Gravestone Quotes & Sayings

Walk the midway and hear the carnival barker.
Come see the freak named after his deceased father.
Come see the prince who wants to abdicate his throne.
Come see the son whose name is carved on a gravestone. — Sherman Alexie

On my gravestone, I want 'Here lies the singer,' not 'Here lies the T.V. presenter'. — Cilla Black

What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone. — Eckhart Tolle

I don't want an epitaph on my gravestone that says, 'He would have pursued some big dreams in his life, but other people wouldn't let him. — Tom Peters

New York is nearly a grave. The Empire State Building is its gravestone. — Walter Tevis

The fist of a revolutionist must be hard like a gravestone; if not, his own gravestone will soon be erected! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Sehun love Kai." he brushed his fingers on the gravestone. "Kai love Sehun."

"Sooooo much, Sehun... — FishMeAnEXo

There is no such thing as a happy ending. Every culture has a maxim that makes this point, while nowhere in the Universe is there a single gravestone that reads 'He Loved Everything About His Life, Especially the Dying Bit at the End'. — Eoin Colfer

Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I'm just going to put: 'Glad I Could Help.' — Dick Van Dyke

My gravestone will say, 'Here Lies Damon Lindelof - Or Does He?' — Damon Lindelof

You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? 'She did it the hard way.' — Bette Davis

Did Errol ever know that his life would be just a dash on a gravestone? That everything he did and all the food he ate and the car trips he took and the kisses he gave would all end up as a line on a rock? In a park with a whole lot of strangers? — Brooke Davis

Handcuffs weigh much more than gravestones.
(from "Gratitude") — Visar Zhiti

Calzada de Calatrava, as Almadovar's brother once put it, 'is the sort of place where people spend their whole life saving for a decent gravestone in the cemetery. — Giles Tremlett

The inscription on his gravestone had felt so wholly insufficient the moment she saw it. Just a name and dates, carved by machine. Just the inadequate and impersonal. Loving Father and Husband, like every other headstone there, whether it was true or not. This was the tasteful way to do it, she knew, even though it showed none of the true shape of the man — Stuart Nadler

They will put that on my gravestone. 'Here lies Tinker, her heart was in the right place, but her foot was in her mouth and god knows where her brain went. — Wen Spencer

Steven Tyler isn't in Aerosmith anymore, but his gravestone will probably say something about Aerosmith. — Patrick Stump

He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

So when the big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay for the funeral directors to stay on, they create the appearance of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King. — Neil Gaiman

He who sees his heir in his own child, carries his eye over hopes and possessions lying far beyond his gravestone, viewing his life, even here, as a period but closed with a comma. He who sees his heir in another man's child sees the full stop at the end of the sentence. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

You always have a lot going on Harper. It's like your thing. When you die in a hundred years, they'll probably write on your gravestone, 'Here lies Harper Price-Dang it, She Still had Stuff To Do! — Rachel Hawkins

When a child dies, a parent loses a part of themselves," he said. "Your whole world ceases to exist and you're nothing but a shell of the person you once were. Your mom has dealt with it in her way, me in mine, and you in yours." He lifted his hand off John's gravestone and rose. "Your mom hates the world, I avoid it, and you try to save it. — Nicole Williams

The last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. — Dan Wells

Rafe tugged her closer before she could trip over a gravestone. "Damn it, woman. Devil take your wagon! You fail to grasp the severity of this situation. — Brooklyn Ann

I once saw a dead man. Actually, i've seen many dead men. Too many for most. But this one, i've carried with me. Was a car wreck... The driver, he was the dead man. Had a bullet hole in his temple. Shot from the inside of car or out, didn't matter. His hat, though, was one of those mesh hats, with the puffy front. Like a trucker wears. Anyway, written on the hat was: "Shit happens." The epitaph of humanity's gravestone. Shit happens. A neat little bow over a pine box of waste. What a metaphor for life. — Brian Azzarello

I often thought my gravestone would say, 'Here lies Gandalf. He came out,' — Ian McKellen

When evangelist Billy Graham's wife, Ruth, died in 2007, she chose to have engraved on her gravestone words that had nothing to do with her remarkable achievements. It had to do with the fact that as long as we are alive, God will be working on us, and then we will be free. She had been driving one day along a highway through a construction site, and there were miles of detours and cautionary signs and machinery and equipment. She finally came to the last one, and this final sign read, "End of construction. Thank you for your patience." That's what is written over Ruth Graham's grave: "End of construction. Thank you for your patience." Construction today. Freedom tomorrow. — John Ortberg

That is the most wonderful sentence I have ever heard. I want that on my gravestone. Snuffleupagus was real. No more. Just that. Harper — Joe Hill

I don't want to have a gravestone. I want to have all my friends burn me and then snort the ashes. I think that's the only way to go out. — Marilyn Manson

Harper said, "But Snuffleupagus was real."
"That is the most wonderful sentence I have ever heard. I want that on my gravestone. Snuffleupagus was real. No more. Just that. — Joe Hill

The loss inside him kept piling - vertebrae shattered, finger bones lost, gravestone past and guillotine future, ghost woman and her ghost curls, — Ryan Graudin

I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: 'Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800'. — John Adams

On my gravestone, I want it to say, "I told you I was sick." — Tom Waits

But I'm not going to stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, 'O lovely! — Ursula K. Le Guin

I labor grimly on these sentences, wondering all the while if prose is but the gravestone marking the forsaking of wildness — Maggie Nelson

In my life are many windows
and many graves.
Sometimes they exchange
roles:
then a window is closed forever,
then by way of a gravestone
I can see
very far.
(Hebrew-to-English translation by Rabbi Steven Sager) — Yehuda Amichai

The three of them left the noodle shop and went to a nearby love hotel. It was on the edge of town, on a street where love hotels alternated with gravestone dealers. — Haruki Murakami

Pak Karman hugged his wife's gravestone tightly. "You left without saying farewell!" The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light. — Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

One puts off the biography like you put off death. To write an autobiography is to etch the words on your own gravestone. — Carlos Fuentes

I think of myself as a comforter. That's what i want on my gravestone. — Charlie Price

Three years earlier her father had been buried (irritable and impatient as he always had been) in the Fladstrand Church cemetery that bordered the lovely park, Plantagen, which shared with the cemetery its trees, shared its beech and ash and maple, in the same plot where her mother, wide eyed and confused, had lain down almost willingly two years before, where her brother had lain for thirty-five years, dazed and unwillingly after too short a life.
A dove was looking down from atop the family gravestone. It was made from metal so it could not fly away, but sometimes it went missing all the same and only a spike would remain. Someone had taken that dove, someone out there maybe had an entire collection of doves and angels and other small, Christian bronze sculptures in a cupboard at home and on long evenings would close the curtains and take them out and run his fingers gently over the smooth, cold bodies. — Per Petterson

As when astronaut Mike Mulhane was asked by a NASA psychiatrist what epitaph he'd like to have on his gravestone, Mulhane answered, "A loving husband and devoted father," though in reality, he jokes in "Riding Rockets," "I would have sold my wife and children into slavery for a ride into space. — Mary Roach

I've never written a quote I feel would be suitable for my gravestone. Wouldn't it be ironic if it were this one? Oh, and could you pull a few weeds while you're here? — Ryan Lilly

[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: 'On the other hand, maybe I should have lived. — Barbara Walters

The show brought Claudia sadness finer than any requiem or any gravestone or anything beautiful or sorrowful that she could think of. On afternoons when she wasn't working with her husband or rotating on the platform in the Human Picture Gallery at Luna, she would go off by herself and pay her dime and linger in the corridors of the exhibit. — Sarah Hall

I think they'll probably put that on my gravestone. 'He Was Heterosexual and Had Low Expectations. — Cassandra Clare

To what nadir of paltriness , pettiness, and squalor a man can sink! How could he change so! But is this really true to life? ---It is, it's all true to life, for anything can happen to a man. Your ardent youth of today would recoil in horror if you were to show him his own portrait as an old man. Once you set off on life's journey, once you take your leave of those gentle years of youth and enter the harsh, embittering years of manhood, remember to keep with you all your human emotions, do not leave them by the wayside, for you will not pick them up again! Grim and terrible is the old age which awaits us, and nothing does it give in return! The grave itself is more merciful than old age, for at least on the gravestone you will find written the words: 'Here a man lies buried!' but in the cold, unfeeling features of inhuman old age you can read nothing. — Nikolai Gogol

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.
This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome. — Vladimir Nabokov

Sometimes I dream--"
"I'll put that on your gravestone. — Philip K. Dick

Till the master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew. — Rudyard Kipling

I'm going to put that on my gravestone. "He created such a category of unwanted pop culture - - Famous for directing unwanted cultural references" — Tim Burton

It's about stories. If I can tell the story to America, whether it's Riesling or a boxer from Harlem, it will sell. I know on my gravestone it's going to be, 'Storyteller.' — Gary Vaynerchuk

When you're gone would you rather have your gravestone say, 'He never missed a meeting.' Or one that said, 'He was a great father.' — Steve Blank

These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced.
— Anne Lamott

I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most important thing about me. Is that what I want on my gravestone: Here lies an African American? — Henry Louis Gates

Rarely has a man been more comfortable with his own greatness. He spent much of his leisure time penning long and flattering portraits of himself, declaring that there had never 'been a greater botanist or zoologist', and that his system of classification was 'the greatest achievement in the realm of science'. Modestly, he suggested that his gravestone should bear the inscription Princeps Botanicorum, 'Prince of Botanists'. It was never wise to question his generous self-assessments. Those who did so were apt to find they had weeds named after them. — Bill Bryson

I always tell my wife, 'If you're ever looking for something to put on my gravestone, put down, 'He was an honest man, and he never held a grudge.' — Doug Harvey

I have been approached now and again about sitcoms, but, with very few exceptions, one simply needs to move to L.A. for at least a year or two these days if one wants to develop a series - which is what writing a pilot means. I've also been approached about writing episodes for sitcoms, but in order to do that one actually has to watch sitcoms ... Life's too short for television, and I don't what it on my actual gravestone, HE STARED AT A BOX FOR 10,000 HOURS. — David Ives

