"Epitaph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... single-breasted coat and long waist-coat, ruffles and sword, such as gentlemen wore about the year 1770, and bearing a strong resemblance to the features of the second Charles. On the broad marble which forms the background is inscribed an epitaph, which has perpetuated to our times the estimate formed by his "inconsolable widow," the Dowager Lady Mardykes, of the virtues and ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Indeed, that epitaph might fitly describe Miss Macnaughtan's war work. She grudged nothing, she gave her strength, her money, her very life. The precious ointment was poured out in the service of her King and Country and for the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... 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
... that I 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
... came young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose "reek" was of so much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work and whose epitaph is the Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, to be tutor in a knight's family, and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with too warm approval to suit his patron's ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... in the porch had turned red, and the maples in the door-yard yellow, the flower-pots were removed to the warm cellar, and one winter evening Sammy Ray wrote Greeny's epitaph:— ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... letting subsequent events take care of themselves; Austen Vane, had an uncomfortable quality of reducing a matter first of all to its simplest terms. He knew that Mr. Flint's views were as fixed, ineradicable, and unchangeable as an epitaph cut in a granite monument; he felt (as Mr. Flint had) that their first conversation had been but a forerunner of, a strife to come between them; and add to this the facts that Mr. Flint was very rich and Austen Vane poor, that Victoria's friends were not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as Henry Clay once said, 'There is nothing as melancholy as the old age of a dinner; who, sir, shall pronounce its epitaph?' That, sir, I call eloquence. No more wine, thank you." As he spoke, he drew a large Cabana from his waistcoat pocket and lighted it from one of the candles on ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... not surrender these flags!" Sergeant Planciancois said: "Colonel, I will bring back these colors to you in honor, or report to God the reason why!" Noble words these, and brave! And no more fitting epitaph could mark the resting-place of a hero who has laid down his life in defence of human liberty! A king might well covet these sublime words of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Chiswick, where his widow came to join him twenty-five years later (in 1789), was adorned in relief with the mask of Comedy, the wreath of laurel, the palette and the book on Beauty; and it was his friend Garrick who is said to have composed those lines of his epitaph, with which we too may take our farewell of the great artist ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... epitaph, you mean that she called me a liar, I did, brother, and she was not much wrong, for I certainly do not always stick exactly to truth; you, however, have not much to complain ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... discovering, from facts such as these, the causeless rancour with which innocent and industrious people were so recently persecuted. The moral of the history of the accursed race may, perhaps, be best conveyed in the words of an epitaph on Mrs. Mary Hand, who lies buried ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... tranquillity. Who's Griffith? Why the veteran HOWE (ah, Howe, When and Where did I first see you, Sir? Wasn't it in the days when good old Mortonian farces were the attraction at the Haymarket?) is "the safe man," and excellently well did he deliver his epitaph on Wolsey. But all are good, not forgetting our old friend the sterling, that is the ARTHUR STIRLING actor as Cranmer, and the youthful GILLIE FARQUHAR, unrecognisable as Lord Sands, looking as ancient as if he were The Sands ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... stain of Carolina's dishonor; these men cannot be contemned now. They have shown themselves noble men. They have made for themselves a place in American history, along with their fathers at New Orleans, and their grandfathers under Washington. And the rebel epitaph of the brave Colonel Shaw, who led them unflinchingly against the iron hail of Wagner, is no reproach, but a badge of honor: 'We have buried him under ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and a simultaneous wild yell arose from their lips. The outburst was at once a dirge, an apology, an epitaph, and a paean of triumph. A strange requiem, you may say, over the body of a fallen, comrade; but if Jimmy Hayes could have heard it he ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... I but rate My grief and thy too rigid fate, I'd weep the world to such a strain That it should deluge once again. But since thy loud-tongued blood demands supplies More from Briareus' hands, than Argus eyes, I'll sing thy obsequies with trumpet sounds, And write thy epitaph ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sunk, but the traveler had known wells sunk even nearer. He rose to his feet with the great knife in his hand, a frown on his face, and his doubts resolved. He no longer shrank from naming what he knew. This was not the first corpse that had been thrown down a well; here, without stone or epitaph, was the grave of Squire Vane. In a flash all the mythological follies about saints and peacocks were forgotten; he was knocked on the head, as with a stone club, by the human common ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... millions of timber-trees," and the present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted. There was an eminent Italian musician, who had a piece of music inscribed on his tomb; and I have heard of a Dutch mathematician, who had a calculation for his epitaph. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... recorded the names and virtues of his lordship's mother and her husband; and after due time of preparation, the monument was set up, exhibiting the arms and coronet of the Esmonds, supported by a little chubby group of weeping cherubs, and reciting an epitaph which for once did not tell ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... much to do, and she refused to go until she had laid some flowers also on Anne Hathaway's tomb and on that of Susanna, Shakespeare's daughter, who married Dr. Hall. She also copied the epitaph, which begins: ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... says the epitaph on the flat table-stone, beneath the wind tormented trees of Iron Gray. Concerning these Manes Presbyteriani, "Guthrie's and Giffan's Passions" and the rest, Scott had a library of rare volumes full of prophecies, "remarkable Providences," angelic ministrations, diabolical ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a vast realm of the unknown and to invite disaster. In "The Return of Imray," a good-natured Englishman pats the head of Bahadur Khan's child and is killed for it. Another Englishman, in "Beyond the Pale," thought that he understood the heart of India, and here is his epitaph: "He took too deep an interest in native life, but he will never do so again." Dravot could play king and even god in Kafiristan, but when he exposed himself ignorantly to an old racial superstition he met instant ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... 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 ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... avail: after continual and severe suffering, devotedly watched by Severn, he expired on 23 February, 1821. He was buried in the old Protestant Cemetery of Rome, under a little altar-tomb sculptured with a Greek lyre. His name was inscribed, along with the epitaph which he himself had composed in the bitterness of his soul, 'Here lies one whose name was writ ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... implores you to leave her to her 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 ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... scornful rhetoric and his bitter laugh. He was no more a mere dilettante than Swift himself, but now and then in the midst of his most serious thought some absurd or grotesque image will obtrude itself, and one is reminded of the lines on the monument of Gay rather than of the fierce epitaph of the Dean ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... other]—'the man 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 never be re-opened by ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... poorest piece of human clay in the potter's field. The great leveller had passed his rule over him as he passes it over every one of us. The dead lion was less now than the living dog, and the Golden Dog itself was henceforth only a memory, and an epitaph forever of the tragedy ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... We show it with 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
... 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
... 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 leaves behind:— ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... contract of marriage 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
... of one who fell fighting valiantly, thrown rudely on a horse's back? Why was his stone coffin degraded into a tavern-trough, and his remains tossed out no man knew where? Not merely that the Plantagenets never lifted their heads from the gory dust any more, so that their conquerors wrote the epitaph upon their tombs, and hired the annalists of their fame; but, still more, that the weak and assailed Henry required every excuse for his invasion and usurpation; and that the principal nobility of England ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... antiquities in iron, so that only a limited number of specimens of this metal have come down to us from very early times; one of the earliest in England is a grave-stone of cast metal, of the date 1350: it is decorated with a cross, and has the epitaph, "Pray for the soul of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the poet as to the painter. Had all dedications been occasioned by such feelings as gave birth to this, these graceful and fitting tributes of affection and gratitude would never have dwindled away to the cold and scanty lines, like an epitaph on a charity tomb-stone, in which they appear, when they appear at all, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... growing in favor with me. With that thought came always a suggestion of slim, freckled Dorothy and Sir George's offer. She held out to me wealth and position, a peaceful home for my old age, and a grave with a pompous, pious epitaph at ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... a young, beautiful, and amiable partner, at a period so interesting, was the probable reason of her husband devoting his fortune to a charitable institution. The epitaph occurs in Strype's edition of Stewe's Survey of London, Book iii., ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... morning paper, we murmur, "Poor old Jones! Well, it's certainly time he shuffled off." Then we drink our coffee placidly, turn to some other news, and never think of him again. Many a once-beloved actor gets this cruel epitaph. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... 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
