"Epitaph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stand beside the 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 ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... This following Epitaph was long since presented to the world, in memory of Mr. HOOKER, by Sir WILLIAM COWPER, who also built him a fair Monument in Bourne Church, and acknowledges him to ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... comedy, finishes too perfectly. You once called me a Don Quixote of disillusion. And now, perhaps, I will inspire a few new phrases. Let them be poignant, but above all graceful. I would have for my epitaph your smile and the whimsical irony of your comment. Better this than the hand-rubbing grunt of the firing-squad returning to barracks after its labors. Alas! that I will not be near you to hear it. But perhaps there will come to me as I ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... his epitaph for all dead friendships and Stephen wondered whether it would ever be spoken in the same tone over his memory. The heavy lumpish phrase sank slowly out of hearing like a stone through a quagmire. Stephen saw it sink as he had seen many another, feeling its heaviness depress his heart. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... grain of sand. And wheresoe'er thy silent relics keep, This tomb will never let thine honour sleep, Still we shall think upon thee; all our fame Meets here to speak one letter of thy name. Thou canst not die! here thou art more than safe, Where every book is thy large epitaph. ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... prematurely old before much more than half of the allotted span was completed. But he died in harness, the end attained, the work that lay before him honourably done. Which of us may dare to ask for more? He has raised an enduring monument in his works, and his epitaph shall be the grateful thanks of many a mariner threading his way among the mazes of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... seat of the Earl of Oxford, on the 18th of September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where on a monument, for which, as the "last piece of human vanity," he left five hundred pounds, is engraven this epitaph:- ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... first husband of a lady of whom 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 quote from ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... put up by Parliament, the other to Craggs, a young statesman, whose posthumous fame was sullied by his share in the South Sea Bubble. The elder Craggs committed suicide {29} when the Bubble burst, but the son died first, and Pope wrote a wordy epitaph and superintended the erection of the monument. From this side we turn to the other tower, but make no exhaustive survey of the "Whig Corner," for statesmen galore are to be found in the north transept, and we mention the chief of these in connection with their contemporaries ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... convent of St. Mary of Cleeve, in Somersetshire, willing to show their sense of obligation to him and Canon Moore, gave yearly to the Dean and Chapter the sum of L6 13s. 4d. to be spent in celebrating their anniversary. Sylke's tomb represents a very ghostly figure with the epitaph, "Sum quod eris, fueram quod es, pro me, precor, ora." The chantry is in the style of the later Gothic, and is one of those "final touches" to the cathedral Archdeacon Freeman esteems so happily imparted to it. The ancient works of the thirteenth-century clock, upon the north wall, have been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... 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
... great Kang Hi, who reigned over the Middle Kingdom for sixty-one years. Pe-ling consists of several temple-like buildings. The visitor first enters a hall containing an enormous tortoise of stone, which supports a stone tablet inscribed with an epitaph extolling the deceased Emperor. At the farthest extremity of the walled park is the tomb itself, a huge mass of stone with a curved roof. In a pavilion just in front of this building the Emperor of China ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... 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 man, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... turn thou to the west out of Fifth avenue into Twenty-second street, to the distance of, perhaps, ten rods, and there on a little marble slab set in the wall of a house on the north side of the street, read this curious epitaph: ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... me in that pit at the top of Quill's Window,—that it was my whim, if you like. Close it up after you have placed me there and cover it with great rocks, so that Edward and I may never be disturbed. I want no headstone, no epitaph. Just the stones as they were hewn ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... above the flowers. I treasure an ivy leaf or two, given by the workwoman, and pick up a cone which has just fallen from a fir-tree upon the grave of Alexander, as I read the inscription on his headstone: "Thou too wilt at last come to the grave; how art thou preparing?" This simple epitaph, with name and age, is all, except his earthly work, that speaks for him who was once, after Napoleon Bonaparte, the most famous man in Europe, and who, in learning and in devotion to Nature, was as ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... Machiuuels followers and disciples was the author of that booke, who to auoid discredite, filcht it forth vnder Aretines name, a great while after hee had sealed vp his eloquent spirit in the graue. Too much gall dyd that wormwood of Gibeline wits put in his inke, who ingraued that rubarbe Epitaph on this excellent Poets tombstone, Quite forsaken of all good Angels was he, and vtterly giuen ouer to an artlesse enuie. Foure vniuersities honored Aretine with these rich titles, Il flagello de principe Il veritiero, Il deuino, & Lvnico Aretino. The French king Frances the first, he kept ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... grafted on innocent thoughts; their days of health and nights of sleep—their toils, by danger dignified, yet guiltless—their hopes of cheerful old age and a quiet grave, with cross and garland over its green turf, and their grand children's love for epitaph." ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... The 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 futuri The ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... 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 Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "country dialect" and his awkward person) was agreed to, and put in practice by several of the guests. The active aggressors appear to have been Garrick, Doctor Bernard, Richard Burke, and Caleb Whitefoord. Cumberland says he, too, wrote an epitaph; but it was complimentary and grave, and hence the grateful return he received. Mr. Forster considers Garrick's epitaph to indicate the tone of all. This, with the rest, was read to Goldsmith when he next appeared at the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... finished his life by violence, or whether mere distaste of life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his epitaph, and the consistency of his end; dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind: and some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his place of burial, where the vast sea ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Constitution of the United States can be relied upon to guarantee the American people the right of free speech. Thus freedom of discussion is ended. Democracy in the United States is dead. The Supreme Court on the 10th of March, in the Debs' case, wrote its epitaph. ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and put an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish invective, which was intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling. As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had written stand, than to take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them into "tears of sensibility," or mould them into dull praise, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... incomprehensible epitaph is this, which always strikes me afresh, upon each perusal, as a ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... thought I, are at least tolerably correct: could I not get some one or two copies introduced into the poet's corner of the Inverness Courier or Journal, and thus show that I have literature enough to be trusted with the cutting of an epitaph on a gravestone? I had a letter of introduction from a friend in Cromarty to one of the ministers of the place, himself an author, and a person of influence with the proprietors of the Courier; and, calculating on some amount of literary sympathy from a man accustomed to court the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Bishop de Lisle in 1361, Walsingham was elected bishop by the convent, but the election was set aside by the pope. This eminent architect was buried in the cathedral, but the precise spot is not known. The epitaph on his tomb has been preserved, and in it we find that he was buried "ante Chorum" (in front of the choir). This would mean the ritual choir as then existing, and would fix the place of his interment approximately at the spot where there is now a large monumental ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... of the Kappa, and my gallant friend, Commander Stephan. His best epitaph was in a corner of the same paper, and was headed "Mark Lane." ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... during the last insurrection, said "he knew all about the plot, but would die before he would tell? He received seven hundred and fifty lashes and died." Yet where, amid the mausoleums of the world, is there carved an epitaph like that? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... which stands in the Abbey garden, he intended it for himself, Joe Murray, and the dog. The two latter were to lie on each side of him. Boatswain died not long afterward, and was regularly interred, and the well-known epitaph inscribed on one side of the monument. Lord Byron departed for Greece; during his absence, a gentleman to whom Joe Murray was showing the tomb, observed, "Well, old boy, you will take your place here some ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... do not know that anyone could better this epitaph which the Duke of Saint-Maclou composed for himself in the last words he spoke this side ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... almost condemned to go houseless, and naked; and now the very most sacred feelings of my heart are subject to his influence. I walked up and down in an agony. Another such disappointment, and my brain will turn, thought I, and they may write my epitaph—"Died of love ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... with his dust! A fair memorial shall arise to him I' th' midst of France: here, where the hero's course And life were finished, let his bones repose. Thus far no other foe has e'er advanced. His epitaph shall be the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the desire and at the suggestion of my friend, the Editor of this Series, that I undertook to attempt to help posterity in the difficult business of knowing what to add to Hume's epitaph; and I might, with justice, throw upon him the responsibility of my apparent presumption in occupying a place among the men of letters, who are engaged with him, in their proper function of writing about English Men ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... state, neither the name nor the epitaph can yet be given ; nor can it now be said precisely when. The verses are allowed to be very beautiful. Those on the anniversary of the wedding were received (this day) in the presence of two poets and a poetess, who