"Tombstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here in town, but it blighted her whole life in a way, although she was just in her teens when it happened. It helped her to bear up, knowing he'd died such a hero. Some of the town people put up a tombstone to his memory, with a beautiful inscription on it that the summer people go to see, almost as much as the landing place of the Pilgrims. She'll be true to his memory always, and it's something beautiful to see her devotion to Emmett's father. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... valuable possession; and he had therefore requested his patron, the Duke of York, to be his son's friend. Both the duke and the king had promised their good counsel and protection. Thus "with a gentle and even gale," as it says on his tombstone, "in much peace, [he] arrived and anchored in his last and best port, at Wanstead in the county of Essex, the 16th of September, 1670, being then but forty-nine years and four ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... Elizabeth answered him; "you need not insist upon it. I shall never marry; my kingdom takes the place of a husband for me, and my subjects are my children. When I am dead, I wish graven on my tombstone: 'Here lies Elizabeth, who reigned so many years, and who ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... gents, this is a racket full of solemnity. We wants nothin' but good words. Don't mind about the trooth; which the same ain't in play at a funeral, nohow. We all knows Jack; we knows his record. Our information is ample that a-way; how he steals a hoss at Tucson; how be robs a gent last fall at Tombstone; how he downs a party at Cruces; how that scar on his neck he gets from Wells-Fargo's people when he stands up the stage over on the Lordsburg trail. But we lays it all aside to- day. We don't copper nary bet. Yesterday mornin', accompanied ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... were strongest within me I know not, but both strove mightily. For first of all it is a strange experience for any man to see his own tombstone, and in spite of myself I could not help shivering. But strong as was this feeling, anger well-nigh overcame it. It seemed to me that both my mother and brother were so eager for me to be dead, that they were glad of any excuse for making me appear so, and I determined ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... Whenever I hear the name it makes me feel as I did one day when my crutches slipped on the ice, and I fell on the pavement before the door, and some newsboys stood and laughed at me. Infelix Andrews! I want that written on my tombstone when I ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... knocked over more than once that morning, and there was an edge upon his voice as he rapped out his orders to the stockmen who were working with him. He did not look in the least degree pretty, and there was not enough poetry about him just then to make an obituary jingle on a tombstone. I little thought that day that a time would come when he would prove the glory of his Australian breeding in the teeth of an enemy's guns on ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... she; and no sooner were the words out than she fled, like a beam of light chased by the shadow of a tombstone. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... care for their graves; look, how the grass and weeds nod over that tombstone; and you would not clear this, unless you knew something about the girl that lies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... become so disorganized that all formation by regiments, companies, etc., had been broken up. Unfortunately, one of the Americans' dead privates could not be identified. He was buried where he fell, and a board tombstone was placed at the head of his grave, on which was carved ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... forecast of the madness which finally overtook him. "The stage darkened," said Scott, "ere the curtain fell." Insanity {190} deepened into idiocy and a hideous silence, and for three years before his death he spoke hardly ever a word. He had directed that his tombstone should bear the inscription, Ubi saeva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit. "So great a man he seems to me," wrote Thackeray, "that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling." Swift's ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... muttered Bruno, shaking his fairly athletic shoulders and fingering the knife at his belt as though making preparations for an inevitable struggle. "All right. They may kill, but I'll furnish some red paint for my tombstone, anyway!" ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... amiable state of mind that the Jesuit priest said, "God was in," when He looked down on the camp ground and saw the priest sleeping with a Congregational Chaplain. Or in the same state of mind you'll be in when you look down and see the sexton keeping your tombstone up to date. The truth of Joachim offsets the repose of Paganini and Kubelik. The repose and reputation of a successful pianist—(whatever that means) who plays Chopin so cleverly that he covers up a sensuality, and in such a way that the purest-minded see nothing ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... to her again. This time he came near, rubbed hard against her dress, and, when she sat down on a flat tombstone, laid his head comfortably in her lap, wagging ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... tired of lounging in the library, loitering on the pier, and of all the rest of the usual dull sea-side routine, he literally knew so little what to do with himself, that, to kill an hour or two before dinner, he would frequently be seen seated on a tombstone in the churchyard, yawning; staring at the church clock, and comparing it with his own watch;—in short, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... of the dead. If future generations have to rely upon the revelations of our churchyards for facts connected with the people of modern times, they will write that we were all of us faultless as fathers, irreproachable as husbands, and devoted and self-sacrificial as children. Every tombstone is engraved with a catalogue of human virtues; and idlers wandering round about our country churches, find themselves surrounded by the ashes of fond husbands, innocent angels, and adored wives. These prattlings of sorrow have their happy significance, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... For some time after his boys said "Doctor" in every third sentence, and then grew weary of a too common title, and fell back on Rabbi, by which he was known unto the day of his death, and which is now engraved on his tombstone. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... right across the city to the temple of Nishni Hongangi. On our way we were more than once stopped and turned off the direct road, which was kept by soldiers for the passage of the Mikado to worship at the tombstone of his innumerable ancestors, real or imaginary. Being a spiritual Emperor, he has to be well kept up to his religious duties, and is always being sent off to worship at some shrine or another, in order to maintain his popularity ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... is said on his tombstone in Giggleswick Church to be one of the Franklands of "Thartilbe" (Thirkleby, near Thirsk) and he was admitted to ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... the assurance which the experiment gave me that they might, under proper conditions, be relied on in battle, and finally used to him the expression which I believe I can repeat exactly: "If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, 'Died of a theory.'" General Lee was brought before a committee to state his opinion as to the probable efficiency of negroes as soldiers, and disappointed the probable expectation by his unqualified advocacy ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... to their satisfaction, Frankie Gurney came into the house with Georgie, holding a piece of smooth, white marble, and asked Dexie if she would write something on it, for it was to be the cat's tombstone. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... like your pa. He had red hair. But you favor your ma in your eyes and mouth. She was a nice little thing. My darter went to school to her and was nigh crazy about her. They was buried in the one grave and the School Board put up a tombstone to them as a reward for faithful service. Will ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "Big enough for a tombstone!" he said below his breath as his eyes rested on a large blue cross. Then he smiled again and held ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the newspapers at the time. Colonel Joyce's tombstone in Oak Hill bears a likeness of him ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... tombstone after revision the epitaph was substantially the same. "Interred" was changed to "deposited"; "theatre" was stricken out and "aim" inserted and "honor" added after "usefulness"; "became" was changed to ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... Abstruse Works of the late Joseph (vulgo Joe) Miller. With a humorous etching of his tombstone, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... business! That ought to be inscribed on the tombstone of every dead reputation. Hic jacet Una Habberton. Nice girl, but ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... and dying of homesickness, before they returned, so that when they should come home, they would find only her grave, covered with flowers. She even went so far, in one desperate moment, as to compose a fitting epitaph for her tombstone, which was to be of white marble, of course, with an angel ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... of royal lineage. Popular tradition individualizes him as the "Stout Stewart of Bonkill" of Blind Harry the minstrel, who fell with Sir John the Grahame at the battle of Falkirk—although that hero was buried near the field of action, as his tombstone there in the old ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... on one of my photographs of long-ago places and people, a crowd of sad, gentle thoughts has rushed into my heart, and driven the devil out, as clean as ever so much holy water and priestly exorcism could have done! I have a photograph of Haddington church tower, and my father's tombstone in it—of every place I ever lived at as a home—photographs of old lovers! old friends, old servants, old dogs! In a day or two, you, dear, will be framed and hung up among the 'friends.' And that bright, kind, indomitable face of yours will not be the least efficacious face ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... has who is sure of his cause. He would have none of their sophistries, none of their fears, none of their old-fashioned absurdities. Did she love him? Was her heart to him as was his to her? That was the one question on which it must all depend. As he thought of it all, sitting there on the tombstone, he put out his arm as though to fold her form to his bosom when he thought of the moment in which he became sure that it was so. There had been no doubt of the full-flowing current of her love. Then he had aroused himself, and had shaken his ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... all the respec's I know—put up a fine Bible-texted tombstone for her, an' had her daguerre'type enlarged to a po'tr'it. I don't know's I'm obligated to do any more, 'cep'n, of co'se, to wait till the year's out, which, not havin' no young children in need of a mother, I couldn't hardly do less ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... decorations of that grave. Piled marble or towering granite would lie too heavy on the heart of this child of Nature. And as the years shall pass, still will the humble grave continue to be visited. "Forgotten" will never be written upon the tombstone of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Still through the clear brilliance of New England winter nights will the stars look down tenderly upon it. Arcturus will stand guard over it, golden-belted Orion will send down quivering lances of light to illumine ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... gentlemen, bow low to the ladies of his acquaintance, and then to others of the gentry. No! 