Tombstone quotes
174 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside tombstone — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia."
"Human beings have got a lot of good, noble impulses inside them, and most people want to be good and do more good than they do evil. Hell, we've had nuclear weapons now for thirty or thirty-five years and nothing's happened yet. That in itself seems to be a miracle. If Reagan pushes the button or somebody pushes the button in Russia or somebody pushes it in Costa Rica, they can put a big tombstone in outer space that says, "We gave it a good try." Because we have."
"And alien tears will fill for him pity's long broken urn. For his mourners will all be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn."
"Surely with as good reason as had Archimedes to have the cylinder, cone and sphere engraved on his tombstone might our distinguished countrymen leave testamentary directions for the cubic eikosiheptagram to be engraved on theirs. Spirit of the Universe! wither are we drifting, and when, where, and how is all this to end?"
"The cold hoarfrost glistened on the tombstones, and sparkled like rows of gems, among the stone carvings of the old church. The snow lay hard and crisp upon the ground; and spread over the thickly-strewn mounds of earth, so white and smooth a cover, that it seemed as if corpses lay there, hidden only by their winding sheets."
"I used to have nightmares that they would put 'He played Ted' on my tombstone."
"Here lies Groucho Marx and Lies and Lies and Lies P.S. He never kissed an ugly girl."
"Man must endure his going hence."
"Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. [...]"
"The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or conscious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away."
"James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end."
"The Body of B. Franklin, Printer Like the Cover of an old Book Its Contents turn out And Stript of its Lettering & Guilding Lies here. Food for Worms For, it will as he believed appear once more In a new and more elegant Edition corrected and improved By the Author."
"I've finally gotten to the bottom of things."
"At the great iron gate of the churchyard he stopped and looked in. He looked up at the high tower spectrally resisting the wind, and he looked round at the white tombstones, like enough to the dead in their winding-sheets, and he counted the nine tolls of the clock-bell."
"I don't want a tombstone. You could carve on it 'She never actually wanted a tombstone.'"
"Steel True, Blade Straight."
"Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To digg the dust encloased heare! Blest be the man that spares thes stones, And curst be he that moves my bones."
"The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned."
"Then on your tombstone, where you only get a little bit of space to sum up your life, some wax-faced creep chisels a set of meaningless numbers instead of poetry or a secret love or the name of your favorite candy. In the end, all you get is a few words."
"When they bury me in a church and chuck earth on my grave, I'd like the words 'Well, at least he tried' engraved on my tombstone."