said handsome things of them. The ess being a maiden ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... painter in his day and painted the whole wall (on the left hand as one enters) of the Pieve of San Gimignano with stories of the Old Testament; in which work, which in truth was not very good, there may still be read in the middle this epitaph: ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... tombstones of the end of the seventh century, there is the epitaph of a daughter of a potter. [Footnote: Roberts, vol. i. p. 76.] These writings testify to the general knowledge of reading, just as much as our epitaphs testify to the same state of education. The Athenian potter's ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... noted thereabouts for his Wealth and Usury: It happen'd, that in a pleasant Conversation amongst their common Friends, Mr. Combe told Shakespear in a laughing manner, that he fancy'd, he intended to write his Epitaph, if he happen'd to out-live him; and since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desir'd it might be done immediately: Upon which Shakespear gave him these ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... chair to the middle of the street. The king passed with averted head, and without replying to Trivulzio, who cried, "Sir, ah! sir, just one moment's audience!" Trivulzio, on reaching home, took to his bed, and died there a month afterwards, on the 5th of December, 1518, having himself dictated this epitaph, which was inscribed on his tomb, at Milan, "J. J. Trivulzio, son of Anthony: he who never rested, rests. Hush!" [J. J. Trivultius, Antonii filius, qui ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 it with all ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... know where to have us, and will be sure, and rightly sure, that we shall not shirk our obligations, nor scamp our work, nor neglect our duties. And being thus full of faith, and counted faithful by Him, we need care little what men's judgments of us may be, and need desire no better epitaph than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me: You cannot better be employ'd, Bassanio, Than to live still, and write mine epitaph. ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... Upon the pediment of the table are placed two female ideal figures in relief, representing love and pity, entwined each in the arms of the other; the proper emblems of the genius of his poetry." It bears the following epitaph from ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Why the veteran HOWE (ah, Howe, When and Where did I first see you, Sir? Wasn't it in the days when good old Mortonian farces were the attraction at the Haymarket?) is "the safe man," and excellently well did he deliver his epitaph on Wolsey. But all are good, not forgetting our old friend the sterling, that is the ARTHUR STIRLING actor as Cranmer, and the youthful GILLIE FARQUHAR, unrecognisable as Lord Sands, looking as ancient as if he were The Sands ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... of alabaster, sometimes sumptuously gilded.' So writes Risdon, about the year 1630, and adds regretfully, 'Time hath not so much defaced, as men have mangled that magnificent monument.' It has now entirely disappeared. The epitaph ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... "Write your epitaph, Jack," drawled a deep voice from the reading table. "That's the only sure way, and even that is no good if your ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Erasmus to assuage the stormy sea with his smooth rhetoric. The Sage of Rotterdam was old and sickly; his day was over. Adrian's head; too; languishes beneath the triple crown but twenty months. He dies 13th Sept., 1523, having arrived at the conviction, according to his epitaph, that the greatest misfortune of his life was to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... guides of conduct, and virtue is indeed a superstition if life ends at the grave. This is the conclusion which the philosophy of negation must accept at last. Such is the felicity of those degrading precepts which make the epitaph the end. If the life of Burnes is as a taper that is burned out then we treasure his memory and his example in vain, and the latest prayer of his departing spirit has no more sanctity to us, who soon or late must follow him, than the whisper of winds that stir the leaves of the protesting ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... epitaph in Rome to be inscribed on his tomb, to show his willingness to die, and tax those that were so both to depart. Weep and howl no more then, 'tis to small purpose; and as Tully adviseth us in the like case, Non quos amisimus, sed quantum lugere par sit ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave, Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, 'We only truly live, but ye are dead.' Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace A dead soul's epitaph in every face! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... The following epitaph which was placed over his grave was interpreted, according to the prepossessions of those who read it, either as a testimony to his sanctity or as a proof ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the stain of Carolina's dishonor; these men cannot be contemned now. They have shown themselves noble men. They have made for themselves a place in American history, along with their fathers at New Orleans, and their grandfathers under Washington. And the rebel epitaph of the brave Colonel Shaw, who led them unflinchingly against the iron hail of Wagner, is no reproach, but a badge of honor: 'We have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 an envelope, thus: ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... sniping. To my surprise and delight Ridley brought mails, my portion being eleven letters. Some had the home post mark of May 25th, and the others August 7th. I must leave off for a space here, as I have to