Muhammad Ali - House of Commons on Bill Hicks - Alexander Pope - Isaac Newton - Tony Hancock TV - Rebecca West - William Shakespeare - David Garrick - James Thomson - Jefferson Davis - John Milton - Carl Sagan - Spike Milligan - Mrs Jonathan Thompson - Hermine Speier - Dorothy Parker - Benjamin Franklin - Abu’l-Ala-Al-Ma’arri - Standard World War I epitaph - Robert Louis Stevenson - Ogden Nash - Anonymous - Thomas Gray - William Hogarth - William Herschel - Kurt Vonnegut - Blackadder Goes Forth TV - Martin Luther King - Matthew Prior - Ayrton Senna - Hilaire Belloc - Jonathan Swift - Robert Frost - Sporting Times - Bernard Manning - Frank Carson - Wendell Phillips - Benito Mussolini - William P Rothwell - Groucho Marx - Author Unknown - George Lyttelton - Gracie Allen & George Burns - Charles Bukowski - Samuel Butler - George Carlin - Karen Carpenter - Bette Davis - W C Fields - Werner Heisenberg - Richard Hind - Jesse James - John Keats - Matthew Mudd - Bonnie Parker - Penn & Teller - Quick Draw McGraw - Frank Sinatra - John Wilmot & Charles II - Jack Machine Gun McGurn - Jonathan Blake - Author Unknown - Anna Hopewell - Jim Morrison - Author Unknown - Mr & Mrs John Barnes - Lester Moore - John Penny - Archibald Knox - Arthur - A E Housman - Tony Benn - The Guardian & The Times on John le Mesurier - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Ben Jonson - Fitz-Greene Halleck - John Keats - W H Auden - Frances Cornford - Thomas Babington Macaulay - James Douglas - Theodore Roosevelt re John Muir - Matthew Arnold - Sylvia Nasar - William Faulkner - esias -
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room in heaven. Muhammad Ali, cited Time magazine 1978
This House [House of Commons] notes with sadness the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks on 26th February 1994. Records his assertion that his words would be a bullet in the heart of consumerism, capitalism and the American dream. And mourns the passing of one of the few people who may be worthy of being mentioned as inclusion with Lenny Bruce in any list of unflinchingly and painfully politically honest political philosophers. House of Commons Early Day Motion proposed by MP Stephen Pound
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, ‘Let Newton be.’ And all was light. Alexander Pope
Let mortals rejoice
That there has existed such and so great
An Ornament of Human Nature. Isaac Newton’s epitaph at Westminster Cathedral
No, you lost your chance, me old son. You contributed absolutely nothing to this life. A waste of time you being here at all. No plaque for you in Westminster Abbey. The best you can expect is a few daffodils in a jam-jar. A rough-hewn stone bearing the legend, He came and he went, and in between nothing. Tony Hancock, Hancock’s Half Hour
If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on the headstone might well be: It seemed a good idea at the time. Rebecca West
Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,
But not remembered in thy epitaph! William Shakespeare, I Henry IV V iv 100
Good friend, for Jesu’s sake forbear
To digg the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that squares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones. William Shakespeare, grave inscription
Farewell great Painter of Mankind
Who reach’d the noblest point of Art
Whose pictur’d Morals charm the Mind
And through the Eye correct the Heart.
If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay,
If Nature touch thee, drop a Tear:
If neither move thee, turn away,
For Hogarth’s honour’d dust lies here. David Garrick’s epigram for Wiliam Hogarth
Here lies a man who never lived,
Yet still from death was flying;
Who, if not sick, was never well;
And died – for fear of dying! James Thomson, Epitaph on Solomon Mendez, 1782
What needs my Shakespeare for his honour’d bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones,
Or that his hallow’d relics should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? John Milton, Epitaph on Shakespeare
… And so sepulchered in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. ibid.
He preferred the truth to his dearest illusions. Carl Sagan’s proposed epitaph to astronomer Johannes Kepler
I told you I was ill. Spike Milligan, written in Gaelic
SACRED TO THE REMAIN OF
JONATHAN THOMPSON
A PIOUS CHRISTIAN
AFFECTIONATE HUSBAND
HIS DISCONSOLATE WIDOW
CONTINUES TO CARRY ON
HIS GROCERY BUSINESS
AT THE OLD STAND ON
MAIN STREET, CHEAPEST
PRICES IN TOWN.
LEBEN IST LIEBE [Life is Love] Dr Hermine Speier, archaeologist, gravestone at Vatican
EXCUSE MY DUST Dorothy Parker, proposed inscription for gravestone, 1925
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment. Dorothy Parker, But the One On the Right, New Yorker 1929
50,894. THE BODY
of
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Printer
like the cover of an old book,
its contents torn out,
and stripped of its lettering and gilding lies here, food for worms;
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will (as he believed) appear once more,
in a new,
and more beautiful edition,
corrected and amended. Benjamin Franklin’s proposed mock epitaph
Here Skugg lies snug
As a bug in a rug. Benjamin Franklin, letter to Georgiana Shipley, on death of her squirrel
This wrong was by my father done
To me, but never by me to one. Abu’l-Ala-Al-Ma’arri, proposed verse over grave
A soldier of the Great War known unto God. Epitaph for unknown World War I soldier
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
‘Here he lies when he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.’ Robert Louis Stevenson, Underwoods
Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed.
He watched the ads,
And not the road. Ogden Nash, Lather as You Go, 1942
Reader, pass on, nor idly waste your time
In bad biography, or bitter rhyme;
For what I am, this cumbrous clay ensures,
And what I was is no affairs of yours. Anonymous inscription Peterborough churchyard
THE EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav’n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear,
He gain’d from Heav’n (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God. Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard closing verses
Farewell, great painter of mankind!
Who reached the noblest point of art,
Whose pictured morals charm the mind
And through the eye correct the heart. William Hogarth, 1697-1764, inscription by David Garrick