'Sir Charles had first other devoirs to pay. He paid us his second compliments.' From these two exemplary actions we must infer his whole character. It should have been inscribed on his tombstone, 'He would not dock his horses' tails.' That is the most trifling details of his conduct are regulated on the most serious considerations. He is one of those solemn beings who can't shave themselves ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... once standing in the cemetery of Stirling and gazing upon the monument of two Christian sisters who suffered martyrdom for Christ, and as I read the inscription on the tombstone, I thought of how much we were indebted to those who have borne the burden ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... however, Irving explored the neighbourhood, and was rewarded, as he thought, by running to earth Dame Quickly's "parcel-gilt goblet" in a tavern near by. He had one other "find." In the old graveyard of St. Michael's, which no longer exists, he discovered, so he avers, the tombstone of one Robert Preston who, like the Francis of "Anon, anon, sir," was a drawer at the Boar's Head, and quotes from that tombstone the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... it, mistaking it for the Indian-summer sun! Thus peradventure he shall decline softly, slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his wind-pipe and he gasps away to death some early morning before the world is aired, and they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of years!' yea! If he preserve his principles in perfect order, a Forsyte may live on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... too. Some of the younger crew on the floor was lookin' up and grinnin', and more kept stoppin' and joinin' in all the time. I cal'late we looked kind of green and soft, hangin' over that marble rail, like posies on a tombstone; and green is the favorite color to a stockbroker, they tell me. Anyhow, we had a good-sized congregation under us in less than no time. Likewise, they got chatty, and commenced ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Blenkiron, 'I can't read that tombstone language of yours. But I reckon that that notice to trespassers, whatever it signifies, don't apply to you and me. I take it this gentleman is in ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... respectable Madame de Roucoulles I have read, at least seven times, what the Prussian Books say of her by way of Biography; but it is always given in their dull tombstone style; it has moreover next to no importance; and I,—alas, I do not yet too well remember it! She was from Normandy; of gentle blood, never very rich; Protestant, in the Edict-of-Nantes time; and had to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... intervals of argument my speech grinned with anecdotes like a basketfull of 'possum heads. The fiddle played its part, the people did the rest, and I carved upon the tombstone of the demolished ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... trying quarter of an hour. Ah me! the thud of the spade on your mother's grave! None gave any sign of what he felt save Drumsheugh, whose sordid slough had slipped off from a tender heart, and Chalmers, who went behind a tombstone and sobbed aloud. Not even Posty asked the reason so much as by a look, and Drumtochty, as it passed, made as though it did not see. But I marked that the Dominie took Chalmers home, and walked all the way with him ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... from tombstone of Sir William, who lies buried at Greencroft, near Petersburg, Virginia."—See South. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... old woman wore mittens like unto his stockings in texture and in colour. They took no heed of me as I looked on, unable to account for them. The old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man much too meek for a beadle. On an old tombstone in the foreground between me and them, were two cherubim; but for those celestial embellishments being represented as having no possible use for knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have compared them with the hay-makers, and sought a likeness. I ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... up inquiringly, and she continued: "I notice that an old tombstone seems to set you meditating. So it does me. When I look at an ancient monument, and especially an old headstone, I find myself almost unconsciously retracing the years to the date that is written on the stone. Why do you think that is? Why should a monument be so stimulating to the imagination? And ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... that she left the child in a basket, on a tombstone, in a marble-worker's yard, in town; in the yard of a man whose name was Durfee?" I said, as rapidly as I ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... gipsies, beggarwomen, and thimbleriggers were thick as blackberries; while Jack himself—who, upon hearing of what was going forward, had come down by the night coach with all expedition—was standing on a tombstone near the doorway, and holding forth to the whole bevy of rascals whom he had assembled about him. It was evident from his tones and gestures that Jack had been exciting the mob in every possible way; but as the justices and the constables drew near, he changed the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Celia and Betty and Theodosia and Clementina Stockard were all married and gone. But Anne had never had another lover. There had to be an old maid in every big family she said, and she was not going to marry Jerome Irving just for the sake of having Mrs. on her tombstone. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... always ushered into the gloomy library, with its high ceiling, with its long windows that reached almost to the rococo cornice, with its cold marble mantelpiece that reminded me of a tombstone, with its interminable book shelves filled with yellow bindings. On the centre table, in addition to a ponderous Bible, was one of those old-fashioned carafes of red glass tipped with blue surmounted by a tumbler of blue tipped with red. Behind ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fragile goods, lay heaped at the top and came away easily to her hand, exposing that which lay firmly wedged at the bottom. What she had expected to find she did not know. What she did find astonished her beyond all things. It was a beautifully chiselled white marble tombstone in the shape of a cross. The whole of the inscription was clear of dust or any covering save one fading yellow rose. Awed, deeply touched, and feeling herself upon the verge of a mysterious revelation, Christine lifted Roddy's yellow rose and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the monuments, shrines, and chantry chapels, were destroyed by the Parliamentary troops. Two queens lie buried here, Catherine of Aragon and Mary of Scotland, without elegy or epitaph, monument or tombstone. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... subscribed his name. Others rapidly followed. The heart went with the name, the blood was pledged with the ink, the Covenant was for life even unto death. When all in the church had subscribed, the parchment was carried to the churchyard and placed on a flat tombstone, where the people outside added name after name till there was no room, no, not for an initial letter. The scene was impressive beyond description; the people gave themselves willingly unto the Lord. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... along that when you got a little of the nonsense tried out of you there would be a residue of common-sense, and I am glad to have your boss back up my judgment. There's two things you just naturally don't expect from human nature—that the widow's tombstone estimate of the departed, on which she is trying to convince the neighbors against their better judgment that he went to Heaven, and the father's estimate of the son, on which he is trying to pass him along into a ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... her troubles by dying, in 1714. Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, who had only wished to live, she said, long enough to have engraved upon her tombstone: "Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," died, in spite of this desire, only a few weeks before the queen; and the new heir to the throne was her son, George Louis of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the church, but the church gate was locked and broken—a calf, two pigs, and an ass, in the churchyard; and several boys (with more of skin apparent than clothes) were playing at hustlecap upon a tombstone, which, upon nearer observation, he saw was the monument of his own family. One of the boys came to the gate, and told Lord Colambre 'there was no use in going into the church, becaase there was no church there; nor had not ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... out into the little graveyard on the very edge of the cliff. He was amused at the quaint epitaphs. Then one tombstone, lying flat upon the ground, a tombstone which, in large capitals, called upon the reader to 'Prepare to meet thy God,' startled him. Again he thought of the ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... Flemming. "The child seems to have been born only to be buried, and have its name recorded on a wooden tombstone." ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Thisbe—slaying lions! One of your ghosts carried a loaf of bread, and dropped it in fright; one carried a pound of fresh butter for home consumption. They were in the churchyard for one in passing to kneel at her father's grave and kiss his tombstone.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... corruption, corruption from desire, desire from sensation, and sensation from contact, I have avoided every kind of action, every kind of contact, and—without stirring any more than the pillar of a tombstone—exhaling my breath through my two nostrils, fixing my glances upon my nose; and, observing the ether in my spirit, the world in my limbs, the moon in my heart, I pondered on the essence of the great ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... tints, stood the ruined walls of a little chapel. In the dilapidated vault close by lay buried many of his ancestors, and under the little wavy hillocks of fern and nettles, slept many an humble villager. He sat down upon a worn tombstone in this lowly ruin, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, he surrendered his spirit to the stormy and evil thoughts which he had invited. Long and motionless he sat there, while his foul fancies and schemes ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... put on the tombstone, that he would have been President of the Royal College of Physicians, Lord High Admiral, Commander-in-Chief, Lord Chancellor, and Archbishop of Canterbury, if—he had only ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... and we all went to sleep. There is no necessity in Cyprus for sentries or night-watchers, the people are painfully good, and you are a great deal too secure when travelling. As to "revolvers!" I felt inclined to bury my pistols upon my first arrival, and to inscribe "Rest in peace" upon the tombstone. It would be just as absurd to attend church in London with revolvers in your belt as to appear with such a weapon in any part of Cyprus. Mine were carefully concealed in some mysterious corner of the gipsy-van; where they now ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... entitled "Gallia Victrix." If the history of France in Africa ends in bringing the southern borderlands of the Mediterranean, the old haunts of the Barbary Corsairs, within the pale of civilization, it may some day be possible to bury the unhappy past, and inscribe upon the tombstone the optimistic motto: ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... he had ever spent. The organ ceased playing, the little choir dispersed, the school children were sent home, Mr. Abraham Boosey retired to the bar of the Duke's Head, Muggins tenderly embraced every tombstone he met on his way through the churchyard, the "gentlefolk" followed Reynolds' lantern towards the vicarage, and Mr. Thomas Reid, the conservative and melancholic sexton, put out the lights and locked the church doors, muttering a sour laudation of more primitive times, when ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... feeble-minded. It is better so, as it is—better that he should be spread about over the surface of the ocean in a broad general way, thus saving all the expense and trouble of gathering him up and burying him and putting a tombstone over him. He was one of ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... far as Coblenz, where they were joined by Fitzjames, who had set out upon hearing the news. He was just in time to see his father alive. Sir James Stephen died September 14, 1859, an hour or two after his son's arrival. He was buried at Kensal Green, where his tombstone bears the inscription: 'Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.' The words (from Joshua i. 9) were chosen because a friend remembered the emphasis with which my father ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the crime, poverty and ignorance of our age, for a man to live so that his friends can truthfully write on his tombstone, "He never had an enemy," is for him to be eternally disgraced. Such a man should never be guilty of showing his face in heaven, for he will find that the angels, at least, are his enemies. Looking toward integrity, Christ came to bring peace. Looking toward iniquity, Christ came to ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... scholar Apollo!" they repeat, foolishly, ignorantly. He was better; was more like a real portrait of a real young Greek, like Tryphon, Son of Eutychos, for instance, (as friends remembered him with regret, as you may see him still on his tombstone in the British Museum) alive among the paler physical and intellectual lights of modern England, under the old monastic stonework of the Middle Age. That theatrical old Greek god never took the expressiveness, the lines of delicate meaning, such as were come into the face of the English ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... eye in a graveyard. What a necrology of notability! How many a controversialist who made a great stir in his day, how many a once rising genius, how many a withering satirist, lies here shrunk all away to the tombstone immortality of a name and date! Think of the aspirations, the dreams, the hopes, the toil, the confidence (of himself and wife) in an impartial and generous posterity;—and then read "Smith J.(ohn?) 1713-1784(?). The Vision of Immortality, an Epic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... supported by the State, as an open forum for the education of the young men of the Commonwealth; and his biographers inform us that he regarded this the most important achievement of his great career. In fact, he esteemed this victory so highly that he directed the words to be placed upon his tombstone at Monticello—"Founder of the University of Virginia." No act of his revealed more fully than this the tactician and the statesman, and no single act of his, although his entire career was strewn with great deeds, did so ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... those homes of bliss where they must never dwell. Such was the apparition, though too shadowy for language to portray; for here would be the moonbeams on the ice, glittering through a warrior's breastplate, and there the letters of a tombstone, on the form that stood before it; and whenever a breeze went by, it swept the old men's hoary heads, the women's fearful beauty, and all the unreal throng, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an inquiring mind, the dwarf decided to satisfy himself upon the matter. All around him lay slabs of rock, some of which were worn perfectly smooth and to the thinness of a tombstone, by centuries of polishing in the iron jaws of glaciers. Selecting one of these of convenient size, Otter approached the edge of the bridge, pushing the stone before him over the frozen snow. Here the ice was perfect, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... writings—the friend and wife, whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward, I dedicate this volume." Not less touching is the testimony borne by another great living writer to the character of his wife, in the inscription upon the tombstone of Mrs. Carlyle in Haddington Churchyard, where are inscribed these words:—"In her bright existence, she had more sorrows than are common, but also a soft amiability, a capacity of discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart, which are rare. For forty years she was the true ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... walked through the graveyard, and stood leaning against her tombstone. I soon knew that she was coming, for I heard the ringing sound in the air which always came before her. A moment after, she stood beside me. She placed her hand on my heart, and said, "Joseph, all is right here,"—then upon my forehead, and said, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... eight hundred pounds; but, according to Garrick's report of her, was neither amiable nor handsome, though that she was both in Johnson's estimation appears from the epithets "formosae, cultae, ingeniosae," which he inscribed on her tombstone. Their nuptials were celebrated at Derby, and to that