... known; and surely no more beautiful life—beautiful in itself and in the works of immortal beauty which in its short course were produced—has ever been lived by anyone of those to whom the crown of inspired singers and an enduring monument in the temple of art has been given. "Look around," was the epitaph on a great architect. "Listen," is the most fitting tribute to the wonderful genius ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... recall. She hoped she should never be anything so dull as an historical personage! And besides, greatness was for the men—it was enough for a princess to be virtuous. And she looked as edifying as her own epitaph. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... formidable a wit of the pen. Sam Beazley, on the contrary, was a light, airy, graceful person, who had much refinement, without that peculiar manner which bespeaks the well-bred gentleman. He was the Daly of "Gilbert Gurney," whose epitaph was written by Hook long before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... 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 was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... executed women who must need cross the line of human happiness—legally; and administered their estate; and decreed the disposition of their defunct personalities in legislative halls; only omitting to provide for the matrimonial crypt the fitting epitaph: "Here lies the relict of American freedom—taxed to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... burial-ground. You love to stroll round among the graves that crowd each other in the thickly peopled soil of that breezy summit. You love to lean on the freestone slab which lies over the bones of the Mathers,—to read the epitaph of stout William Clark, "Despiser of Sorry Persons and little Actions,"—to stand by the stone grave of sturdy Daniel Malcolm and look upon the splintered slab that tells the old rebel's story,—to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... consecrated Bishop of Worcester. He died at his residence in Park Street, Westminster, on the 27th of March 1699, and was buried in Worcester Cathedral, where a monument was erected to his memory by his son, with a Latin epitaph by Richard Bentley, who had been one of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... tenderness of feeling, infinite aspiration, moral passion, that straining hope of something beyond, which is the life of the religious soul—they are all here, and the Dernier Mot with which the sad little volume ends is poor Amiel's epitaph on himself, his conscious farewell to that more public aspect of his life in which he had suffered much ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be seen; and wear the form of man, and yet fly in the face of all the laws of human nature:—and all this, in the hope of getting a belly-god burgess through a needle's eye! Oh, let him stick, by all means; and let his polity tumble in the dust; and let his epitaph and all his literature (of which my own works begin to form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even from the history of man! For a fool of this monstrosity of dulness there can be no salvation; and the fool who looked for the elixir of life was an ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... (as they hold) in the blacke friers at Sterling. But Fabian and others doo as it were point out the place of his interrement, saieng that he lieth intoomed on the south side of saint Edwards shrine, with an epitaph expressing partlie his proportion of bodie and partlie his properties of mind, as after ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... be said to have composed an epitaph for Prussianism three-quarters of a century ago when he wrote ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... 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 in contempt ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... she; "Cecil Devereux! What can you be thinking of? I am talking to you. Here's this epitaph of Francis the First upon Petrarch's Laura, that you showed me the other day: do you know, I dote upon it. I must have it translated: nobody can do it so well as you. I have not time; but I shall not sleep to-night ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the passing stranger saw The epitaph of Caroline, And wondered, with a shuddering awe, That it could dare the ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... and to confirm Clarinda in her good Inclinations, I would have her consider what a pretty Figure she would make among Posterity, were the History of her whole Life published like these five Days of it. I shall conclude my Paper with an Epitaph written by an uncertain Author [5] on Sir Philip Sidney's Sister, a Lady who seems to have been of a Temper very much different from that of Clarinda. The last Thought of it is so very noble, that I dare say my Reader ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... even 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 in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... you will find in Browne that which influenced more than any other single thing the early work of Keats. Browne has another claim to immortality; if it be true as is now thought that he was the author of the epitaph ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... 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 to the ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... at this period 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 point out. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Franklin's active life, let us insert here an amusing epitaph which he composed about this time, and which has ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... headboards had been erected near the shallow graves. One of them had the following significant epitaph written on ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... for backgammon, used by Shakespeare and others. The following lines are from an epitaph entirely made up of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Duchess of Queensbury, who loved this excellent man living, and regret him dead, have caused this monument to be erected to his memory. Pope, than whom no man loved him better, composed an epitaph ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... creature, how she was cooked! I am but a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave—and Mr. Riley if you would have the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which would sort of describe the awful way in which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... record—"Petronia, a deacon's wife, the type of modesty. In this place I lay my bones: spare your tears, dear husband and daughters, and believe that it is forbidden to weep for one who lives in God." [353:3] "Here," says another epitaph, "Susanna, the happy daughter of the late Presbyter Gabinus, lies in peace along with her father." [353:4] In the Lapidarian Gallery of the papal palace, the curious visitor may still read other epitaphs of the married ministers ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... churchyard high above the German Ocean are three small monuments placed by some loving friends of those who lie beneath. To no one more truly can the epitaph be applied than that which is cut on each tomb—that of the brother, of the sister, and of the faithful African—Hic jacet ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... usually hang a few small pictures, which were presented by very poor artists who thought themselves cured by prayers at the shrine. This is confirmed by a crutch hanging up close to the pilaster. The bones of Raphael are laid in this tomb since 1520, with an epitaph recording the esteem in which he was held by Popes Julius II. and Leo X.; but they have not always been allowed to lie undisturbed. On Sept. 14, 1833, the tomb was opened to inspect the mouldering skeleton, of which drawings were made, and are reproduced in two of our illustrations. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... sonship to God, or his audacious intention to live his own life; and in less tragic fashion, but none the less along the same lines, the world tends to pick at, and to fray the moral garments of, its leaders still to-day. When such a one succeeds through sheer simplicity, then that last feeble epitaph of mediocrity is applied to him: "He is lucky," because so few people realize that "luck," is merely not to be dependent ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of a party of nuns standing at the door of their convent and handing out the woollen garments which they have made for the old monks who are standing there waiting to receive them, with food to give to the nuns in exchange. The simplicity of this scene recalls the epitaph which is said to have been written in honor of a Roman housewife who lived in the simple days of the Republic: "She stayed at home and spun wool!" Somewhat later the nuns were called upon to furnish the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... done, I'd have no son Pounce on these treasures like a vulture; Nay, give them half My epitaph And let ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... whilst his lyre and one of his best compositions lie neglected on the ground. Upon the pediment of the table are placed two female ideal figures in relief, representing love and pity, entwined each in the arms of the other; the proper emblems of the genius of his poetry." It bears the following epitaph from ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... still, did war prescribe disgrace and death for all? If Cary had crept through the Union lines, to reach the side of a helpless little one—yes, even in a coat of blue—would the Great Tribunal count his deed accursed? Should fearless human love reap no reward beyond the crashing epitaph of a firing squad, and the powder smoke that drifted with ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... left behind him, it is said, what he may have meant as his epitaph, an inscription containing the purport of three ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... how closely linked 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
... Pack-Saddle The Ear-maker, and the Mould-mender The River Scamander The Confidant Without Knowing It, or the Stratagem The Clyster The Indiscreet Confession The Contract The Quid Pro Quo, or the Mistakes The Dress-maker The Gascon The Pitcher To Promise is One Thing, to Keep It, Another The Nightingale Epitaph of La Fontaine ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... his widow, lies buried in the church of Stoke Pogeys; and her monument may still be seen, with an epitaph commencing thus: ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... utramq, in part[e] nihil fingere; Ordinary passages of your | sed quasi Christian[u] de Honourable Mothers Holy Life and | Christiana quae sunt vera proferre, Death: wherein I haue as a | id est, Historiam scribere non Christian spoken the truth of a | Panegyricum. S. Ierom, Epitaph. Christian, that is, (as Saint | Paulae.] Ierom[d] protesteth in a like | case) made a true Narration; not a | Vain-glorious Panegyrick. Let Poets | and Oratours praise those women, | which Poppaea-like[e], are graced | [Note e: Poppaea cuncta ...
