"Epitaph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... devoted adherent of the Union, and his love for it had but increased in exile. He stood by Mr. Clay against the Southern Democrats in the angry contest of 1850, declaring that "if the Union must be dismembered" he "prayed God that its ruins might be the monument of his own grave." He "desired no epitaph to tell that he survived it." Against the madness of repealing the Missouri Compromise he entered a protest and a warning. He notified his Southern friends that the dissolution of the Union might be involved in the dangerous step. He alone, of the Southern Democrats in the Senate, voted against ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... stood above the sink, rubbing the dishes with a damp cloth, he thought: "When I die, I should like it said of me: By his own efforts, he remained a poor man." And he stood still, the dishtowel in his hand, thinking of that wealthy iron-master, whose epitaph is said to read: Here lies a man who knew how to enlist in his service better men ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... unrevenged? Thy pleasant wiles Forgotten, and thine innocent joy? Shall hollow-hearted apathy, The cruellest form of perfect scorn, With langour of most hateful smiles, For ever write In the weathered light Of the tearless eye An epitaph that all may spy? No! sooner she herself ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... epitaph of Doctor Unonius, upon a modest stone in the churchyard of Polpeor, in Cornwall, of which parish he was, during his life, the general friend, as his scientific ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... seldom seen a Christian die in such admirable sentiments, and I think it fit to fix his memory by a suitable inscription on his tombstone. Both of you, gentlemen, are learned enough to do that successfully, and I engage myself to have the epitaph of the defunct engraved on a large white stone, in the manner and style wherein you compose it. But remember, in making the stone speak, to make it proclaim nothing but the praise ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... his death-bed. The Regent Morton's famous epitaph spoken by Knox's grave, is an imperfect echo of what the Reformer ten days before, in bidding farewell to the Kirk (Session) of Edinburgh, had said of his own past career:—'In respect that he bore God's message, to whom he must make account for the same, he ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... gray-headed, leaning on a staff, To that great city of his birth he came, And at its gates he paused with wondering laugh To think how changed were all his thoughts of fame Since first he carved the golden epitaph To keep in memory a worthy name, And thought forgetfulness had been its doom But for a few bright letters ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... his memory is also to be seen at the family burial-place, Parham, Sussex, England, with the following epitaph:— ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... whom I had not yet seen, entered Chopin's room when I was getting a lesson. Meyerbeer was not announced, he was king. I was playing the Mazurka in C (Op. 33), printed on one page which contains so many hundreds—I called it the epitaph of the idea [Grabschrift des Begriffs], so full of distress and sadness is the composition, the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 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, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... found this epitaph on an ancient monument, I should at once have guessed it was modern; for there is nothing so common among us as heroes, but among the ancients they were rare. Instead of saying a man was a hero, they would have said what he had done ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... life and had learned to despise should accompany her to the grave. It was her wish to be buried obscurely in the small and ancient church of Gagny; and there, in the southern aisle, near the chapel of the Virgin, some faithful but unknown hand has placed upon a slab of black marble the following epitaph:— ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... incomprehensible epitaph is this, which always strikes me afresh, upon each perusal, as a ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... was a pitiful epitaph for a man's life! I'm sorry! Jimmie Dale's face softened a little—the man was dead now. "I'm sorry.... Fleming P. Forrester"—he had seen that signature on bank paper a hundred times in the old days; he had little ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... please, your will is mine; Enjoy it without fear, And your grave will be this glass of wine, Your epitaph—a tear— Go, take your seat in Charon's boat; We'll tell the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... jest of an ex-minister is as flavourless as a mummy; as unintelligible as its hieroglyphical epitaph. Three days after his fall, his wit, under the sponge of oblivion, has grown as much a mystery as the name of him who built the pyramid, or the taste ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... Carlsruhe, 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 elevated into ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was the highly esteemed Friend of Dr. Parr, Mr. Grove of Lord Sheffield. A beautiful epitaph in verse, written by Mr. Grove, on his beloved Wife, is one of the chief ornaments of ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... 