town they went together on horseback from Birmingham; but the bride assuming some airs of caprice on the road, like another Petruchio he gave her such effectual proofs of resolution, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... disputed district, bury ancient-looking stones with suitable inscriptions. It will go beyond the simple changes in the termination of the surnames of those who come under its dominion; the name upon a tombstone will be made to end, according to circumstances, in "off" or "vitch," sometimes in the Roumanian "esco" or the Greek "opoulos." If this is known to the departed, one would like to learn how it affects them. A great deal of energy has been brought to bear in the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... so hard and so long at March without speaking or smiling, or taking any more notice of him than if he had been an effigy on a tombstone, seemed unaccountable to that youth. Had he been able to look at himself from her point of view he would not have been so ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... But then the distance separating the living from the dead is so great! Poor Tom had tried. Byrne ran to the bed and attempted to lift up, to push off the horrible lid smothering the body. It resisted his efforts, heavy as lead, immovable like a tombstone. The rage of vengeance made him desist; his head buzzed with chaotic thoughts of extermination, he turned round the room as if he could find neither his weapons nor the way out; and all the time he stammered awful ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Lovaina 'at 'is whole bloody family was drowned when the Rio Janeiro went down off Mile Rock in Frisco bay. The kid was 'is sister's only child, an' 'is uncle left a thousand francs with the American consul for a proper tombstone on 'is grave in the cemetery. The ol' gent worshipped ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... class. It is true that there was then no doctrine of the "dignity of labour," but that there was reasonable pride taken in a trade reputably maintained is seen from the frequent appearance of its tools upon a tombstone. In respect of the mere enjoyment of life, the labourers, of the Roman world were, so far as we can gather, tolerably happy. They had abundant holidays, mostly of religious origin; but, like our own, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... arranged with Creech, the chief bookseller in Edinburgh, to undertake a second edition of his poems. This was published in March, 1787, the subscribers numbering over 1,500. Out of money thus derived, he provided a tombstone for the neglected grave of Robert Fergusson, his "elder brother in the muses," in the Canongate churchyard. Then he decided to visit some of the classic scenes of Scottish history and romance. He had as yet seen but a small part of his own country, and this ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... games of chance. Who has not seen that terrible etching in Hogarth's "Industry and Idleness," where the idle apprentice, instead of going devoutly to church and singing out of the same hymn-book with his master's pretty daughter, is gambling on a tombstone with a knot of dissolute boys? A watchful beadle has espied the youthful gamesters, and is preparing to administer a sounding thwack with a cane on the shoulders of Thomas Idle. But the race of London beadles is now well-nigh extinct; ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... genius would find full recognition. Perhaps he was right: more than one book which seemed dead and was dead for contemporary readers has had a resurrection when the rivals who triumphed over it lived only in the tombstone memory of antiquaries. Comfort for some of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the rest; they have but little interest. It is not only in the aisles, however, that we find the work of the Florentine sculptors. Galileo Galilei, an ancestor of the great astronomer, is buried in the nave at the west end, under a carved tombstone enthusiastically praised by Ruskin. And then on the first pillar on the right we find the work of Bernardo Rossellino's youngest brother Antonio (1427-1478), who, under the influence of Desiderio da Settignano, has carved there a relief of Madonna and Child, surrounded by a garland ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the well-known family of Prigg, and he prided himself on the circumstance. How often was he seen in the little churchyard of Yokelton of a Sunday morning, both before and after service, pointing with family pride to the tombstone of a relative which bore ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... system: how few the ceremonies through which they pass during the course of their lives! At their deaths they are interred by the fraternity, without pomp, without prayers; thinking it then too late to alter the course of God's eternal decrees: and as you well know, without either monument or tombstone. Thus after having lived under the mildest government, after having been guided by the mildest doctrine, they die just as peaceably as those who being educated in more pompous religions, pass through a variety of sacraments, subscribe to complicated creeds, and enjoy the benefits ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... her, cool, even refreshing. With a feeling of gentle, almost sweet, weariness, she walked through the broad centre avenue, allowed Fritz to run on in front, and did not mind when he disappeared from her sight for a few seconds behind a tombstone, though at other times she would not have allowed such behaviour. She remained standing before her husband's grave. She did not, however, look down at the flower-bed, as was her general custom, but gazed past the tombstone ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... different one there, since the dullest mind cannot blankly receive a dead statement without some effort to give it life. Borrow was not going to commit himself to