— The Praise of a Godly Woman • Hannibal Gamon
... besides the cathedral to interest us,—old buildings, a museum, full of curious objects, and the old town itself. When I was there the first time, I remember that we picked up a guide-book in which we found a verse that has remained in my memory ever since. It is an epitaph on a native of Salisbury who died ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... move, there has not been another of my kind, nor has man suffered as I have suffered, and been crushed and torn and thrown aside to die, without even the mercy of a death-wound. Describe it? Tell it? Look at me! I am both love's description and the epitaph on his gravestone. In me he lived, me he tortured, with me he dies never to live again as he has lived this once. There is no justice and no mercy! Think not that it is enough to love and that you will be loved in return. Do not think that—do not ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... anticipation, lay no store by the approbation of the circles which will surround us in our old age, and I desire nothing among posterity but a tomb to which I may precede M. Necker, and on which you will write the epitaph. Such resting-place will be dearer to me than that among the poplars which cover ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... 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 ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... write a series of epitaphs upon him (his "country dialect" and his awkward person) was agreed to, and put in practice by several of the guests. The active aggressors appear to have been Garrick, Doctor Bernard, Richard Burke, and Caleb Whitefoord. Cumberland says he, too, wrote an epitaph; but it was complimentary and grave, and hence the grateful return he received. Mr. Forster considers Garrick's epitaph to indicate the tone of all. This, with the rest, was read to Goldsmith when he next appeared at the St. James's Coffee-house, where Cumberland, however, says he never ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... sidelong at his living spouse, as if he were inclined to drive a thriftier bargain by bespeaking four gravestones in a lot. I was better pleased with a rough old whaling captain, who gave directions for a broad marble slab, divided into two compartments, one of which was to contain an epitaph on his deceased wife, and the other to be left vacant, till death should engrave his own name there. As is frequently the case among the whalers of Martha's Vineyard, so much of this storm-beaten widower's life had been tossed away on ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... within it the meetings of the Platonic Academy, orphaned by the death of Lorenzo; he had written an excellent, learned book, of a new topographical sort, about ancient Rome; he had collected antiquities; he had a pure Latinity. The simplest account of him, one sees, reads like a laudatory epitaph, at the end of which the Greek and Ausonian Muses might be confidently requested to tear their hair, and Nature to desist from any second attempt to combine so many virtues with ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... despatched to them some hierarchical assistance for the good of their souls, and were answered: "D——n your souls, grow tobacco!" The English manner of to-day could not even have come into its own when that epitaph of a lady, quoted somewhere by Gilbert Murray, was written: "Bland, passionate, and deeply religious, she was second cousin to the Earl of Leitrim; of such are the Kingdom of Heaven." About that gravestone motto was a certain lack of the self-consciousness ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Thomas Thumb; but the King and the Court were so sorry at the loss of their little favourite that they went into mourning for him. And they put a fine white marble monument over his grave whereon was carven the following epitaph: ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... to be hanged; if it doesn't happen to-day, it will happen to-morrow. I only beg, before I die, that you will pay my respects to Madam Burgomaster and the young lady, and instruct them to give me the following epitaph: ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... life remained. She built and supported at her own expense an extensive monastery for Jerome and his monks at Bethlehem. When she died, Jerome wrote to her daughter the long and celebrated letter called "Epitaph of Paula," in which he exhausts the hyperboles of praise. The features of a rare character and the proofs of an extraordinary affection may be discerned within the extravagances of this eloquent panegyric. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... But Dr. James Johnson, writing his "Economy of Health" ten years after, declared that these German exercises had proved "better adapted to the Spartan youth than to the pallid sons of pampered cits, the dandies of the desk, and the squalid tenants of attics and factories," and also adds the epitaph, "This ultra-gymnastic enthusiast did much injury to an important branch of hygiene by carrying it to excess, and consequently by causing its desuetude." And Dr. Jarvis, in his "Practical Physiology," declares the unquestionable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the tomb was carved the lengthy epitaph, printed on the next page, as composed by Dr. Timothy Dwight, Putnam's former friend and chaplain in the army, who subsequently became President of ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... 