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 ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... his own emotions. Ignorant of the fate of his sweet Melanie, he had died, as he had lived, the very soul of honor; and when they buried him, in the old chapel of his Breton castle, beside his famous ancestors, none nobler lay around him; and the brief epitaph they carved upon his stone was true, at least, if it were short and simple, for it ran ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... dead it doesn't matter if you were not successful in a business way. No one has yet had the courage to memorialize his wealth on his tombstone. A dollar mark would not look well there. The best epitaph proclaims simple old Scripture virtues, like honesty and diligence and patience. And you will observe that when the meanest skinflint or the most disgracefully avaricious millionaire dies, his tombstone never refers to ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... slender stalk to its stick with the smallest thread, and he had a reverent way of laying a bulb or seed in the ground, and then gently shaping and smoothing a small mound over it, which made the little inscription on the stick above more like an affecting epitaph than ever. Much of this gentleness may have been that apology for his great strength, common with large men; but his face was distinctly amiable, and his very light blue eyes were at times wistful and doglike in their kindliness. I was soon to learn, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... most touchingly beautiful epitaph I have ever read, was written in that one word, "Peace." It seemed like the last sigh of a departing spirit, over the clay which it was about to abandon ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... present, and the present has become the past, and is gone for ever; while they who had no aims beyond the things of time, which are now sunk beneath the dreary horizon, will awake too late to the conviction that they are outside the ark of safety, and that their truest epitaph is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... naive give-and-take fashion of asking a favour of a God recalls the old Scotch epitaph cited ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... being long since forgotten. Another sings plaintively how all things, land and food and property, pass progressively, as by a law of nature, into the hands of Misi Ueba, and soon nothing will be left for Samoans. This is an epitaph the man would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unrolled below us, like a great map, starred here and there with burning houses. Above the trees of Union Square, my glass showed me a white line, lighted by the bon-fires, where Caesar's Column was towering to the skies, bearing the epitaph of the world. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... moment, made no reply: her silence was a grim judgement of the whole point of view. "Poor little monkey!" she at last exclaimed; and the words were an epitaph for the tomb of Maisie's childhood. She was abandoned to her fate. What was clear to any spectator was that the only link binding her to either parent was this lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for bitterness, a deep little porcelain cup in which ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... decorations are "cheap" there. Yet it should be remembered that zeal, industry, enterprise, and patriotism are "cheap," too, if they are to be won by them. Perhaps we manage better. The good old copybook maxim, "Virtue is its own reward," must be McNair's epitaph, whilst we cannot help feeling that India could have better spared many ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... am 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
... occasionally words to this effect: "The reaction resulted in nothing but an insoluble resin which was not further investigated." Such a passage would be marked with a tear if chemists were given to crying over their failures. For it is the epitaph of a buried hope. It likely meant the loss of months of labor. The reason the chemist did not do anything further with the gummy stuff that stuck up his test tube was because he did not know what to do with it. It could not be dissolved, it could not be crystallized, ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... was very agreeable, as he always is, and told many anecdotes of George Selwyn, 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 got a letter from ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... conquered Saxon king, had a son, and the conqueror William had a daughter, Gundrada. The former became a Viking pirate, and in his old age a monk, and was buried in a church, now a Presbyterian chapel. There his epitaph may be read in fine bold lettering, still distinct. That man ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... in the north aisle are of no special interest. That to Bishop Warburton at the west end contains an epitaph that is worth reading. Next to it is an ungainly tomb, filling up an enormous wall space, with a depressing effect. Farther eastwards is the tomb by Flaxman to the memory of Mrs Morley, who died at sea ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... marble recumbant figure of a bishop and the chapel is therefore known as "the chapel of the stone bishop." Nearby is the tomb of his father, that Rodrigo de Bastidas who was imprisoned by Bobadilla, and an epitaph full of ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... or of joy. But to watch her pronounce the death-warrant of all The illusions of life—lift, unflinching, the pall From the bier of the dead Past—that woman so fair, And so young, yet her own self-survivor; who there Traced her life's epitaph with a finger so cold! 'Twas a picture that pain'd his self-love to behold. He himself knew—none better—the things to be said Upon subjects like this. Yet he bow'd down his head: And as thus, with a trouble he could not command, He paused, crumpling the letters he held in his ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... the tree, and sighed as she recalled her own bereavements, and her Christian heart was busy in suggesting some means of consolation for the stricken parents. Mr. Colbert was stooping by a distant tomb reading its epitaph to little Jennie, who listened with the deepest interest. There was no sound to mar the stillness of that peaceful retreat, the whispering winds went, dirge-like, through the waving grass, and the leaves rustled softly ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... deliverance is at hand, perishing by a combination of foul play on the part of his foes and neglect on that of his slave. At least once, too, in that parting of Asdis with Grettir and Illugi, which ranks not far below the matchless epitaph of Sir Ector on Lancelot, there is not only suggestion, but expression ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Soldier's Consolation Genial Impulse Neither this nor that The way to behave The best As broad as it's long The Rule of Life The same, expanded Calm at Sea The Prosperous Voyage Courage My only Property Admonition Old Age Epitaph Rules for Monarchs Paulo post ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... by command of Pope Urban a truth which, in this day, is taken for granted by the youngest of children. Galileo was then kept in exile for the rest of his days, died, and was buried ignobly, apart from his family, without fitting ceremony, without monument or epitaph. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... 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 ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... after a time the month Quintiles, in which Julius Caesar was born, was called Julius, whence we have July. Thus this name, placed in the calendar, is become the imperishable record of a great man; it is an immortal epitaph on Time's highway, engraved by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... active part which Lord Mordaunt had taken in effecting the restoration of Charles II., in which service, according to his epitaph, he "encountered a thousand dangers, provoking and also defeating the rage of Cromwell," was not rewarded by any extraordinary marks of distinction or favour, and he seems after that event to have quietly resided on his ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... disturbed the epitaph. But as soon as the last of the fallen were buried, and the soldiers had eaten and refreshed themselves, the torch was set to Piqua, even as it had been set to Chillicothe. In an hour the town was a huge mass of flames, three miles long, and lighting up the neighboring ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... several of the students did not forbear to whisper among themselves, that rather than there should be a mistake in the calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven through a slip about his neck." Whether this suggestion is founded in truth, we have no other evidence than an obscure hint in the epitaph hereafter inserted, which was written by the author himself, a short time before his death. His body, with due solemnity, was buried near that of Dr. Robert Weston, in the north aisle which joins next to the choir of the cathedral of Christ Church, on the 27th of January 1639-40. Over ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... again to his uneasy pacing, but now with an irrational and supporting sense of duty done. He had dug his grave that morning; now he had carved his epitaph; the folds of the toga were composed, why should he delay the insignificant trifle that remained to do? He paused and looked long in the face of the sleeping Huish, drinking disenchantment and distaste of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance. Could the thing ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... their present shape, for in a letter to me, dated 5 Nov. 1877, speaking of the poet's son, who was Vicar of Bredfield, he says: "It is now just twenty years since the Brave old Boy was laid in Bredfield Churchyard. Two of his Father's Lines might make Epitaph for some ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... his pupils we would send this epitaph, and ask them if aught less tributary could be said of one who was and is to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... might have produced some regard for it, in those authors that have crowded libraries with elaborate dissertations upon Homer; since to afford a subject for heroick poems is the privilege of very few, but every man may expect to be recorded in an epitaph, and, therefore, finds some interest in providing that his memory may not suffer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Louis XIV. was to be the second. There was little of comedy in the future Madame de Maintenon; though, after all, there was doubtless as much as there need have been in the wife of a poor man who was moved to compose for his tomb such an epitaph as this, which I ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... a monument to him, in which the remains of this brave general still repose. It was a short time after his death that the English took possession of St Louis, and all the officers of that nation joined in defraying the expences of the erection of the monument, on which there is an epitaph beginning with these words: "Here repose the remains of the brave and upright General Blanchot," &c. We think it not foreign to the purpose, to publish a trait which will prove how far General Blanchot carried his ideas of justice; every ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... 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 ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... [8] The Journal's epitaph was promptly written by a scurrilous opponent in lines showing that the prominences of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... wild roses, the labernum gracefully rose, and suspended her yellow flowers; and adjoining was a spot which the Recluse had selected for his grave, of which, like the monks of La Trappe, he dug a small portion every day until he had finished it. He composed his Epitaph in French, and had it inscribed on a stone. If the reader is at much interested as I was in the history of the poor Hermit, he will be pleased with the translation of it, which follows, from the pen of my respected and distinguished friend, William Hayley, Esq. ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... to explain the meaning of this epitaph, one to the effect that Oliver Cromwell, while at Christchurch, dug up some lead coffins to make into bullets, replacing the bodies from ten coffins in one grave. This solution is more ingenious than probable, as ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... the poet La Faye, whom she advised in his compositions, and whose life she made delightful. Her fondness for the arts and pleasure procured for her the appellation of 'Dame de Volupte', and she wrote this epitaph upon herself: ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... treasure trove toward the heavy expense of the imposing funeral. On the seventh day of the decease—the 27th day (18th September)—the obsequies took place at the Tentokuji of Shiba, where she was to rest, well weighted down by massive sandstone and an interminable epitaph—of which the posthumous name of Tenso[u]-in can be remembered. The Sho[u]gun Ke was present in his proxy of Tsuchiya ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... man who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie, will not hazard his character with posterity, by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated, will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, or a pretence to impeach the probity which he means to preserve, even in the grave, to which ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... splendid if impoverished House forced by pride to place its unwedded (because undowered) daughter in the convent that needs no dot. Obscure in financial realms alone, it required little search to put my finger on the epitaph of that brother of the cruel letter (a Cardinal before his death), on the father's pictured cruel face—he scorned to eat with the mushroom Romanoffs!