incontrovertible statements such as are or might be made to a Life Insurance Company. He had no command of a tombstone style and would not have himself circumscribed with full Christian name, date of birth, etc., as a sexton or parish clerk might have done for him. Twenty years later indeed—in 1862—he did write such an account of ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... evidence is such as country people give one for a story of apparitions; if you discover any signs of incredulity, they triumphantly show the very house which the ghost haunted, the identical dark corner where it used to vanish, and perhaps even the tombstone of the person whose death it foretold. Jack Cade's nobility was supported by the same irresistible kind of evidence: having asserted that the eldest son of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was stolen by a beggar-woman, "became ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... ask, what the deuce brought you there? Of course, it was only to taste the fresh air; To pick cowslips and daisies; and brush off the dew, Or drink gin o'er the tombstone of Brian Boru. As to flags, and all that; 'twas but doing in style, The honours of Freedom to Erin's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... plate of his arms defaced. Poor memorials though they be, yet they are something saved for a while from oblivion, and I should be almost as unwilling to destroy them as to efface the Hic jacet of a tombstone. There may be sometimes a pleasure in recognising them, sometimes ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... reflections at the close of his essay on the tombs of Westminster Abbey: "When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... A tombstone from the cemetery of the monastery is built into the Turkish wall at the north-eastern corner of the church. It bears an epitaph to the following effect:—'In the month of September of the year 1387, fell asleep the servant of God, Dionysius the Russian, on the sixth day of ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... "Pa Ford is a good man. He has a good heart, but there's so many of them that it is all he can do to rustle what must be had. Why," she told me in a burst of confidence, "I've been saving up for a tombstone for ma for twelve years, but I have to help pa once in a while, and I sometimes think I never will get enough money saved. It is kind of hard on three dollars a week, and then I'm kind of extravagant at times. I have wanted a doll, a ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... cautiously, and at the foot of the mountains, one hundred and fifty miles from Fort Yuma, we met a freight train from Santa Fe loaded with flour and bacon, principally, bound for Tombstone, Arizona. This train was owned by a man named Pritchett; but he was generally known as "Nick in the Woods." His party had had a fight with the Indians in the mountains the third day before we met him, and he had lost several mules killed and two of his teamsters were wounded. He informed ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... price than the merchant had offered; and together with the heads of his three sons and grandson, who, according to custom, were all seized and decapitated, had them deposited near one of the city gates, with a tombstone and inscription. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... withdrew to the end of the passage and looked up the shaft, and I for one was glad to see the stars shining in heaven above me. Then we made a double loop in the rope, and at a signal were hauled up till we hung over the ledge where the black mass of marble rested, the tombstone of Montezuma's treasure, and of him who sleeps ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... a book on the subject, the perusal of which induced Mr. Milsom to lend a hand to the work which the young Genevese missionary had begun. And thus good example goes on ever propagating itself; and though the tombstone may record "Hic jacet" over the crumbling dust of the departed, his spirit still lives and works through other minds—stimulates them to action, and inspires them with hope—"allures to brighter worlds, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... last enjoyed, here Pompey lies.' There were agreeable excursions, too, from Chiswick to the neighbouring places, particularly to Richmond, where Clare visited Thompson's monument on the hill, as well as his tombstone in the old church, which, covered as it was with cobwebs, he thought much less beautiful than that of Hogarth's dog. It was Clare's intention to stop at least a week with his kind host at Chiswick, but an awkward circumstance occasioned his departure at the end of a few days. The reverend ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... inscriptions in this old cemetery, may have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work of the kind under consideration. But Bunhill Fields and similar places in and near London and other great towns have taught me the law to which I have already referred—the law that the picture-tombstone was country bred, and could never have endured under the modern conditions of life in or ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... affairs in Commons, whilst controverting all his statements, says "everyone must admit that the Hon. Member has spoken from his heart." "Which," NOVAR says, "it reminds me of the couplet Joe Gargery meant to put on the tombstone of his lamented father, 'What-sume'er the failings on his part, Remember, reader, he were that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... at them with a sort of fascinated interest. Somehow or other it seemed rather like reading one's own tombstone, and I couldn't help wondering whether I was in the main hall or whether I had been dignified with an eligible site in the Chamber of Horrors. If it hadn't been for my appointment I should most certainly have taken a cab straight ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges |
