Dead In Tombstone Quotes & Sayings

It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He was a man who didn't believe in violence, He's a good man ... and dead. — Louis L'Amour

It cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of
the art of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to
synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat
simultaneously in every normal human system so that when eleven strikes,
all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent
disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. Of them we can justly
say that they live precisely the sixty-eight or seventy-two years
allotted them on the tombstone. Of the rest some we know to be dead
though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through
the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call
themselves thirty-six. The true length of a person's life, whatever the
"Dictionary of National Biography" may say, is always a matter of
dispute. — Virginia Woolf

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

I now believe when I'm dead and buried my tombstone will read, 'I'm not entirely sure the band's over.' — Nick Mason

Though angels were easy to finds in cemeteries, she said that she didn't especially care for funereal angels and tombstone cherubs
she wanted her angels among the living, not watching over the already dead
and thus she scoured parks and gardens for the angels with whom, on some level, she wanted to commune. — Chris Bohjalian

If with pleasure you are viewing
Any work a man is doing;
If you like him or you love him, tell him now.
Don't withhold your approbation
Till the preacher makes oration
And he lies with snowy lilies o'er his brow.
For no matter how you shout it,
He won't really care about it;
He won't know how many teardrops you have shed.
If you think some praise is due him,
Now's the time to slip it to him,
For He cannot read his tombstone when he's dead. — Clyde H. Box

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

Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

He makes up the most remarkable yarns - and then his mother shuts him up in the closet for telling stories. And he sits down and makes up another one, and has it ready to relate to her when she lets him out. He had one for me when he came down tonight. 'Uncle Jim,' says he, solemn as a tombstone, 'I had a 'venture in the Glen today.' 'Yes, what was it?' says I, expecting something quite startling, but no-wise prepared for what I really got. 'I met a wolf in th street,' says he, 'a 'normous wolf with a big red mouf and awful long teeth, Uncle Jim.' 'I didn't know there was any wolves at the Glen,' says I. 'Oh, he comed there from far, far away,' says Joe, 'and I fought he was going to eat me up, Uncle Jim.' 'Were you scared?' says I. 'No, 'cause I had a gun,' says Joe, 'and I shot the wolf dead, Uncle Jim - solid dead - and then he went up to heaven and bit God,' says he. — L.M. Montgomery

I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters! — Charles Lamb

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. — Charles Dickens

It's the anonymity of the war that makes the killing possible. When the nameless dead are named again on tombstone and on cenotaph, then they regain the identity they lost as soldiers, and take their place in grief and memory, the ghosts of sons and lovers. — Diana Gabaldon

No sooner was I safely among the gravestones than a great feeling of warmth and calm contentment came sweeping over me.
Life among the dead.
This was where I was meant to be!
What a revelation! And what a place to have it!
I could succeed at whatever I chose. I could, for instance, become an undertaker. Or a pathologist. A detective, a gravedigger, a tombstone maker, or even the world's greatest murderer.
Suddenly the world was my oyster
even if it was a dead one. — Alan Bradley

Who has not raised a tombstone, here and there, over buried hopes and dead joys, on the road of life? Like the scars of the heart, they are not to be obliterated. — Ninon De L'Enclos

The old dead trees are the most fascinating - the countless trees lying in the gullies and up the hills that fell perhaps a century ago, pulling up their roots from the earth as they toppled. The great upheavals left rocks in their huge tentacles and, as they slowly rot, the trunks are home to populations of creatures, from goannas to wild pigs. As grey as tombstones in a cemetery they lie there, having outlasted generations of farmers, as they'll outlast me. In their own way they are as beautiful, more beautiful, than living trees. — Phillip Adams

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. [ ... ] — Edgar Allan Poe

Hear the bells ringing they're singing "Christ is risen from the dead!" The angel up on the tombstone said, He is risen just as he said! — Keith Green

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

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