—on the carved door-posts where Emperors had entered in the great Italian ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... in his last ditch, and his discoverers proceeded leisurely for the coroner. Upon the arrival of that public functionary some days later, a pile of nice clean bones was discovered, with this touching epitaph inscribed with a lead pencil upon ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... had wondered what could have caused Tranquil, his wife, to choose so strenuous an epitaph. Tranquil, who had never stirred twenty miles from the place where she was born; whose very name, so far as they could gather, ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a monument in the church where they had hoped to keep the bones of the artist who did more for their Immortal City than any man who ever lived. Over this monument is the following epitaph: ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... charge by some good missionaries, converted to Christianity, and educated to such extent that he could read and write. He took a great fancy to poetry and became somewhat of a poet himself. His desire was that after his death there should be placed at the head of his grave an epitaph, which he prepared himself, in rhyme, in ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... toast, "The Day we Celebrate," said: "For many years we have been celebrating this day and looking at ourselves through Yankee eyes. To-night it is to be given us to see ourselves as others see us. We have with us one of whom it may be said, to paraphrase the epitaph ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... inherently improbable.[81] The opening stanzas may be quoted as conveying a fair idea of the whole, which sustains its character of sprightly elegance for over a hundred lines, ending with the luckless Harpelus' epitaph: ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... at 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
... the first to greet the strangers with a nod; and following the old man's eyes, he observed that perhaps that was the first time he had ever seen a Punch off the stage. (Punch, it may be remarked, seemed to be pointing with the tip of his cap to a most flourishing epitaph, and to be chuckling over ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... and Falkland did not. After all, their loud cries for a non-party administration only meant an administration in which their own party was supreme. Howe was wholly in the right when he said that Johnston's epitaph should be, 'Here lies the man who denounced party government, that he might form one; and professing justice to all parties, gave every office ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... where four roads meet, and that a cart-load of stones should be thrown upon the body. Yet, when gentlemen or ladies commit suicide, not by cord or steel, but by turtle soup or lobster salad, they may be buried on consecrated ground, and the public are not ashamed to read an epitaph upon their tombstones false enough to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... them no sort of intellectual sympathy. In style, in education, in experience, whatever Hake was Borrow was not. Borrow knew almost nothing of Hake’s writings, either in prose or in verse. His ideal poet was Pope, and when he read, or rather looked into, Hake’s ‘World’s Epitaph,’ he thought he did Hake the greatest honour by saying, “There are lines here and there that are nigh as good as Pope’s.” On the other hand, Hake’s acquaintance with Borrow’s works was far behind that of some Borrovians who did not ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... combined for good, the results of the intellectual activity of the inventors of the steam engine will be fully seen. Then no monument will be required to keep green the memory of Watt, Corliss, or any other of these great men, but it will be said of them, as of Sir Christopher Wren in the epitaph in St. Paul's: "Seek you a monument, look about you!" Every wreath of steam rising to the heavens from factory, mill or workshop will be a reminder of Hero of Alexandria, every mine will possess a memorial to Papin, Worcester and Savery; every steamship will bring ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... expected in so 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... frequent that it cannot help to determine the play's date. It is in this period (1512-14) that it is customary to place the death of Vicente's first wife Branca Bezerra, leaving him two sons, Gaspar and Belchior. She was buried at Evora with the epitaph: ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... himself his own nothingness; most of all, to annihilate 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 ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the often return of the exiles to their old home in the quaint epitaph which a writer in The Spectator (it might have been Addison himself) read from one of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Caldecott died, a minor poet, unconsciously paraphrasing Garrick's epitaph, wrote: "For loss of him the laughter of the children will grow less." I quote the line from memory, perhaps incorrectly; if so, its author will, I feel sure, forgive the unintentional mangling. Did the laughter of the children grow less? Happily one can be quite sure it did not. So ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... the blot does not overshadow his life. His end was a derision because the animal in him ran him unchained and bounding to it. A stormy blood made wreck of a splendid intelligence. Yet they that pronounce over him the ordinary fatalistic epitaph of the foregone and done, which is the wisdom of men measuring the dead by the last word of a lamentable history, should pause to think whether fool or madman is the title for one who was a zealous worker, respected by great heads of his time, acknowledged the head of the voluminous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was to rationalize orthodoxy so as to make it palatable to thinking minds. "I can't ride two horses at one time," once said Robert Ingersoll to Beecher, "but possibly I'll be able to yet, for tomorrow I am going to hear you preach." Then it was that Beecher offered to write Ingersoll's epitaph, which he proceeded to do by scribbling two words on the back of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the guard, who did not witness his affliction without tears. From this time he would listen to no reports or suggestions.