carve an epitaph for the poor fellow who died a few days ago. You see one's occupations out here are ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... plague in 1511 is registered by all the oldest authorities. His body was conveyed to Castelfranco by members of the Barbarelli family and buried in the Church of San Liberale. In 1638 an epitaph was placed over his tomb by Matteo and ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... bronze 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 ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... for technical education, and the getting the City Companies under way in the matter. In the words of Mr. George Howell, M.P. (who sent it to the "Times" (July 3, 1895) just after Huxley's death), it has an additional interest "as indicating the nature of his own epitaph"; as a man "whose highest ambition ever was to uplift the masses of the people and promote their welfare intellectually, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... beloved poet is sunken to the level of the common earth, and is only marked by the quaintly lettered, simple stone bearing the famous epitaph. While at Rome I heard talk of another and grander monument which some members of the Keats family were to place over the dust of their great kinsman. But, for one, I hope this may never be done, even though the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... a museum, full of curious objects, and the old town itself. When I was there the first time, I remember that we picked up a guide-book in which we found a verse that has remained in my memory ever since. It is an epitaph on a native of Salisbury ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... drop of spray cast by the infinite I hung an instant there, and threw my ray To make the rainbow. A microcosm I Reflecting all. Then back I fell again, And though I perished not, I was no more."— The Pantheist's Epitaph. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... advantages which England would derive from the treaty in the best manner his talents for oratory—which were very mean—would permit. He concluded his speech with declaring, that he desired no other epitaph to be inscribed on his tomb, than that he was the adviser of such a peace. He was opposed by Lord Temple, and supported by the Earl of Halifax; and notwithstanding all the arguments of the opposing peers, the address was carried by a large majority. The treaty was therefore signed, and commercial ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the Fearless, in whom previous to his death the Sire d'Hocquetonville confided the troubles cemented with lime and sand in his heart, used to say, in spite of his hardheartedness in these matters, that this epitaph plunged him into a state of melancholy for a month, and that among all the abominations of his cousin of Orleans, there was one for which he would kill him over again if the deed had not already been done, because this wicked ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... commanded at the capitulation of Tournay. On his death in 1729, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Pope wrote an epitaph beginning: ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Jests," printed in 1630, tells of one travelling through Stratford, "a town most remarkable for the birth of famous William Shakespeare." In the same year is said to have been written Milton's memorable epitaph (printed 1632), a noble testimony from the Puritan genius to the power of his ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... choice, When poised upon the gale my form shall ride, Or dark in mist descend the mountain-side, Oh, may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where dust to dust returns, No lengthened scroll, no praise-encumbered stone! My epitaph shall be my name alone. If that with honor fail to crown my clay, Oh, may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot By that remembered, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... understood by being old, is something that still remains to be explained. If one stumbled, in the steppes of Tartary, on the grave of a Megalonyx, and, after long study, had deciphered from some pre-Adamite heiro-pothooks, the following epitaph:—'Hic jacet a Megalonyx, or Hic jacet a Mammoth, (as the case might be,) who departed this life, to the grief of his numerous acquaintance in the seventeen thousandth year of his age,'—of course, one would be sorry for him; because it must ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... depressing circumstances that Mr. Gladstone rose to defend himself and his colleagues. In a fine passage he thus described what the position of the Cabinet would have been if they had shrunk from their duty: "What sort of epitaph would have been written over their remains? He himself would have written it thus: Here lie the dishonored ashes of a ministry which found England at peace and left it in war, which was content to enjoy the emoluments of office and to wield the sceptre of power so ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... of terrestrial Strife, For him who quits this Donjon Keep of Life, To read the World's expectant Epitaph: "He left a ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... dates but the strictly historical can be depended upon. There are pictures at Venice with the name of Antonello, and dated 1474—years after his supposed death. We can scarcely suppose that the "noble-minded" Vasari would have fabricated an epitaph for Antonello, if none had ever existed; we know how easily not only epitaphs, but the very monuments that bear them, are removed to give place to others. Vasari does not say, in quoting this inscription, that Antonello was the first who painted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... in many-coloured moss and lichen and aerial algae, and the stonecutter's handiwork, his lettering, and the epitaphs he revelled in—all this is lost when you take the inscription away and print it. Take this one, for instance, as a specimen of a fairly good seventeenth-century epitaph, from Shrewton, a village on Salisbury ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... before I saw the splendid mausoleum of William the Silent, but the sexton stopped me before the very simple tomb of Hugh Grotius, the prodigium Europae, as the epitaph calls him, the great jurisconsult of the seventeenth century—that Grotius who wrote Latin verses at the age of nine, who composed Greek odes at eleven, who at fourteen indited philosophical theses, who three years later accompanied the illustrious Barneveldt in his embassy to Paris, where Henry ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... The Epitaph of the valiant Esquire M. Peter Read in the south Ile of Saint Peters Church in the citie of Norwich, which was knighted by Charles the fift at the winning of Tunis in the yeere of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... and plenty's smiling brow, And trade and commerce speed the plough; Thy friends that were not long ago, Such game they make; Thy epitaph is "soldier" now, ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... you gentlemen may decide as to my health,' he said, 'but I know that I am dying. Tell my wife that I wish to be buried in my native country, and to place upon my tombstone my name and this epitaph: "He wrote history, and made history."'" The voice of the girl had dropped to a whisper. She recovered herself and continued sadly: "Until three days ago that is the only word we have received from ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... of the poet La Faye, whom she advised in his compositions, and whose life she made delightful. Her fondness for the arts and pleasure procured for her the appellation of 'Dame de Volupte', and she wrote this epitaph upon herself: ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... editions, in 4to., in which the name is spelt Mertens:—"Theo. Mertens impressore." Two other title-pages have "Apud Theod. Martinum." So it appears that the printer himself used different modes of spelling his own name. Erasmus wrote a Latin epitaph on his friend, in which a graceful allusion is made to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... 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 to gain that name. With ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... It has many pictures, and is the sleeping place of many distinguished dead; but one tomb within the chancel absorbs all the attention of the stranger. For hundreds of years the world has looked upon the unadorned stone lying flat over the dust of William Shakspeare, and read the epitaph written ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... whether the Cathay of old European writers and of modern Mahommedans was or was not a distinct region from that China of which parallel marvels had now for some time been recounted. Benedict, as one of his brethren pronounced his epitaph, "seeking Cathay found Heaven." He died at Suchow, the frontier city of China, but not before he had ascertained that China and Cathay were the same. After the publication of the narrative of his journey (in the Expeditio Christiana apud Sinas of Trigault, 1615) inexcusable ignorance alone ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Dashall, "does credit to your taste; it is considered the finest in the Metropolis. St. Paul's displays the grand effort of Sir Christopher Wren; but there are many other fine specimens of his genius to be seen in the City. His Latin Epitaph in St. Paul's may be translated thus: 'If you seek his monument, look around you;' and we may say of this steeple, 'If you wish a pillar to his fame, look up.' The interior of the little church, Walbrook,{1} (St. Stephen's) is likewise ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... EPITAPH, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect. Following is ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Sometimes an old epitaph will be found of such impressive though simple language that it clings long in the memory. Such is this verse of gentle quaintness over the grave of a tender Puritan blossom, the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... posterity, and was little careful of popularity while he lived; having acquired a competency by his labours, he retired to Stratford, and spent the remainder of his life in ease and retirement, like a private gentleman. His income was estimated at L200. The epitaph—not that on his monument, but on the rude stone actually covering his remains is to the following effect, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... Edinburgh, whose "reek" was of so much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work, and whose epitaph is the Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, to be tutor in a knight's family, and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with too warm approval ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... incongruous feeling. The dedication is as honorable to the poet as to the painter. Had all dedications been occasioned by such feelings as gave birth to this, these graceful and fitting tributes of affection and gratitude would never have dwindled away to the cold and scanty lines, like an epitaph on a charity tomb-stone, in which they appear, when they appear at ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... part[e] nihil fingere; Ordinary passages of your | sed quasi Christian[u] de Honourable Mothers Holy Life and | Christiana quae sunt vera proferre, Death: wherein I haue as a | id est, Historiam scribere non Christian spoken the truth of a | Panegyricum. S. Ierom, Epitaph. Christian, that is, (as Saint | Paulae.] Ierom[d] protesteth in a like | case) made a true Narration; not a | Vain-glorious Panegyrick. Let Poets | and Oratours praise those women, | which Poppaea-like[e], are graced | [Note e: Poppaea cuncta alia fuere with all other things sauing ...