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 ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... her eyes. For three days numerous choirs of virgins alternated in Greek, Latin, and Syriac their mournful but triumphant chants. Six bishops bore her body to the grave, followed by the clergy of the surrounding country. Jerome wrote her epitaph in Latin, but was too much unnerved to preach her funeral sermon. Inhabitants from all parts of Palestine came to her funeral: the poor showed the garments which they had received from her charity; while the whole multitude, by their sighs and tears, evinced ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... of saying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," which, as Paul's solemn irony makes but too plain, must be the philosophy of life to those who believe that the dead rise not, which was the case with the Egyptians and the Greeks, and the Hebrews also. An old French epitaph expresses to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... coming to a stop under the shadow of the 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 ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Valadolid, where he died on the 8th of May 1506, aged 64 years. His body was carried to Seville, as he had ordered in his will, and was there honourably interred in the church of the Carthusians, called De las Cuevas, with a Latin epitaph commemorating ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... 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, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... sincerely beloved, nor more truly regretted, by all who knew him. His remains were deposited, amidst the heartfelt regrets of his friends and companions, on the following day, in the court-yard of Mr Beatman, under the shade of two orange-trees; and an appropriate epitaph, written by Captain Campbell, and carved on a slab of native mahogany, was placed ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... 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 still ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... middle of the 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
... second vol. Pray get them if you can: you have my Sieyes, have you not? One of them is there. I have been nearly in the other world. My regret was 'to die and leave the world "rough" copy'. Otherwise I had thought of an epitaph and a good end. Hic jacent reliquiae mortales Gulielmi Hazlitt, auctoris non intelligibilis: natus Maidstoniae in comi [ta] tu Cantiae, Apr. 10, 1778. Obiit Winterslowe, Dec., 1827. I think of writing an epistle to C. Lamb, Esq., to say that ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... How different would have been the life of 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 great ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and by repute suppose of fever, it will never be known whether we died in reality of the fever or of the doctor. But this other creature, in the case of dropping out of the coach, will enjoy a coroner's inquest; consequently he will enjoy an epitaph. For I insist upon it, that the verdict of a coroner's jury makes the best of epitaphs. It is brief, so that the public all find time to read; it is pithy, so that the surviving friends (if any can survive such a loss) remember it without fatigue; it is upon oath, so that ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 into the dust of the churchyard. In the far West, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... extremely good fellow in her age, and not by any means a very bad fellow in her youth. She was at one time pretty, or at least good-looking;[174] she was at all times clever; and if she did not quite deserve that almost superhuman eulogy awarded in the Devonshire epitaph to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the woods with his head under his left arm, with a spear, and surrounded by hounds. The Bonder always left a sheaf of oats for his horse, so that he should not ride over their freshly sown fields, when the Jette or giant went on his hunting excursions. There is even an epitaph ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... stranger ruminate over the details. Many portions of it were, indeed, known to him, for the traveller was no other than our old acquaintance Tom; but all was interesting. When he had heard it to the end, he uttered these only words, which might, indeed, serve for moral and poor Bruin's epitaph:— ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Gazette, Jan. 30 and May 8, 1794.] There was also a slight effort now and then at literature of a lighter kind. The little Western papers, like those in the East, had their poets' corners, often with the heading of "Sacred to the Muses," the poems ranging from "Lines to Myra" and "An Epitaph on John Topham" to "The Pernicious Consequences of Smoking Cigars." In one of the issues of the Knoxville Gazette there is advertised for sale a new song by "a gentleman of Col. McPherson's Blues, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... be said to affect his happiness, as he is past caring whether people think ill or well of him. Besides, after death it must needs be all right, as every man is so particularly fortunate in his epitaph!" ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... locust's flowery plume, The birch's pale-green scarf, And break the web of brier and bloom From name and epitaph. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "The King's Head," has a dark avenue of yews leading from the road to the porch. A brass to the memory of Archbishop Harsnett may be seen on the floor of the chancel. The epitaph in Latin was ordered to be so written in the will of the archbishop. Translated, the first portion may be read: "Here lieth Samuel Harsnett, formerly vicar of this church. First the unworthy Bishop of Chichester, then the more unworthy Bishop of Norwich, at last the ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... Mrs. 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 ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... Seale is a fascinating little place. It consists only of a few cottages, shy and red-roofed, deep among high hedges, bushy dells and reedy meadows, with wheatfields and barleyfields clothing the chalky slopes above. The church has been rebuilt, but has some inscriptions worth looking at. One is an epitaph on a young officer, Edward Noel Long, who was drowned at sea. According ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... out. Billy, my son, cover him. Now, Mr. Texas Pete," he says, cold as steel, "there is the grave. We will place the hoss in it. Then I intend to shoot you and put you in with the hoss, and write you an epitaph that will be a comfort to such travellers of the Trail as are honest, and a warnin' to such as are not. I'd as soon kill you now as an hour from now, so you may make a break for it ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... 