Best Tombstone Quotes & Sayings

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 - When he gives everything that is in him to do the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do. — Harry S. Truman

Having 'Oscar winner' on your tombstone is a great thing. — George Clooney

James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end. — Edward Abbey

Having read the inscriptions upon the tombstones of the great and little cemeteries, Wang Peng advised the Emperor to kill all the living and resurrect the dead. — Paul Eldridge

A genius of comedy His talent brought joy and Laughter to all the world. — Oliver Hardy

"The Entertainer" He did it all. — Sammy Davis Jr.

As you sit, make peace also with the reality that, after you die, it won't matter to you how you are remembered; you will not be here to experience it. All the grand things that you do or say, all the skyscrapers you build and cover with gold, your elegant tombstone, all will be completely forgotten eventually. Even your children, and their children, too, will be forgotten. That being so, perhaps it is best to begin to erase your presence well before you leave the scene. — Alice Walker

Reputation is what men say about you on your tombstone;
Character is what the angels say about you before the throne of God — William Hersey Davis

Once upon a time ...
... as a fair maiden lay weeping upon a cold tombstone, her heartfelt desire was suddenly made real before her: tall, broad of shoulder, attired in gleaming silver and gold, her knight in shining armor had come to rescue his damsel in distress ... — Jude Deveraux

Pard, we will meet again in the Happy Hunting Ground To part no more, Goodbye — Wild Bill Hickok

Do not save your loving speeches
For your friends till they are dead;
Do not write them on their tombstones,
Speak them rather now instead. — Anna Mickelson

On my tombstone, I really hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial ... — Ken Wilber

You could spend hours following the trail of a single dispute, through smoking battlefields of interlinked comments threads and screen shots and blogs where the message "this post has been deleted by its author" stands like a tombstone over the grave of the one witness who can tell you what really happened. I know, because I've wandered extensively over this blasted heath in the past couple of weeks. — Laura Miller

When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice - twice - we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there. — J.D. Salinger

The epitaphs on tombstones of a great many people should read: Died at thirty, and buried at sixty. — Nicholas Murray Butler

Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it. — Virginia Woolf

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I have my tombstone already. A tombstone company in the East gave it to me when I jumped Snake Canyon. My plot is in Montana. — Evel Knievel

One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all!
THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though. — Luigi Pirandello

At Rest An American Soldier And Defender of the Constitution. — Jefferson Davis

There occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute. — P.G. Wodehouse

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone. — Oscar Wilde

Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than "The Individual." — Soren Kierkegaard

I have tried my best to give the nation everything I had in me. There are probably a million people who could have done the job better than I did it, but I had the job and I always quote an epitaph on a tombstone in a cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona: "Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damndest." — Harry S. Truman

What's fame, after all? It can be what someone writes on your tombstone. — Peter Duncan

In loving memory from the Family. — Bugsy Siegel

On my tombstone just write, 'The sorest loser that ever lived.' — Earl Weaver

When I was younger, I loved graveyards. They weren't spooky so much as mysterious. Each tombstone another story to uncover. Another life to learn about.
Now that I'm older - I won't say how old - I hate graveyards. The only life - or rather death - I see in the tombstones is my own. — Pseudonymous Bosch

I must say, some are not very beautifully made. They're coffee-table books for people who drink alcohol. I have nothing against coffee-table books as long as they are well done. They must not look like gravestones on a table. Sometimes they are too big, they come in boxes and things like this. No, a book has to be easy to open and you don't have to be a bodybuilder to lift it. I like books I can read in bed. Those big tombstones would kill me. — Karl Lagerfeld

If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory. — Jefferson Davis

Left love behind many years ago. Now it rests under a cross in the cemetery in Tombstone. — Franco Nero

She did it the hard way. — Bette Davis

I want this epitaph engraved on my tombstone: "See you soon — Edouard Leve

A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough.
[Alexander's tombstone epitaph] — Alexander The Great

Well, Alexander thought, any minute now, one of the girls he had carelessly discarded was going to come by the barracks with a gun and blow his brains out and on his tombstone the epitaph would read, Here lies Alexander, who couldn't remember the name of any girl he had fucked. — Paullina Simons

It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is F*** YOU ALL. — Claire Messud

When I am dead and buried, on my tombstone I would like to have it written, 'I have arrived.' Because when you feel that you have arrived, you are dead. — Yul Brynner

You're both perfectly all right," she informed them. "And we will get Aurimere back, and our magic back, and our town back, and then we will have everything we need."

"We have some important stuff already," Ash offered tentatively.

Lillian frowned. "What do you mean?"

Jared surrendered himself to the strangeness of this situation, sank back onto the pillows himself with his head near Lillian's hip, and sighed heavily to attract his aunt's attention. "He wants to know you love him more than that stupid house."

"It is a very nice house," Aunt Lillian said, sounding offended. "Your ancestors are buried in the crypt of that house."

"Sure. Okay. We'll get our lovely creepy house back. When they bury me in that crypt, I want 'Jared, very inbred, deeply uncomfortable about it' on my tombstone. — Sarah Rees Brennan

[When asked what he wants for his tombstone epitaph]
Since I'm an atheist, and have no belief whatsoever in life after death, I couldn't care less
it's not like it'll have any impact on me, since by definition I will be completely extinguished. I guess if someone twisted my arm and forced me to provide an epitaph, it would be 'Don't forget.' Sound advice ... — Richard Bartle

As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above", I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. — Charles Dickens