—"Everything to-morrow," was his invariable answer. He stood by Duroc while he died; drew up with his own hand an epitaph to be placed over his remains by the pastor of the place, who received 200 napoleons to defray the expense of a fitting monument; and issued also a decree in favour of his departed friend's children. Thus closed the 22nd. The allies being strongly posted during most of the day, had ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... grave are the bones of Venerable Bede." We know the old story how the pupil who was writing his dear master's epitaph could not find the right word, as it has happened to many a one for the time being; and how he slept and awoke to find the word supplied by the gracious ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... heartily condole with you upon so melancholy an Occasion. I think you ought to have blacken'd the Edges of a Paper which brought us so ill News, and to have had it stamped likewise in Black. It is expected of you that you should write his Epitaph, and, if possible, fill his Place in the Club with as worthy and diverting a Member. I question not but you will receive many Recommendations from the publick of such as will appear Candidates ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... A weather-beaten stone slab marks his resting-place. The inscription calls him "The Joshua and pure Lutheran pastor of the High Germans in America on the east and west bank of the Hudson." In the original the epitaph reads complete as follows: "Wisse Wandersman Unter diesem Steine ruht nebst seiner Sibylla Charlotte Ein rechter Wandersmann Der Hoch-Teutschen in America ihr Josua Und derselben an Der ost und west seite Der Hudson Rivier rein ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... the grave of the friend he loved, to record the high endowments and powerful talents of the painter he admired, and the poet he revered. Baldovini retired to his cell to write the Life of Salvator Rosa, and then to resign his own; Oliva to his monastery, to compose the epitaph which is still read on the tomb of his friend; and Carlo Rossi to select from his gallery such works of his beloved painter, as might best adorn the walls of that chapel, now exclusively ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... "Rather a fine epitaph to have on one's tombstone," he said, "especially if the tombstone were in some crowded city graveyard. I suppose I am a man of God, but I don't think I could be ...
— When William Came • Saki
... the shading and colorings of a Chardin des Lupeaulx. Vain and egotistical, supple and proud, libertine and gourmand, grasping from the pressure of debt, discreet as a tomb out of which nought issues to contradict the epitaph intended for the passer's eye, bold and fearless when soliciting, good-natured and witty in all acceptations of the word, a timely jester, full of tact, knowing how to compromise others by a glance or a nudge, shrinking from no mudhole, but gracefully leaping ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... formerly he used to say he should like to be buried at Langar and to have on his tombstone the subject of the last of Handel's Six Great Fugues. He called this "The Old Man Fugue," and said it was like an epitaph composed for himself by one who was very old and tired and sorry for things; and he made young Ernest Pontifex in The Way of All Flesh offer it to Edward Overton as an epitaph for his Aunt Alethea. Butler, however, left off wanting any tombstone long before he died. ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... 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 been instrumental ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... light of the Wise-Burr tragedy its concluding paragraph has a singular significance: "In the end I ask the world to deal charitably with me. Should my body be found, give it decent burial and write for an epitaph: 'Here lies the body of a man whose reckless ambition and fear of being accused of want of nerve have sacrificed his own life and betrayed a fellow-mortal into the snares of death, with no higher object than to serve the interests of a scheme which, to say the best of it, is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... generally supposed that the name Dante is an abbreviation of Durante; but this is not certain, though the poet had a nephew so called. Dante is the name he goes by in the gravest records, in law-proceedings, in his epitaph, in the mention of him put by himself into the mouth of a blessed spirit. Boccaccio intimates that he was christened Dante, and derives the name from the ablative case of dans (giving)—a probable etymology, especially for a Christian appellation. As an abbreviation of Durante, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... the story of the burial of Montcalm in a grave partially formed by the explosion of a bomb, rests only on the assertion in his epitaph, composed in 1761 by the Academy of Inscriptions at the instance of Bougainville. There is, however, other evidence of the fact. The naval captain Foligny, writing on the spot at the time of the burial, says in his Diary, under the date of September 14: "A huit heures du soir, dans ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... this copy from a nibbing of a quaint epitaph, made in the beautiful old church of Lavenham many years since, with a view to putting a Query as to its construction. The first two lines, as I read them, want a verb, unless we read the conclusion of the first line as a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... that anyone could better this epitaph which the Duke of Saint-Maclou composed for himself in the last words he spoke this ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... the world. His mind is in the same condition as his fingers, working back to clods. He will get a rise of one and sixpence in a year or two, and marry on it and become duller and heavier; and, in short, the clever ones could already write his epitaph. ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... 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 of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... grand-nephew, Mr. Robert Nettleton, in 1764 placed on the north side of the present church, upon a black marble slab, a long epitaph, still to be seen, recording the fact that "near to this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esquire." At no great distance from this slab is the tombstone, recently brought in from the graveyard outside, of Georgius Chapman, Poeta, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... epitaph of tedious length Should overcharge the stone; Since loftiest verse would lose its ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... copy of an epitaph written by Louis XVIII., on the Abbe Edgeworth; I am sure the intention does honour to H.M. heart, and the critics here say the Latin does honour to H.M. head. William Beaufort, who sent it to my father, says the epitaph was communicated ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... story the papers would make of it. So he and the physician devised a statement for the press to the effect that the Weblings died of something they had eaten. The stomach of Europe was all deranged, and Sir Joseph had been famous for his dinners; there was a kind of ironic logic in his epitaph. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... all," he said in a debate in the House of Lords. "Cui bono? What utility is to be obtained? Suppose a conviction to be the result?—the lady makes your lordships a courtesy, and you return a bow." She survived, living on the continent, until 1788. As an epitaph for her there can be nothing better than a remark of Horace Walpole: "I can tell you nothing more extraordinary, nor would any history figure near hers. It shows genius to strike anything so new as her achievements. Though we have many uncommon personages, it is not easy ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... has been a question to which of the two brothers, Hubert or John, the honor of the invention is to be attributed. Van Mander gives the date of the birth of Hubert 1366; and his interesting epitaph in the cathedral of St. Bavon, at Ghent, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... poppy it is to be. A visit to the seedsman's procured the necessary surreptitious poppy seed; and so now poor Sir Goldfish sleeps with the seed of sleep in his mouth, and the children watch his grave day by day, breathless for his resplendent resurrection. Will you write us an epitaph?' ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... which the ninth, "A son Esprit," is the chief masterpiece); twelve epistles (that to Racine being pre-eminent); the literary-didactic poem, L'Art Poetique; a heroi-comical epic, Le Lutrin; miscellaneous shorter poems (among which may be noted the admirable epitaph on Arnauld, and an unhappy ode, Sur la Prise de Namur, 1693); and various critical studies in prose, his Lucianic dialogue Les Heros de Roman, satirising the extravagant novels not yet dismissed to oblivion, and his somewhat truculent Reflexions sur Longin being specially ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... more difficult than the just criticism of contemporary literature. It is even more grateful to give praise where it is needed than where it is deserved, and friendship so often seduces the iron stylus of justice into a vague flourish, that she writes what seems rather like an epitaph than a criticism. Yet if praise be given as an alms, we could not drop so poisonous a one into any man's hat. The critic's ink may suffer equally from too large an infusion of nutgalls or of sugar. But it is easier to be generous than to be just, and we might readily put ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for the Christian soul to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the heathen smiles And it weareth the Christian down. And the end of the fight is a tombstone white With the name of the dear deceased; And the epitaph drear—'A fool lies here Who tried ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... standing. It showed a woman seated and stretching out her right arm, which a woman friend was touching. In the background was another, contemplative, woman and a man wearing a chaplet of leaves, his hand lifted to his face. For epitaph there was one word cut ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... feeling about the Squire;—they regarded him as an operation of Nature. So he lived his life in his colourless fashion, rousing no hate, gaining no love, and fulfilling his duties as though his own epitaph were an abiding vision to him. He cared for no enjoyments, and did not particularly like to see other people enjoying themselves. He seemed to fancy that laughter should be taken like the Sacrament, and, for his own part, he preferred not being a communicant. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... symbol of the virtues which the possessor inherits from a long line of illustrious ancestors! How much honour and honesty have been forfeited to be graced with a title or a ribbon; how much genius and worth have sunk to the grave without an escutcheon and without an epitaph! ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... buried, for he does not sell the old horses who have done him good service, but has them buried "with the honors of war"—that is, standing upright, with their halters and shoes on. Above one of them he has placed the epitaph: ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... grave. Long pilgrimages are made to the Old World for this purpose, and when the traveler discovers in the crowded church-yard a moss-covered, crumbling stone, which bears the name he seeks, he takes infinite pains to decipher the half-obliterated epitaph, and finds in this often what he regards as ample remuneration for all his trouble. How vastly greater would be his satisfaction if he could obtain even the simplest and briefest history of those in whom he takes so deep an interest. Who were they? ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Shenstone's Schoolmistress, The Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns, The Twa Dogs of the same Author; or of these in conjunction with the appearances of Nature, as most of the pieces of Theocritus, the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton, Beattie's Minstrel, Goldsmith's Deserted Village. The Epitaph, the Inscription, the Sonnet, most of the epistles of poets writing in their own persons, and all loco-descriptive poetry, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... whispered darkly, as before; and I somehow traced in the two sounds a fanciful analogy to the open boastfulness of Mr. Jo. Dunfer's mouth and the mysterious reticence of his manner, and to the mingled hardihood and tenderness of his sole literary production—the epitaph. All things in the valley seemed unchanged, excepting the cow-path, which was almost wholly overgrown with weeds. When we came out into the "clearing," however, there was change enough. Among the stumps and trunks of the fallen ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... to have devoted his time to the management of the estates and to upholding the territorial privileges of the house. If the epitaph formerly to be seen on a brass on his tomb is to be believed, he was a man prudent, just, pious, esteemed by all, chaste, kind, and adorned ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... most of us get more shadow than shunshine, more cholera-morbus than cream. Man born of woman is of few days and full of politics. The moment he hits the globe he starts for the grave, and his only visible reward for long days of labor and nights of pain is an epitaph he can't read and a tombstone he don't want. In the first of the Seven Ages of man he's licked, in the last he's neglected, and in all the others he's a fair mark for the shafts of falsehood. If he don't marry his first love, he's forever miserable, and if he ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... very gloomy possibilities of her pining away, 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
... bid you bid my daughter liue, That were impossible, but I praie you both, Possesse the people in Messina here, How innocent she died, and if your loue Can labour aught in sad inuention, Hang her an epitaph vpon her toomb, And sing it to her bones, sing it to night: To morrow morning come you to my house, And since you could not be my sonne in law, Be yet my Nephew: my brother hath a daughter, Almost the copie of my childe that's dead, And she alone is ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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
... a fair, fresh, fading, wither'd rose, Or like to rhyming verse that runs in prose, Or like the stumbles of a tinder-box, Or like a man that's sound yet sickness mocks; E'en such is he who died and yet did laugh To see these lines writ for his epitaph. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... moved to some remonstrance. He often felt the necessity of asserting himself, lest he should presently hear his own passing-bell and epitaph. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... and surrounding offspring, than in the graceful figures and poetic allegories of the modern artist. The humble intreaty to the reader to "praye for the soule of the departed," is not very elegant—yet it is better calculated to recall the wanderings of morality, than the flattering epitaph, a Fame hovering in the air, or the suspended wreath of the remunerating angel.—But I moralize in vain—the rage of these new Goths is inexorable: they seem solicitous to destroy every vestige of civilization, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 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, on a late Expedition against the Pennsylvania Insurgents"; and also, in rather ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the heart of France, where his career Of conquest ended, let his relics lie! So far no hostile sword attained before. A fitting tomb shall memorize his name; His epitaph the spot ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... were, and but for the defensive energy of the Christianized Teuton would have been, to the Saxon what the Saxon had been to the Celt, whose sole monuments in England now are the names of hills and rivers, the usual epitaph of exterminated races. Like the Saxons the Northmen came by sea, untouched by those Roman influences, political and religious, by which most of the barbarians had been more or less transmuted before ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... our predecessors in African travel and discovery. The Consul promises now to have the grave repaired and white-washed, and I, on my part, promise, in the event of my return to the interior, to carry with me a small tombstone, to place over the grave, with name, date, and epitaph. If there were a thorough and bonâ fide Geographical Society in England, this little attention to the memory of that distinguished man of science would have been performed long ago. But our societies ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... horse" again. For aught I know he still roams the Adirondack forest, and maybe personates the ghostly and ghastly white deer of song and legend. Who can tell? But he was lifted off Scott Peck's shoulders, and all Scott said by way of epitaph on the departed, when he came home to find his white steed gone, was, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... over the Styx, poor Tantalus so torturingly mocked, the daughters of Danaus drawing water in sieves all were accredited by the general crowd on one extreme.5 On the other extreme the whole scheme, root and branch, was flung away with scorn. The following epitaph on an unbeliever is attributed to Callimachus. "O Charidas, what are the things below? Vast darkness. And what the returns to earth? A falsehood. And Pluto? A fable. We have perished: this is my true speech to you; ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... boldly trefoiled canopy. It is a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure on it, which is the only work of art in the church deserving serious attention. It is the tomb of Gerard Bolderius "sui temporis physicorum principi," says his epitaph,[10] not, as far as I can discover, untruly. On the front of the sarcophagus is the semi-figure of Christ rising from the tomb, used generally at the period for the type of resurrection, between the Virgin and St. John; and two ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... paramount title as Queen's favourite. To disarm suspicion on that score he adds a postscript: 'The Queen is in very good terms with you, and, thank be to God, well pacified; and you are again her Sweet Robyn.' He cannot have esteemed Leicester. A stinging epitaph, attributed