— The Praise of a Godly Woman • Hannibal Gamon
... printed in 1580 in 8vo. (miscalled 16mo.), "A Memorial, &c. of Mr. William Lambe, Esquier," is well known; but many years ago I saw, and copied the heading of a broadside, which ran thus:—"An Epitaph, or funeral inscription vpon the godlie life and death of the Right worshipfull Maister William Lambe Esquire, Founder of the new Conduit in Holborne," &c. "Deceased the 21st April Anno 1580. Deuised by Abraham Fleming." At the bottom was—"Imprinted ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... on his farm at New Rochelle, according to his latest wishes. "Thomas Paine. Author of 'Common Sense,'" the epitaph he had fixed upon, was carved upon his tomb. A better one exists from an unknown hand, which tells, in a jesting way, the secret of the sorrows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... comes, don't drag me out of my grave and give me a public funeral; don't take advantage of my having no voice to raise in my own defense, and insult me by a national statue. No! do me justice on my tombstone; dash me off, in one masterly sentence, on my epitaph. Here lies Wragge, embalmed in the tardy recognition of his species: he plowed, sowed, and reaped his fellow-creatures; and enlightened posterity congratulates him on the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... House." Great men lie buried under its shadowy arches, and their memory lives on in sculpture, in paintings and wonders of wrought iron. In a chapel dedicated to St. Wenceslaus rests that princely martyr; you may see his epitaph and the shirt of mail he wore. In the bronze gates of this chapel you are shown a ring to which the saint is said to have clung when his murderers hacked him down. The walls of the chapels are inlaid with ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... he went again, venturing in small ill-equipped vessels of thirty or forty tons into the most dangerous seas. These voyages were as remarkable for their success as for the daring with which they were accomplished, and Davis's epitaph is written on the map of the world, where his name still remains to commemorate his discoveries. Brave as he was, he is distinguished by a peculiar and exquisite sweetness of nature, which, from many little facts of his life, seems to have affected every one with ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... first I used to attend my own funeral in disguise, because I had read about a man doing that in an old romance by an author named Bennett, from whom I remember borrowing five pounds in 1912. But I got tired of that. I would not cross the street now to read my latest epitaph. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... imaginary man was for going to call on her and letting subsequent events take care of themselves; Austen Vane, had an uncomfortable quality of reducing a matter first of all to its simplest terms. He knew that Mr. Flint's views were as fixed, ineradicable, and unchangeable as an epitaph cut in a granite monument; he felt (as Mr. Flint had) that their first conversation had been but a forerunner of, a strife to come between them; and add to this the facts that Mr. Flint was very ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... person visits that consecrated ground who has not reaped enjoyment from the labors of that man's life. And as the simple epitaph meets the eye, and is read in an audible tone, the heart-felt invocation, "Blessings on his ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... of a man," she began complacently, "a man that was buried alive, and who contrived to dig himself up and then read his own epitaph. It did not please him, but he was wise and amended his life. I have often thought how much it might help some people if they could read ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... she; "Cecil Devereux! What can you be thinking of? I am talking to you. Here's this epitaph of Francis the First upon Petrarch's Laura, that you showed me the other day: do you know, I dote upon it. I must have it translated: nobody can do it so well as you. I have not time; but I shall not sleep to-night if it is not done: and you ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... of a young, beautiful, and amiable partner, at a period so interesting, was the probable reason of her husband devoting his fortune to a charitable institution. The epitaph occurs in Strype's edition of Stewe's Survey of London, Book iii., ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... and her mournful memories. She talks to you about her last wishes, follows her own funeral, is buried, plants over her tomb the green canopy of a weeping willow, and at the very time when you would like to raise a joyful epithalamium, you find an epitaph to greet you all in black. Your wish to console her melts away in ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... single-breasted coat and long waist-coat, ruffles and sword, such as gentlemen wore about the year 1770, and bearing a strong resemblance to the features of the second Charles. On the broad marble which forms the background is inscribed an epitaph, which has perpetuated to our times the estimate formed by his "inconsolable widow," the Dowager Lady Mardykes, of the virtues and accomplishments ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... betraying secrets or giving the game away, the employes know exactly what to expect. More than one would-be witness has disappeared; his epitaph is, 'Found drowned.' Ah, I see FitzGerald moving, and so you must take your departure out of this inferno into the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... witness of 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