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 ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... the Brera is preserved a fair white marble tomb, carved by that excellent Lombard sculptor, Agostino Busti. The epitaph runs as follows:— ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... likewise desire that 300l. may be laid out to purchase a handsome monument, made in London, to the memory of my late aunt, the Lady Carteret, to be erected in the church where she is interred, and a due epitaph, enumerating her exemplary virtues and life, to be inscribed on it in French and English, and recorded to posterity; and this I desire my brother John will see duly performed, as well as my other executors, with expedition; this piece of gratitude to her memory having ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... needs no epitaph to guard a name Which men shall praise while worthy work is done. He lived and died for good, be that his fame. Let marble crumble: ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... 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 letter goes on to tell of the affection in which the young ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... 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 ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... him, he was able to look back upon his life with a consciousness that he had served his God with at least some measure of the zeal which he had ever been wont to display in the service of his country. He continued to repeat the beautiful lines of the poet, down to the concluding words of the epitaph. Then after a brief pause, turning to his officers:—"Gentlemen," he said, "I would rather be the author of that piece than take Quebec to-morrow." [Footnote: There is a story to the effect that Wolfe, on this night, composed the well-known song which bears his name, commencing: "How stands the ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... checked, however, by the opinion of learned men, who held that in this matter the abilities of the young were more profitably nourished by exercises in Greek." We are reminded of our own Doctor Johnson, who declared that he would not disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey by an epitaph in English. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... 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 ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... Latin, "if you seek his monument, look around you!" And as you gaze upon the grandeur and beauty of the vast Cathedral, you feel that indeed the work of the architect is his best monument. He needs no sculptured tomb, no gorgeous trappings, no fulsome epitaph, to keep his memory green. The cunning hand has mouldered away this many a year, and the busy brain is still, as far as this world is concerned, but the work remains, and the builder cannot be forgotten. Now, this world is full of monuments raised by good and bad, some ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... 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 ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... transformed the land are memorials to the man who lies just there beyond this grave where today we place his mother. On that slab we find only the dates of birth and death and the name of Hamilton Burton; but when I look at it, I seem to read a nobler epitaph in letters of bronze which no weather can dim or tarnish. I seem to read—'Here lies one who put aside a blazing dream to cast his lot into a life of humbler duty.' If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one had grown before has done a noble thing, then ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... history of Italy, but whom he did not follow altogether in his brief sketch of Crescenzio's life and death, and their consequences. The Crescenzi lived on, in power and great state. They buried the terrible tribune in Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, where his epitaph may be read today, but whither he did not retire in life, as some guide-books say, to end his days in prayer and meditation. And for some reason, perhaps because they no longer held the great Castle, they seem to have left the Region of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 wrote ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... "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 in the volume in ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... State House. Cochrane issued from prison a broken and humiliated man, but if report says true, is still living, far out of sight and knowledge, somewhere in New Hampshire. He once sent my father an epitaph of his own selection, asking him to have it carved upon his gravestone should he die suddenly when away from his friends. My mother often repeats it, not realizing how far from the point it sounds to us who never knew him in his glory, but only ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... rises in revolt against untruth." John Knox was too heroic a figure not to rouse the artistic sense in Froude. "There lies one," said the Regent Morton over his coffin, "who never feared the face of mortal man." Froude has made this epitaph the text of the noblest eulogy ever delivered on Knox. "No grander figure can be found, in the entire history of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox." He surpassed Cromwell and Burghley in integrity of purpose and in purity of methods. He towered above the Regent ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... in the churchyard of Cheasing Eyebright, near to the largest yew, and the modest tombstone bearing his epitaph—it ended with: Ut in Principio, nunc est et semper—was almost immediately hidden from the eye of man by a spread of giant, grey tasselled grass too stout for scythe or sheep, that came sweeping ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Nonnulla desunt's legibly appeare, So 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 With subtle wreath, and close embrace doth twine A ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... 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 to hear ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox |
