"Epitaph" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had so endeared himself to all parties by his patience, wisdom and fidelity during his long and difficult term of service. Just before the fall of Richmond he uttered those ever-memorable words, his fitting epitaph: "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, and do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... Cassell, who stood by with the rest of us, and who had nursed him with the fondest mother's care, broke out into loud sobs of irrepressible grief. We decided upon a broken column as his monument—fit emblem of the life so early broken—and we settled his brief, simple epitaph, which Mr. Cassell drew up:—"Erected by his friends in this colony in ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... riding on a little pony, and wearing a magnificent beard of twenty years' growth, which an Oriental might well have envied, the more remarkable in an age when shaving was so generally practised.—A jocular epitaph was composed on "Mary Van Butchell," of which these lines may ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... 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
... the proof; wherefore concealed, but from tenderness to you,—dread, too—a selfish but human dread—to lose in you the sole esteem that I covet; the only mourner who would have shed one tear over the stone inscribed with some lying epitaph, in which it will suit a party purpose to proclaim the gratitude of a nation. Vain hope. I resign it! But you spoke of a son. Alas, alas! you are again deceived. I heard that I had a son,—years, long years ago. I sought him, and found a grave. But ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hudling. Indeed the 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
... 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 of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... dwindled to two stanzas (Boswell's Life, ii. 300).] are slaughtered in detail; [Footnote: Johnson's Works, xi. 372-378. Johnson is peculiarly sarcastic on the Bard and the Progress of Poetry.] the man himself is given dog's burial with the compendious epitaph: "A dull fellow, sir; dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere". [Footnote: Boswell's Life, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... 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 ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... and his whole court went into mourning for little Tom Thumb. They buried him under a rosebush, and raised a nice white marble monument over his grave, with the following epitaph: ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... favourite cat, he said he came upon the remains of human skeletons. But revolution brought about the disturbance of the cat which had disturbed some of old London's people. A few years since the cat's coffin and her epitaph were brought before the directors of a railway as a very puzzling discovery." The engineers of the North London and Great Eastern Railways inform me that many bones were dug up in excavating for the Broad ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... 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, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... virtuous life. In 1661, after his wife's death, he entered the Hermandad de la Caridad, later becoming superior of that order. In his will he endowed the brotherhood with all his wealth and requested that he be buried under the threshold of the chapel of San Jorge. His sole epitaph was to be "Here repose the bones and ashes of the worst man who ever existed in the world." Don Miguel's biography was written by his friend the Jesuit Juan de Cardeas and was added to by Diego Lpez de Haro, "Breve relacin de la muerte, de la ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... in the porch had turned red, and the maples in the door-yard yellow, the flower-pots were removed to the warm cellar, and one winter evening Sammy Ray wrote Greeny's epitaph:— ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... father say, was an excellent cudgel-player. Whether he had any ancestors before this, we must leave to the opinion of our curious reader, finding nothing of sufficient certainty to rely on. However, we cannot omit inserting an epitaph which an ingenious friend of ours ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... mountain-ridge; He turn'd his back on Sheegus Hill, and view'd with misty sight The Abbey walls, the burial-ground with crosses ghostly white; Under a weary weight of years he bow'd upon his staff, Perusing in the present time the former's epitaph; For, gray and wasted like the walls, a figure full of woe, This man was of the blood of them ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... and wisdom which pierces the ear." ("That utterance indeed will have a taste which shall strike the ear.") —Epitaph on Lucan, in Fabricius, Biblioth. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... patron, even while Savonarola was setting Italy in a ferment of passionate religious reaction against the poetic and sensuous paganism infused into the thought of their time by Poliziano and Lorenzo. The scholar was laid in San Marco and they set upon his tomb this epitaph: "Here lies the angel who had one head, and what ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... wife and as the mother of their rarely endowed children, she had become the centre of a distinguished and devoted circle in the Mark Brandenburg and in the Prussian capital, the distance separating us from Ben Jonson's attitude in his Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke is no longer very great: ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... attentively read the paper which the old man had penned; then said to his two fellow-travellers, The poor drinker doteth. Howsoever, I excuse him, for that I believe he is now drawing near to the end and final closure of his life. Let us go make his epitaph. By the answer which he hath given us, I am not, I protest, one jot wiser than I was. Hearken here, Epistemon, my little bully, dost not thou hold him to be very resolute in his responsory verdicts? He is a witty, quick, and subtle sophister. I will lay an even wager ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the 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 reputation now abides ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the stela symbolised the door leading to the private apartments of the dead, a door closed and sealed to the living. It was inscribed on door-posts and lintels, and its inscription was no mere epitaph for the information of future generations; all the details which it gave as to the name, rank, functions, and family of the deceased were intended to secure the continuity of his individuality and civil status in the life beyond death. A further ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... garden, and destroyed the secluded beauty of Hogarth's cottage. The garden, well stored with walnut, mulberry, and apple trees, contained a small study, with a head-stone, placed over a favourite bullfinch, on which the artist had etched the bird's head and written an epitaph. The cottage contained many snug rooms, and was but yesterday the residence of a man of learning and genius, Mr. Cary, the translator of Dante. The change of scene, the free fresh air, and exercise on horseback, had for awhile a favourable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... poor Turks, they are dismissed with much the same epitaph which might long since have been written for our colored troops, if some of our Department commanders had been suffered to have their way:—"As to the Turks, the Allies despised them, and the English used ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Read him the epitaph which the city resolved to inscribe above them at the public cost; (to Aeschines) that even by these very lines, Aeschines, you may know that you are a man destitute of feeling, a dishonest ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... whether he is the larva of meloe,—the Scarabee said, as if he had not heard a word of what I had just been saying.—-If I live a few years longer it shall be settled, sir; and if my epitaph can say honestly that I settled it, I shall be willing to trust my posthumous fame to ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... should be more heroical; but the ground of all youth's suffering, solitude, hysteria, and haunting of the grave, is nothing else than naked, ignorant selfishness. It is himself that he sees dead; those are his virtues that are forgotten; his is the vague epitaph. Pity him but the more, if pity be your cue; for where a man is all pride, vanity, and personal aspiration, he goes through fire unshielded. In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... consummation; her second, the Infante of Spain, died immediately after their union; and her third, the duke of Savoy, left her again a widow after three years of wedded life. She was a woman of talent and courage; both proved by the couplet she composed for her own epitaph, at the very moment of a dangerous accident which happened during her journey into Spain to join her second ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... including Schoharie, until his end, December 27, 1719. He lies buried in West Camp. 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
... tenderness of feeling, infinite aspiration, moral passion, that straining hope of something beyond, which is the life of the religious soul—they are all here, and the Dernier Mot with which the sad little volume ends is poor Amiel's epitaph on himself, his conscious farewell to that more public aspect of his life in which he had suffered much and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the little man. Many jests have their serious motives, not wholly known to those who perpetrate the jokes. If unconscious of the forces really leading to the episode, little did they dream that its results would live till now, and to all intents for ever. Each wrote an epitaph on Noll, and he in turn an epitaph on all. The Retaliation shows his power in compressed expression, and his fine discernment of men and character. The little poem lives, a veritable, and, in its way, a wholesale contribution ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... told her that the mob had repented when they learnt the news. He had heard them cry: "Honour him!" and "A statue in the theatre!" and "Bring his body back,[106:1] bury him in Piraeus—Thucydides shall make his epitaph!" ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... and yet the siege had only begun when he was mortally wounded. He called his successor and his associates to him, and at last, having omitted no detail of counsel or information that might enable them to carry out his far-seeing plans, he roused himself to dictate his own immortal epitaph: ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... infinitely pathetic in the epitaph this much-loved and successful woman wrote for herself when she felt that the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... of the epitaph which I have seen on Mrs. Carlyle's tombstone, in Haddington cemetery, in which Carlyle records that the light of his life is gone out; so Borrow's life was shadowed after his wife passed away—she who wrote his letters, staved off the "Horrors," and conducted his financial affairs. Borrow ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... [something or other]—'the man that sneaks into' [other men's portfolios, perhaps]—'is'—ay, what is he? Why he is, perhaps, a Knight of the Bath, has a sumptuous mansion in St. James's Square, dies full of years and honor, has a pompous funeral, and fears only some such epitaph as this—'Here lies, in a red ribbon, the man who built a great prosperity on the basis of a great knavery.' I complain heavily of Mr. Taylor, the very able unmasker of Junius, for blinking the whole questions B and C. He it is that has settled the question A, so that it will never ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... has forgotten and what has been lost in scattered libraries. The tomb alone, opening its sombre lips, has replied to the questions of to-day; it knows what historians do not know; it is impartial, and has no interest in lying, apart from the innocent imposture of the epitaph. Each generation, as it sinks forever under the ground, after having lived and moved for a few moments on its surface, inscribes upon the walls of its funeral dwelling the true expression of its acts, its beliefs, its customs, its arts, its luxuries, its individuality, all that was seen then ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... 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 ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... 1794.] There was also a slight effort now and then at literature of a lighter kind. The little Western papers, like those in the East, had their poets' corners, often with the heading of "Sacred to the Muses," the poems ranging from "Lines to Myra" and "An Epitaph on John Topham" to "The Pernicious Consequences of Smoking Cigars." In one of the issues of the Knoxville Gazette there is advertised for sale a new song by "a gentleman of Col. McPherson's Blues, on a late Expedition against the Pennsylvania Insurgents"; ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... all their lives; but try to teach them any new tricks, and the truth of the old adage will very soon show itself. Mr. Henry Hastings had done nothing but hunt all his days, and his record would seem to have been a good deal like that of Philippus Zaehdarm in that untranslatable epitaph which may be found in "Sartor Resartus." Judged by its products, it was a very short life of a ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was not only a broken heart, but a broken fiddle you left behind you, when you departed so suddenly last time you were here? It's astonishing how soon hearts get mended, and fiddles too, it appears. Goody has shuddered at the sight of that instrument ever since. I thought the epitaph on her tombstone would be, ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... the year 1300, having little less than resurrected painting. He left many disciples, and among others Giotto, who was afterwards an excellent painter; which Giotto dwelt, after Cimabue, in his master's own house in the Via del Cocomero. Cimabue was buried in S. Maria del Fiore, with that epitaph made for him by ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... seek in natural solitudes a more fitting environment for his musings. More than once, in the days that immediately followed, he sought by daylight the spot where, in the darkness, he had seen the child thrown into the sea. It soon occurred to him to make an epitaph for her, and carve it in the cliff over which she was thrown. In the noon-day hours in which his father rested, he worked at this task, and grew to feel at home in the place ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... 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
... epitaph afterwards when Uncle Max showed me her grave,—'Priscilla, wife of Ralph Combermere, aged twenty, and her infant son.' What a sad little inscription! But Uncle Max read something sadder still one day. A letter in faded ink was found in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... strength and number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in their numerous castles and manors of the west; their ample revenue was appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the epitaph of Edward, surnamed from his misfortune, the blind, from his virtues, the good, earl, inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... her lesson-books, and of the stupid Greeks and Romans, whose dates she could never recall. She hoped she should never be anything so dull as an historical personage! And besides, greatness was for the men—it was enough for a princess to be virtuous. And she looked as edifying as her own epitaph. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... bende to suche a wronge, That she shold dye and I to live alone. No, this will I: she shall have her request And in most royall sorte her funerall Will I performe. Within one tombe shall rest Her earle and she, her epitaph withall Graved thereon shal be. This will I doe And when these eyes some aged teres have shed The tomb my self then will I crepe into And with my blood all bayne their bodies dead. This heart there will I perce, and reve this brest The irksome life, and wreke ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... to remember those we have loved, and it is, perhaps, for the embellishment of my epitaph, that this ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... chancel of Burynarbon Church, Devonshire, is an epitaph containing a quaint allusion to this old idea respecting the Marigold:—"To the pretious memory of Mary, ye dear, and only daughter of George ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... 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
... spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. "By request of that worthy Nobleman's survivors," says he, "I undertook to compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven;"—wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity that will ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... his own composition, against the internal testimony of utter want of all the marks by which we know him—the Burns-stamp, so to speak, which is visible on all that ever came from his pen. Misled by his handwriting, I inserted in my former edition of his works an epitaph, beginning ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... sound, he rolled over, and was stark dead. It was all over while Esther spoke these words of epitaph. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... which inclination had probably no share on either side, was the niece of Dudley and sister of sir Philip Sidney, one of the most accomplished women of her age, celebrated during her life by the wits and poets whom she patronized, and preserved in the memory of posterity by an epitaph from the pen of Ben Jonson which will not be forgotten whilst English ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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
... those great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course; awaits in patience the fulfillment of the premises; and, resting from his labors, bequeathed his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph, commemorating it one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy." ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work and whose epitaph is the Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, to be tutor in a knight's family, and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with too warm approval to suit his patron's conservatism,[38] he fell into ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... already entered the town, were compelled to retreat; and the joyful nations celebrated Huniades and Belgrade as the bulwarks of Christendom. [33] About a month after this great deliverance, the champion expired; and his most splendid epitaph is the regret of the Ottoman prince, who sighed that he could no longer hope for revenge against the single antagonist who had triumphed over his arms. On the first vacancy of the throne, Matthias Corvinus, a youth of eighteen years of age, was elected and crowned by the grateful Hungarians. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... "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 ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... in no way 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
... Jehoshaphat, in the garden of Gethsemane, the same editor says, that this could not have been known to Jerome, who passed a great part of his life in Bethlehem, and yet observes a total silence on the subject; though in his "Epitaph on Paula," [Jerome, Paris, 1706. Vol. iv. p. 670-688, ep. 86.] he enumerates all the places in Palestine consecrated by any remarkable event. Neither, he adds, could it have been known to Epiphanius, who, though he lived long in Palestine, yet declares that nothing was known as to the ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... by which their constitution or organic law is known among them is kayanerenh, to which the epitaph kowa [Transcriber's note: the "o" is the Unicode o-macron], "great," is frequently added. This word, kayanerenh, is sometimes rendered "law," or "league," but its proper meaning seems to be "peace." It is used in this sense by the missionaries, in their translations of ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... Washington!" He needs no long and fulsome epitaph carved in marble to tell his worth. Did his memory depend upon that alone, the marble would crumble into dust, mingle with his, and his name pass away with the stone that man vainly thought would preserve it. No; his monument is a world made free, and his memory ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... devoted to animals than the rest of the family: the beautiful Angora, Kitty, died when Marty was five, from an abscess in her cheek, where she'd been bitten by a strange bull-terrier; and Marty tearfully wrote her epitaph in a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and the aqueduct—all the things that transformed the land are memorials to the man who lies just there beyond this grave where today we place his mother. On that slab we find only the dates of birth and death and the name of Hamilton Burton; but when I look at it, I seem to read a nobler epitaph in letters of bronze which no weather can dim or tarnish. I seem to read—'Here lies one who put aside a blazing dream to cast his lot into a life of humbler duty.' If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one had grown before has done a noble thing, then surely he who has turned ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... life of Septimius,—a thoughtful preacher of God's word, taking severe but conscientious views of man's state and relations, a heavy-browed walker and worker on earth, and, finally, a slumberer in an honored grave, with an epitaph bearing testimony to his ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think, is the moment for the epitaph of anticipation over him, and the exclamation, alas! I would not be premature, but it is necessary to create some interest in him, and no one but a foreigner could feel it at present for the Englishman who is bursting merely to do like the rest of his countrymen, and rise above them ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 Henry with the details, which are pretty correctly ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... not excel, Such perfection is rare to be had; A good life is, of course, very well, But good living is also-not bad. And when, to feed earth-worms, I go. Let this epitaph stare from my stone, "Here lies the Right Rev. so and so; ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... matter is summed up in a sentence which I heard not long since about a recently deceased friend of the speaker's, and the like of which you have no doubt often heard and perhaps said, 'He is sure to be saved because he has lived so straight.' And at the foundation of that confident epitaph lay a tragical, profound misapprehension of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... They were both forty-six in the year of his birth. He inherited headaches from his mother, and a crooked figure from his father. A nurse who shared their care, lived with him for many years, and was buried by him, with an affectionate epitaph, in 1725. The family tradition represents him as a sweet-tempered child, and says that he was called the "little nightingale," from the beauty of his voice. As the sickly, solitary, and precocious infant of elderly parents, we may guess that he was not a little spoilt, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... known to him, for the traveller was no other than our old acquaintance Tom; but all was interesting. When he had heard it to the end, he uttered these only words, which might, indeed, serve for moral and poor Bruin's epitaph:— ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... epitaph, and this, which he, at least, believed to be an accurate summary of his misfortunes and their cause, may fitly close this brief outline of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Linnaeus, and Buffon fluently; has formed a more accurate judgment of the poetical merits of Shakespeare than that so felicitously expressed by Lord Byron; and has actually emitted English poetry, very superior indeed to Rousseau's epitaph on Shenstone; at the same time that he is much respected by the English officers in his neighbourhood, as a real good judge of a horse, and a cool, bold, and deadly shot at a tiger. The truth is, that ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... after a mention of Lady Purbeck: "Sir Robert Howard died April 22, 1653, and was buried at Clunn in Shropshire, leaving issue by Catherine Nevill, his Wife, 3 sons, who, I presume, he married after the Lady Purbeck's death which happened 8 years before his own. The Epitaph in my Book in Folio of Lichfield, lent me by Mr. Mitton. Sir Robert was 5th Son to Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, Lord Treasurer ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... 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, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... kept worthy watch, and in my haste I slew the saviour of my house and joy. Poor Gelert! thou shalt have such recompense As man may pay unto the dead—Thy name Henceforth shall stand for Faithfulness, and men For evermore shall speak thine epitaph. ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Cecchino is dead. All Rome weeps. Michelangelo is making for me the design of a decent sepulture in marble; and I pray you to write me the epitaph, and to send it to me with a consolatory letter, if time permits, for my grief has distraught me. Patience! I live with a thousand and a thousand deaths each hour. O God! How has Fortune changed her aspect!" Giannotti replied, enclosing three fine sonnets, the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... dialect" and his awkward person) was agreed to, and put in practice by several of the guests. The active aggressors appear to have been Garrick, Doctor Bernard, Richard Burke, and Caleb Whitefoord. Cumberland says he, too, wrote an epitaph; but it was complimentary and grave, and hence the grateful return he received. Mr. Forster considers Garrick's epitaph to indicate the tone of all. This, with the rest, was read to Goldsmith when he next appeared at the St. James's ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... his death, in which case it cannot be said to affect his happiness, as he is past caring whether people think ill or well of him. Besides, after death it must needs be all right, as every man is so particularly fortunate in his epitaph!" ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "If, by epitaph, you mean that she called me a liar, I did, brother, and she was not much wrong, for I certainly do not always stick exactly to truth; you, however, have not much to ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... of Falk took place on April 17, 1782, and the epitaph on his grave in the cemetery at Globe Road, Mile End, "bears witness to his excellencies and orthodoxy": "Here is interred ... the aged and honourable man, a great personage who came from the East, an accomplished sage, an adept in Cabbalah.... His name was ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... does your sex dispose of the problems of life, ma'am," replied Mr. Constantine to Miss Flora Le Pettit, the heiress of Ignores Manor, when she supplied him with this moral as an epitaph oh the affair. Miss Le Pettit smiled on him amiably, but arched her already springing brows as well, for though everyone knew Mr. Constantine was reputed clever, there were the ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... — A proof of the infallibility of the foregoing receipt, in the lamentations of the widow; with other suitable decorations of death, such as physicians, &c., and an epitaph in the true stile. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... properly engrafted on the person of the fair stockinger, in due time required a release from a practitioner of another profession; an innocent affair that now lies buried deep in an odd corner at the old churchyard at Chelsea, without a monumental stone or epitaph to point out the early virtues of the fair Cytherean. To this limb of the law succeeded the Honourable Be—1—y C———n, who was then too volatile and capricious to pay his devotions at any particular shrine for more than a week ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... interred the same evening in the church of the monastery, according to his will; and his tomb was covered with a plain stone, on which, ten years after, Manso, his friend and admirer, caused this simple epitaph ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... characterisations are like the slight outlines in the background of some great artist's canvas: a touch of the brush is all that is spared for each, and yet, if we like to look sympathetically, they live before us. Now, this good woman, about whom we never hear again, and for whom these few words are all her epitaph—was apparently, judging by her name, of Persian descent, and possibly had been brought to Rome as a slave. At all events, finding herself there, she had somehow or other become connected with the Church in that city, and had there distinguished herself by continuous and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Guertler, who bequeathed to the chapter of the Cathedral his house, a large building in the rue du Dome; this inscription is opposite that of Geiler of Kaysersberg; finally, in one of the vestries is the epitaph, in german verses, of the celebrated printer ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... were many other Dickenses, 'an industrious Dickens, a public spirited Dickens, but the last one (that is Edwin Drood) was the great one. The wild epitaph of Mrs. Sapsea, "Canst thou do likewise?" should be the serious epitaph ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... yours, whilst it beat, such faithful pangs of love and grief—boots it to you now, that the whole world loves and deplores you? Scarce any man, I believe, ever thought of that grave; that did not cast a flower of pity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady, so lovely, so loving, so unhappy! you have had countless champions; millions of manly hearts mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up the fond tradition of your beauty; we watch and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... fertile brain can, at a moment's warning, furnish you with 10 Thousand models of a plot—'The greatest variety of Rapes, Murders, Deathsheads, &c., &c., sold here.'" Manning thinks that the Scotch doctor understands Lamb's tragedy better than Coleridge does. He adds: "P.S.—My verdict upon the Poet's epitaph is 'genuine.'" This probably applies to a question asked by Lamb concerning ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... I have asked you to bury me in that pit at the top of Quill's Window,—that it was my whim, if you like. Close it up after you have placed me there and cover it with great rocks, so that Edward and I may never be disturbed. I want no headstone, no epitaph. Just the stones as ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... wholly failed: the saying that he quoted to encourage his friend Soltan—'speravit contra spem: that is a great and holy word of the sacred Scriptures'—might stand for his motto; and a saying from one of his poems, as Miss Gardner not unjustly contends, might well be his epitaph: 'If you would mark him out by any sign, call him a Pole, for he loved Poland. In this love he lived ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... "Nov. 20th." and the figures 16— marking the century, were really tolerably distinct. Accordingly, Sir John wrote a brief notice of Butler's Life, dwelling much upon his well-known poverty, and quoting his epitaph, with the allusion to his indigence underscored, "lest he who living wanted all things, should, when dead, want a tomb," and placed these remarks opposite the letter of our starving poet, which was registered in the volume in conspicuous characters as an "Autograph ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... that consecrated ground who has not reaped enjoyment from the labors of that man's life. And as the simple epitaph meets the eye, and is read in an audible tone, the heart-felt invocation, "Blessings on his memory!" is his ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Mr. Irving's principal works, we have left but little occasion to speak of his general style. A contemporary has denominated him the "Goldsmith of the age;" and of Goldsmith we must remember that, in his epitaph, Dr. Johnson observes: "he left no species of writing untouched, and adorned all to which he applied himself"—a tribute which can scarcely be appropriately paid to any writer of our time. However, we know not any author that Mr. Irving so much resembles as Goldsmith: although ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 584 - Vol. 20, No. 584. (Supplement to Vol. 20) • Various
... Indeed, that epitaph might fitly describe Miss Macnaughtan's war work. She grudged nothing, she gave her strength, her money, her very life. The precious ointment was poured out in the service of her King and Country and for the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... should have done with life. She would not trust this precious gold to any bank or company, lest it should fail and leave her without the means for what she considered a fitting monument for herself. Within the bag was also an epitaph, composed by herself, which was to be put upon the proposed gravestone. For Hannah had no mean opinion of her own merits, and this set her forth as an epitome of many Christian graces, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... baring of His righteous sword, it is an occasion for praise. It is right to be glad when men and systems that hinder and fight against God are swept away as with the besom of destruction. 'When the wicked perish there is shouting,' and the fitting epitaph for the oppressors to whom the surges of the Red Sea are shroud and gravestone is, 'Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... over, vain the loser's sigh. To thy parting lover, wave a gay good-by! 'Neath the storm-cloud bending, see the lily laugh. If Love's reign be ending—write his epitaph! Deck his grave with iris; blot away his name. Isis and Osiris, ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... the "moyen violent" [violent means] of Huszar, which will deliver us from barren tittle-tattle, is right; let us throw the Seeschlange [sea serpent] into the Danube, and if he wants an epitaph here is one: "It is better to do nothing than to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... the first person of quality to eat cheese-cakes in Spring Garden. There you have our epitaphs, if we in truth have earned an epitaph who have not ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... as I say, the nearly contemporaneous settlement of Virginia,—what has resulted from the planting upon this continent of two or three slender colonies from the mother country? Gentlemen, the great epitaph commemorative of the character and the worth, the discoveries and glory, of Columbus, was, that he had given a new world to the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Gentlemen, this is a great mistake. It does not come up at all to the great merits of Columbus. He gave the territory ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... that was to bring him back he must be an exile for ever. His epitaph in the mouths of those that remembered him would be, Comus Bassington, the boy who ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... notice what thou reads, At Edinburgh lie our bodies, here our heads; Our right hands stood at Lanark, these we want, Because with them we signed the Covenant.' Epitaph on a Tombstone at ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 uniform excellence ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... to have given some confusion to the dates.) In fact, no 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... the snow, to say paternosters to the moon, to pat the cat and pat the dog, to salute the friends, to flatter the gout, or the cold of the aunt, to say to her at opportune moments "You have good looks, and will yet write the epitaph of the human race." To please all the relations, to tread on no one's corns, to break no glasses, to waste no breath, to talk nonsense, to hold ice in his hand, to say, "This is good!" or, "Really, madam, you are very beautiful so." And to vary that in a hundred ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... Cornewall, a valiant sea-captain, 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 ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... beautifully illustrated by the epitaph on the martyr Alexander, found over one of the graves in the cemetery of ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... the difficulties and enormous cost to keep such a road in good condition, for, especially in the west monsoon, heavy rain-showers are continually washing the earth off the road. Yet it was by no means necessary." Let this be Governor-General Daendels' epitaph! ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... likely enough 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 ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... piece of Ellwood's, entitled "An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives," will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among the proverbially sober Quakers of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
