little vessels behaved admirably, while the "Pioneer" was sent to the Cape, the "Lady Nyassa," under charge of Dr Livingstone, proceeded by way of Zanzibar to Bombay, which they safely reached, though at times they thought their epitaph would be: "Left Zanzibar on the 30th of April, 1864, and never more ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... engraved on the Collar of a Dog The Translator The Looking-Glass A Farewell to London Sandys' Ghost Umbra Sylvia, a Fragment Impromptu to Lady Winchelsea Epigram Epigram on the Feuds about Handel and Bononcini On Mrs Tofts, a celebrated Opera Singer The Balance of Europe Epitaph on Lord Coningsby Epigram Epigram from the French Epitaph on Gay Epigram on the Toasts of the Kit-Kat Club To a Lady, with 'The Temple of Fame' On the Countess of Burlington cutting Paper On Drawings of the ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... lady, for a moment, made no reply: her silence was a grim judgement of the whole point of view. "Poor little monkey!" she at last exclaimed; and the words were an epitaph for the tomb of Maisie's childhood. She was abandoned to her fate. What was clear to any spectator was that the only link binding her to either parent was this lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for bitterness, a deep little porcelain cup in ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... 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
... and freeze as narrow as possible. Then they will be able to get you out of the opening without much difficulty. It seems hard to think they will never know the true facts of the case," she continued mournfully. "Our epitaph will probably be 'Sat ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... An allusion to the line in the Epitaph appended to the Elegy: "And Melancholy marked ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... been lost on a lee-shore because her longitude was wrong,—not a baby had wailed its last as it was ground between wrecked spar and cruel rock,—not a swollen corpse unknown had been flung up upon the sand and been buried with a nameless epitaph,— but Brannan had recollected the Brick Moon, and had, in the memory-chamber which rejected nothing, stored away the story of the horror. And now George was ready to consecrate a round hundred thousand to the building of the Moon; and Brannan was ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... ordinary measure of humanity, turned in the last dark years of imprisonment to a steady contemplation of human activity, and, largely conceiving here, as in all else, planned a "History of the World." Let his own noble words be his epitaph: ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... they would not use one unnecessary word, nor let an expression escape them that 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
... These scriptures speak nothing to commend that particular act of Jonathan's conjunction in war with his father. David in his epitaph speaks much to the commendation of both Saul and Jonathan, as of excellent warriors, and of Jonathan as a kind and constant friend to him, but there is nothing touched of that point. If that place be pressed, it will follow with much more evidence, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... heard of a man reading his own epitaph, and truly it gave me many curious feelings to stand there and read of myself as a dead man. And yet I had been dead to all of them for more ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... most splendid monument to her departed lord over the family vault of the Bluebeards. The rector, Dr. Sly, who had been Mr. Bluebeard's tutor at college, wrote an epitaph in the most pompous yet pathetic Latin: "Siste, viator! moerens conjux, heu! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse"; in a word, everything that is usually said in epitaphs. A bust of the departed saint, with Virtue mourning over it, stood over ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as being the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an epitaph on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with greater probability, been attributed ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Pelham Streets, 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 visit to ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... of spray cast by the infinite I hung an instant there, and threw my ray To make the rainbow. A microcosm I Reflecting all. Then back I fell again, And though I perished not, I was no more."— The Pantheist's Epitaph. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 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, ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of all the marks by which we know him—the Burns-stamp, so to speak, which is visible on all that ever came from his pen. Misled by his handwriting, I inserted in my former edition of his works an epitaph, beginning ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... it have been well to carve on the marble her true life-history, that those who would not believe it might wage a lawsuit against an epitaph? ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... garden of Gethsemane, the same editor says, that this could not have been known to Jerome, who passed a great part of his life in Bethlehem, and yet observes a total silence on the subject; though in his "Epitaph on Paula," [Jerome, Paris, 1706. Vol. iv. p. 670-688, ep. 86.] he enumerates all the places in Palestine consecrated by any remarkable event. Neither, he adds, could it have been known to Epiphanius, who, though he lived long in Palestine, yet declares that nothing was ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... muttering vengeance, and adding that he would take the responsibility upon himself. The Major spoke with great earnestness and feeling, while, if I recollect right, I treated his information rather lightly, saying, that if they killed me I hoped the Major would write my epitaph. When, however, I saw the artillery pass up Fleet-market, in a direction for Spafields, the place of meeting, I began to think more seriously of the matter; but, as I was about to do that which my conscience approved of, and as I knew that I should not violate ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... am a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit Drops earliest to the ground: and so let me: You cannot better be employed, Bassanio, Than to live still and write mine epitaph." ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... my lord, will you see the Editors well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chroniclers of the time. After your death you had better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live. Hamlet, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... cut a brilliant figure. She was the intimate friend of the poet La Faye, whom she advised in his compositions, and whose life she made delightful. Her fondness for the arts and pleasure procured for her the appellation of 'Dame de Volupte', and she wrote this epitaph upon herself: ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... well move to lay the bill on the table and to write as its epitaph—'nibbled to death ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... meteorological weaknesses of ordinary human nature, does not allow the fact that late December is a rather bleak and cold time of year to deter him from taking daily airings in the neighborhood of the Ritualistic churchyard. Since the inscription of his epitaph on his late wife upon her monument therein, the churchyard is to him a kind of ponderous work of imagination with marble leaves, to which he has contributed the most brilliant chapter; and when he sees any ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... ferme talia, incuriosa fine; these cynical words, with which the historian of the Roman Empire blasted the movements of his age, may almost serve as the epitaph to Bonaparte's early enthusiasms. Proclaiming at the beginning of his Italian campaigns that he came to free Italy, he yet finished his course of almost unbroken triumphs by a surrender which his ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... answered he, calmly. "As for our turning out, the reason is plainly suggested in this epitaph which appeared in a ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... 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 misapprehension ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... envious detractors whose wicked tongues are employed in backbiting him day and night. His own character was by no means free from the same imputations; and the Ferrarese poet, Tebaldeo, the friend of Raphael and Castiglione, composed a witty epitaph, in which he warns passers-by to avoid the last resting-place of this singer, who had made so many enemies in life, lest he turn in his grave and bite them. Bellincioni's bitterest foe was a certain Bergamasque ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... graceful figures and poetic allegories of the modern artist. The humble intreaty to the reader to "praye for the soule of the departed," is not very elegant—yet it is better calculated to recall the wanderings of morality, than the flattering epitaph, a Fame hovering in the air, or the suspended wreath of the remunerating angel.—But I moralize in vain—the rage of these new Goths is inexorable: they seem solicitous to destroy every vestige of civilization, lest the people should ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... helped the brigand to descend from his kibitka. The sight of me troubled him, but soon recovering himself, he said: "You are one of us?" I turned my head away without replying. My heart was wrung when we entered the room that I know so well, where still upon the wall hung, like an epitaph, the diploma of the deceased Commandant. Pougatcheff seated himself upon the same sofa where many a time Ivan Mironoff had dozed to the hum of his wife's voice. Alexis' own hand presented the brandy to his chief. Pougatcheff ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... Pericles[28] that "the loss of the youth of the city was as if the spring was taken out of the year," because the beauty of the idea can in no way suffer by presenting it in English, French, or German rather than in the original Greek. Again, to quote another instance from Latin, the fine epitaph to St. Ovinus in Ely Cathedral: "Lucem tuam Ovino da, Deus, et requiem," loses nothing of its terse pathos by being rendered into English. Occasionally, indeed, the truth is forced upon us that even in prose "a thing may be well said once but cannot be well said twice" ([Greek: ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Fountain saw many young ladies healed of many young enthusiasms by a wedding-ring,—but a wittier woman has said it better, Una declares, in asserting that a married woman's name is her epitaph. If, however, Mr. Reade's opinion of womankind is at any time justifiable, we must bring Una to witness that it is so in ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph— "Here lies all that no one loved of him And that loved no one." Then in a trice that whim Has wearied. But, though I am like a river At fall of evening while it seems that never Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while Cross breezes cut the surface ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... America, and a full participation, mutually beneficial, in our ever enlarging commerce. But her oligarchy has chosen coalition with the South and slavery, and war upon our Union and the republican principle. Divide and conquer is their motto, SUICIDE will be their epitaph. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... improvement on Oxford in the long vacation—the place, however, has its ancient fame, has given birth to two or three distinguished literati, and figured in the civil wars. The fifteenth century records among others the name of Cini, whose epitaph we saw in the cathedral; and the author of the Riciardetto was, we believe, also one of its citizens. In its immediate vicinity fell Catiline. They say the Italian language is spoken here with great purity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... and also with a letter which he wrote to his companion through good and evil days. Soon afterward, he breathed his last. They buried him at Gato, at the foot of a large tree, and engraved on his tomb the following epitaph in English— ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... literary medley, Sterne introduces his reader to a group of characters amongst the most odd and original in fiction. Mr. Shandy, with his syllogisms and his hypotheses, his "close reasoning upon the smallest matters"; Yorick, the witty parson, whose epitaph, Alas! Poor Yorick! expresses so tenderly the amiable faults for which he suffered; Captain Shandy, that combination of simplicity, gentleness, humanity, and modesty, are all creations which deserve to rank with the most individual and ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... 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
... that of L. Caecilius Metellus! How great that of Atilius Calatinus, over whom the famous epitaph was placed, "Very many classes agree in deeming this to have been the very first man of the nation"! The line cut on his tomb is well known. It is natural, then, that a man should have had influence, in whose praise the verdict of history is ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... is also to be seen at the family burial-place, Parham, Sussex, England, with the following epitaph:— ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... used his own portrait for a frontispiece. He speaks of Doctor Beddoes, who was so uncomfortably fat that a lady of Clifton called him a "walking feather bed." He mentions Doctor Stafford, who was so enormous that this epitaph was ascribed to him:— ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... body lies in Chelsea Church, beneath the tomb we have sketched—the epitaph having been written by himself before he anticipated the manner of his death.[3] It is too long to insert; but the lines at the conclusion are very like the man. The epitaph and poetry are in Latin: ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... his music; it was himself. Without it he was nothing, a mere machine! WITH it, he was king over worlds of his own. Poor man, he had little enough in this! At a manufacturing town in England there is a gravestone on which the epitaph records "one Claudius Phillips, whose absolute contempt for riches, and inimitable performance on the violin, made him the admiration of all that knew him!" Logical conjunction of opposite eulogies! In proportion, O Genius, to thy contempt for riches ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Algarotti produces softer ideas when one looks at the sepulchre of a man who, having deserved and obtained such solid and extensive praise, modestly contented himself with desiring that his epitaph might be so worded, as to record, upon a simple but lasting monument, that he had the honour of being disciple to ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... that it cannot help to determine the play's date. It is in this period (1512-14) that it is customary to place the death of Vicente's first wife Branca Bezerra, leaving him two sons, Gaspar and Belchior. She was buried at Evora with the epitaph: ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... made her a 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
... man attains to power, my dear Paul, he has all the virtues of an epitaph; let him fall into poverty, and he has more sins than the Prodigal Son; society at the present moment gives you the vices of a Don Juan. You gambled at the Bourse, you had licentious tastes which cost you fabulous sums of money ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... enough to be a convenient seat, I observed that one of the gravestones lay very close to the church,—so close that the droppings of the eaves would fall upon it. It seemed as if the inmate of that grave had desired to creep under the church-wall. On closer inspection, we found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and with difficulty made out this ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