to him with the usual scarcity of evidence, may express his real view of the poor-spirited soldier, the deceitful courtier, the statesman and noble 'that all the world did hate.' But he was no backbiter. Elizabeth ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... to London Sandys' Ghost Umbra Sylvia, a Fragment Impromptu to Lady Winchelsea Epigram Epigram on the Feuds about Handel and Bononcini On Mrs Tofts, a celebrated Opera Singer The Balance of Europe Epitaph on Lord Coningsby Epigram Epigram from the French Epitaph on Gay Epigram on the Toasts of the Kit-Kat Club To a Lady, with 'The Temple of Fame' On the Countess of Burlington cutting Paper On Drawings of the Statues of Apollo, Venus, and Hercules On Bentley's 'Milton' ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... painter. Above the inscription 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... great figure; if I go to pieces, those who know me will say: 'He was an upstart; he was a thief.' Or perhaps they may say that I was a poor sort, because men who have the ambition to be social forces never get an unprejudiced epitaph." ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... heard of a man reading his own epitaph, and truly it gave me many curious feelings to stand there and read of myself as a dead man. And yet I had been dead to all of them for more than ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... that some one "dyed 1729"; another states that the body below "is deposited here until the last trump"; and one, which must be the veritable original of the "affliction sore" rhyme, ends: "till death did seize and God did please to ease me of my pain." Still another bears this epitaph, verbatim et literatim— ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... and marble, all representing the owner of the palace, and all hung with golden plates. Beneath these appeared the rent-roll of his estates, written in various colours on white vellum, and beneath that, scratched on the marble in faint irregular characters, was no less an object than his own epitaph, composed by himself. It may be ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... in my diary at this time are all in telegraphic style, no doubt owing to the amount of work. Thus an entry in February ends with the following words: "An Emperor penguin just come on a visit — soup-kettle." He did not get a very long epitaph. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... have chiseled on my stone the words: "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him That nature might stand up and say to all the world, This was a man." Those who knew me smile As they read this empty rhetoric. My epitaph should have been: "Life was not gentle to him, And the elements so mixed in him That he made warfare on life In the which he was slain." While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues, Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph Graven by ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... from all Celestial Glories; but Fallen to all manner of Wretchedness and Cursedness. He was once in that Order of Heavenly Creatures, which God in the Beginning made Ministering Spirits, for his own peculiar Service and Honour, in the management of the Universe; but we may now write that Epitaph upon him, How art thou fallen from Heaven! thou hast said in thine Heart, I will Exalt my Throne above the Stars of God; but thou art brought down to Hell! A Devil is a Spiritual and Rational Substance, by his Apostacy from God, inclined unto all that is Vicious, and for that Apostacy confined ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... 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
... 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
... tomb, of good workmanship, ornamented with a sphynx at each end, but bearing no inscription whatever. Common report ascribed the coffin to Talbot, who was for many years governor of the castle; and at length an individual engraved upon it an epitaph to his honor: but the fraud was discovered, and the sarcophagus put aside, as of no account. The second, or principal, story of the keep, now forms a single square room, about fifty feet wide, lighted by circular-headed windows, each divided into two by a short and massy central pillar, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... expected that in no long while M. de Negrepelisse would leave him the estates which he was rounding out so lovingly; but to an unprejudiced spectator it certainly seemed as though the duty of writing the bridegroom's epitaph might devolve upon ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... enormous man, wrote a treatise on obesity and used his own portrait for a frontispiece. He speaks of Doctor Beddoes, who was so uncomfortably fat that a lady of Clifton called him a "walking feather bed." He mentions Doctor Stafford, who was so enormous that this epitaph was ascribed ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a personal experience, but the comment should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger things in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's pathos. Even Keats's epitaph—Here lies one whose name was writ in water—finds an echo in David Gray's Below lies one whose name was traced in sand. Poor Gray was at least the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... degree, that he prayed the gods "to make his Caesars like him, and to grant himself as honourable an exit out of this world as they had given him." And not satisfied with inscribing upon his tomb an epitaph in verse composed by himself, he wrote likewise the history of his life in prose. He had by the younger Antonia several children, but left behind him only three, namely, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... old 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 ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... may be written as his epitaph: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth; Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors and ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Hill 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 kneel by the triple stone that says how ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... She lay with her hands crossed above the coverlid, her eyes closed, her face resting upon the pillow as serene as the epitaph of a good woman on ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris |
