I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says 'Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.' I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have.
quote by Harry Truman
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Related quotes
I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say ""figment.""
quote by Andy Warhol
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Let no man write my epitaph... When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then shall my character be vindicated, then may my epitaph be written.
quote by Robert Emmet
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Live so that when the final summons comes you will leave something more behind you than an epitaph on a tombstone or an obituary in a newspaper.
quote by Billy Sunday
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I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'
quote by Andy Warhol
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Let there be no inscription upon my tomb; let no man write my epitaph: no man can write my epitaph.
quote by Robert Emmet
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The Decline of the West
Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan
brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the
Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of
the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the
East."
poem by Rudyard Kipling
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What the Sexton Said
Your dust will be upon the wind
Within some certain years,
Though you be sealed in lead to-day
Amid the country's tears.
When this idyllic churchyard
Becomes the heart of town,
The place to build garage or inn,
They'll throw your tombstone down.
Your name so dim, so long outworn,
Your bones so near to earth,
Your sturdy kindred dead and gone,
How should men know your worth?
So read upon the runic moon
Man's epitaph, deep-writ.
It says the world is one great grave.
For names it cares no whit.
It tells the folk to live in peace,
And still, in peace, to die.
At least, so speaks the moon to me,
The tombstone of the sky.
poem by Vachel Lindsay
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She Built A New House
she built a new house
on top of a hill
she had it painted
and it looks like a grass
she installed a narrow door
and a cross in the middle
she is old
and i know she wanted
a tomb
a mausoleum
she wants me to write
a letter
and with all these
what i wrote sounded more
like a epitaph for
her
i remember this
'here lies
the body of a woman
untouched'
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Cassius Hueffer
They have Chiseled on my stone the words:
'His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man.'
Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty rhetoric.
My epitaph should have been:
'Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he made warfare on life,
In the which he was slain.'
While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!
poem by Edgar Lee Masters
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Five Feet Under
5 feet under hes got one foot in the grave
Would you look at him I think hes lost it
I dont think that he can be saved
Hes got a down payment on his tombstone
Hes not alone his whole life has been out
On a limb. just look at him, watch
Him get smashed and race bikes so fast
Just dont laugh, what will it say on his
Epitaph
Here he lies may he rest in peace
Hung on to life by the skin of his teeth
Pushing his luck thru the bottle he drinks
Hes got a date with his maker and he
Doesnt want to be late make no mistake
Hes a good friend so why might his life
Have to end, my friend I dont want to
See you dead
I dont want to see him dead
I dont want to see him dead
I dont want to see him dead
song performed by by NOFX
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Lions and Cages
A vacuum lies between the brunt
of the grinding fangs - and here lies
the trepidation like a cold epitaph
waiting to be discovered under
the slumber of the dying autumn grass
because in the stillness of this
nurtured dessication of quintessence
I am a lion and I my own cage.
poem by Norman Santos
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An Epitaph on Doctor Donne, Dean of St. Paul's
He that would write an epitaph for thee,
And do it well, must first begin to be
Such as thou wert; for none can truly know
Thy worth, thy life, but he that hath lived so.
He must have wit to spare, and to hurl down;
Enough to keep the gallants of the town.
He must have learning plenty; both the laws,
Civil and common, to judge any cause;
Divinity, great store above the rest,
Not of the last edition, but the best.
He must have language, travel, all the arts,
Judgment to use, or else he want thy parts.
He must have friends the highest, able to do,
Such as Maecenas, and Augustus too.
He must have such a sickness, such a death,
Or else his vain descriptions come beneath.
Who then shall write an epitaph for thee,
He must be dead first! Let it alone, for me.
poem by Richard Corbet
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Cowboys
Did you sweep us far from your feet
Reset in stone this stark belief
Salted eyes and a sordid dye
Too many years
But dont despair this day, will be their damnedest day
Ooh, if you take these things from me
Did you feed us tales of deceit
Conceal the tongues who need to speak
Subtle lies and a soiled coin
The truth is sold, the deal is done
But dont despair this day, will be their damnedest day
Ooh, if you take these things from me
Undefied, no signs of regret
Your swollen pride assumes respect
Talons fly as a last disguise
But no return, the time has come
So dont despair this day, will be their damnedest day
Ooh, if you take these things from me
Ooh, if you take these things from me
song performed by by Portishead
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Substitute For An Epitaph
Kind Reader! take your choice to cry or laugh;
Here HAROLD lies, but where's his Epitaph?
If such you seek, try Westminster, and view
Ten thousand just as fit for him as you.
Athens
Naked Girl
When Liberty lies bleeding
And the politicians laugh
Its poets who must rescue her
Or write her epitaph.
When Liberty lay naked, scorned
Upon the cobblestones
I gave my coat to be her robe
And brought her to my home
More dead than alive she seemed
I gave her tea to drink
She shivered at the memory
Of how low some people sink.
“My people once were proud and free”
She shook her head in shame.
“But lately they submit like slaves
To politician’s games”
“The State invades your privacy-
You mutely give assent.
What would Patrick Henry say
opposed to such offense? .”
“My treasury is plundered
By thieves the Banksters sent.
As we sink deeper into debt
Our Dollar’s worth three cents.”
“We borrow billions every day
To fight a faceless foe
Engaged in a “forever” war
As my strength erodes”
When Liberty lies bleeding
And the politicians laugh
Its poets who must rescue her
Or write her epitaph.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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Epitaphs
Her Mother's Epitaph
Here lies
A worthy matron of unspotted life,
A loving mother and obedient wife,
A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;
To servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true instructor of her family,
The which she ordered with dexterity,
The public meetings ever did frequent,
And in her closest constant hours she spent;
Religious in all her words and ways,
Preparing still for death, till end of days:
Of all her children, children lived to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory.
Her Father's Epitaph
Within this tomb a patriot lies
That was both pious, just and wise,
To truth a shield, to right a wall,
To sectaries a whip and maul,
A magazine of history,
A prizer of good company
In manners pleasant and severe
The good him loved, the bad did fear,
And when his time with years was spent
In some rejoiced, more did lament.
1653, age 77
poem by Anne Bradstreet
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Lasting Peace
They laid creeping barrage down
in preparation for the push.
It was a pearler Mrs Brown
and turned the battleground to mush.
The effing noise was deafening
and then the silence even worse.
I saw the sergeant beckoning
my fervent prayer became a curse.
The first lieutenant leas us though
over the top into the mud
We had no choice we had to go
. Though why I’ve never understood.
We couldn’t charge we had to trudge
There seemed to be no solid ground
the effing world was full of sludge
and if you fell you would be drowned.
We over ran a German trench
much like the one we left behind.
It had the same familiar stench
and like our own badly designed.
How I survived I do not know
But I got home still in one piece
I still feel guilty sometimes though
And seldom sleep the night in peace.
Remember then the fighting men,
The men like simple Sammy Brown.
Who lived to see his home again
unlike his mates who were mown down.
Though Sammy lived to ninety three
he never could forget the past.
He lies In Highgate cemetery
his epitaph reads Peace at last.
10-Nov-07
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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Ghosts
There's tombstone in a snowy field
Close by an old ghost town
The epitaph's been weather-blown away
There's a belltower where petitions peeled
It's been half torn down
But it must have softened every soul that came to pray
There's a schoolhouse full of broken glass
And wounded walls
The rusty swings like derelicts sleeping in the weeds
There's a picture-graduation class
Staring down deserted halls
"THE HOPE OF 44" is what it reads
It's just a s if some restless wind blew their dreams away far away
It's just as if those dreams had never been but oh-
I feel their ghosts around me now- I hear them say
They've come back home to dream those dreams again
song performed by by Kansas
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Washed Ashore In Ages Past
two weeks later a leg
washed ashore
to be buried at
Charleston cemetery
New Zealand
to be buried as
presumably
the partial remains
of an ancestor
who drowned
needlessly
while attempting
to tow a schooner
through narrow
tidal rocky entrance
heroic rescue
of drowning man
none attempted
doomed to failure
a life lost legend
a drowned memory
leg of lost meaning
half history forgotten
until this brief epitaph
to family I do restore
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Here lies, not Rose the chaste, but Rose the fair! Her scents no more perfume, but taint the air.
in epitaph on Fair Rosamund
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