... its sweetness, and confuses him with its tangle of adventures. The lady for whom it was written was the mother of that William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, to whom Shakspere's sonnets are thought to have been {85} dedicated. And she was the subject of Ben Jonson's famous epitaph. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... substituted for controversy, and the basis of peace was thus made more secure. The treaty also contained provision for the mutual extradition of criminals guilty of specified crimes, but these did not include embezzlement, and "gone to Canada" was for years the epitaph of many a dishonest American who had ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... and us the black barrier of unbelief, and so dam back the stream that was meant to give life to all the world and life to us. Christ infinitely desires to bless us, but He cannot unless we trust Him. I beseech you, do not let this be the epitaph on your tombstone:—'Christ could there do no mighty work ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... them with peculiar indignation. Not only did this poster tramp in again on his cherished convictions about Peace, but he saw in it something more than met the unphilosophic eye. It symbolized for him all that was catch-penny in the national life-an epitaph on the grave of generosity, unutterably sad. Yet from a Party point of view what could be more justifiable? Was it not desperately important that every blue nerve should be strained that day to turn yellow nerves, if not blue, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... choice; When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone; My epitaph shall be my name alone: If that with honor fail to crown my clay, Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember'd, or with ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... lands given to the "Eleemossynary," and the monastery was very flourishing. He governed seven years, and died in 1201. His body was entombed in the south aisle, with two of his brethren, under a Norman arch, beneath which is the following epitaph:— ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... Review. I like the Americans, because I happened to be in Asia, while the English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers were redde in America. If I could have had a speech against the Slave Trade in Africa, and an epitaph on a dog in Europe (i.e. in the Morning Post), my vertex sublimis [3] would certainly have displaced stars enough to overthrow the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... 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
... chapter's participation, as he quaintly expressed it, "with more goodwill," he set aside a legacy of three thousand maravedis as compensation. Not only were his wishes in this and all respects carried out, but the cathedral chapter erected a tablet to his memory, upon which an epitaph he would not have disdained was inscribed: Rerum AEtate Nostra Gestarum—Et Novi Orbis Ignoti Hactenus—Illustratori Petro Martyri Mediolanensi—Caesareo Senatori—Qui, Patria Relicta—Bella Granatensi Miles Interfuit—Mox Urbe Capta, Primum Canonico—Deinde ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... a disappointed, heart-broken king, Joseph II. of Austria, in the Royal Cemetery at Vienna, a traveler tells us, is this epitaph: "Here lies a monarch who, with the best of intentions, never carried out ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... BEN JONSON Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke The Picture of the Body To Penshurst To the Memory of my beloved Master, William Shakspeare, and what he hath left us ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... spelling in this later edition is not untouched by seventeenth century inconsistency. It retains here and there forms like shameles, cateres, (where 1645 reads cateress), and occasionally reverts to the older-fashioned spelling of monosyllables without the mute e. In the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, it reads—' And som flowers and some bays.' But undoubtedly the impression on the whole is of a ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... in the past and in the future, for, as regards myself, I, in anticipation, lay no store by the approbation of the circles which will surround us in our old age, and I desire nothing among posterity but a tomb to which I may precede M. Necker, and on which you will write the epitaph. Such resting-place will be dearer to me than that among the poplars which cover the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Dibdin hastens to add that "she owned an excellent heart, with much of the appearance and manners of a gentlewoman." Grimaldi was not less prompt in expressing his complete satisfaction in regard to his engagements with "the manageress." Dibdin wrote the epitaph inscribed above her grave in the cathedral yard of Rochester. A few lines may be extracted, but it must be said that the composition is ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... 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 ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... wrote "Twenty-four Years After,'' little has come to our knowledge. Of the brig Pilgrim, he says, "I read of her total loss at sea by fire off the coast of North Carolina.'' On the records of the United States Custom House at Boston is this epitaph, "Brig Pilgrim, owner, R. Haley, surrender of transfer 30 June 1856, broken up at Key West.'' Is it not romantic and appropriate that this vessel, so associated with the then Mexican-Spanish coast of California, should have left her bones on the coast of the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... comprehend that an atom,—say, of hydrogen,—which is proud of its personality, will never merge in a molecule of water. The familiar verse: "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" echoes Adam's epitaph to this day:— ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... no avail: after continual and severe suffering, devotedly watched by Severn, he expired on 23 February, 1821. He was buried in the old Protestant Cemetery of Rome, under a little altar-tomb sculptured with a Greek lyre. His name was inscribed, along with the epitaph which he himself had composed in the bitterness of his soul, 'Here lies one whose name ...
— Adonais • Shelley |