He'd seen a lot of bizarre items left at gravesides, like a carton of eggs, a pair of reading glasses, a bag of licorice, smooth stones, a spoon. — Sheri Webber

Ron told Pippa that during the six years he had spent on the book, Valerie Chernow had developed a powerful identification with Hamilton's wife. "She used to say, 'Eliza is like me: She's good, she's true, she's loyal, she's not ambitious.' There was a purity and a goodness about the character, and that was like Valerie," he says. In 2006, after 27 years of marriage, Valerie passed away. For her gravestone, Ron chose a line from the letter that Hamilton wrote to Eliza on the night before the duel: "Best of wives and best of women. — Lin-Manuel Miranda

I notice young girls picking flowers off her gravestone; their clean hearts are soapstone. Their small sorrows are for children alone. And all of their stories will never be told. — Nicholaus Patnaude

If I die suddenly, my gravestone might appropriately offer this insight into my departure: "God got tired." I require lots of work. — Beth Moore

Carefully, she stands. And she runs her hand across the top of Thomasina's gravestone as she leaves, like how, as girls, they would let go of hands - gradually, moving their fingertips over each other's palms, as gently as raindrops. She has done this for sixty-eight years and there is a dip on the stone from this. She has worn the stone down with her loving goodbyes. — Susan Fletcher

Jacob studied the iron graveyard, where every vehicle was its own gravestone. He drove slowly through, as if he was afraid to wake the dead. That was not it though. The general made it clear that they should fear the living. — Dean F. Wilson

It is a terrible moment when you realise you'll never do all the best things this world can offer; that you'll never have a superlative experience. You'll go to a Gala Bingo rather than Vegas; get your own office, but not be a CEO; and get a gravestone, but not in Poet's Corner. You'll never sleep with the girls on the TV. And all of this mediocrity was made worse by the fact of its inescapable prevalence. — Django Wylie

Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people. — Wendell Phillips

Owen was so tiny, we loved to pick him up; in truth, we couldn't resist picking him up. We thought it was a miracle: how little he weighed. This was also incongruous because Owen came from a family in the granite business. The Meany Granite Quarry was a big place, the equipment for blasting and cutting the granite slabs was heavy and dangerous-looking; granite itself is such a rough, substantial rock. But the only aura of the granite quarry that clung to Owen was the granular dust, the gray powder that sprang off his clothes whenever we lifted him up. He was the color of a gravestone; light was both absorbed and reflected by his skin, as with a pearl, so that he appeared translucent at times - especially at his temples, where his blue veins showed through his skin (as though, in addition to his extraordinary size, there were other evidence that he was born too soon). — John Irving

(On his gravestone): "I told you I was ill". — Spike Milligan

In the grave, there is neither learning nor working. Learn while you can, work while you can. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone inscription marking simply the dates of birth and death has, in its brevity, much to recommend it. — Michel Houellebecq

He remembered the gravestone of a woman parishioner in the churchyard of St. John's in the Grove. DEMURE AT LAST, it read. He thought that the single most definitive and amusing epitaph he'd ever come across. — Jan Karon

A rose covered the top portion of the gravestone and underneath it read: Once your eyes have been opened, you can't un-know or un-see. — Rose Pressey

When I've been asked what should be on my gravestone, I've said: 'Here lies Gandalf. He came out.' Two big achievements. — Ian McKellen

I'm going to put on my gravestone, 'He never owned a cell phone.' — Jesse Ventura

She did it the hard way. — Bette Davis

Parvaneh's belly is now so big that she looks like a giant tortoise when she heaves herself down into a squatting position, one hand on the gravestone and the other hooked around Patrick's arm. Not that Ove dares bring up the giant tortoise metaphor, of course. There are more pleasant ways of killing oneself, he feels. — Fredrik Backman

The power of the artform is stronger than stone, the poet says, and chooses the sonnet, a form concerned with argument and persuasion, to say so. This sonnet, he says, will last longer than any gravestone-and you'll be made shinier, brighter, by it. In this form it will-and therefore you will-avoid destruction by war, history, time generally; it'll even keep you alive after death; in fact it'll form a place for you to live, not die, where you'll be seen in the eyes of and the context of this love right to the end of time. — Ali Smith

If I go to a baseball game, I hear 'Shoeless Joe,' but otherwise, I hear 'toe pick' five times a day. No matter how many more movies I make, that'll be on my gravestone. — D. B. Sweeney

The stones lay lumpish and cold under my bare feet. I thought longingly of the black shoes on the beach. A wave drew back, like a hand, then advanced and touched my foot.
The drench seemed to come off the sea floor itself,where blind white fish ferried themselves by their own light through the great polar cold. I saw sharks' teeth and whales' earbones littered about down like gravestone.
I waited, as if the sea could make my decision for me.
A second wave collapsed over my feet, lipped with white froth, and the chill gripped my ankles with a mortal ache.
My flesh winched, in cowardice, from such a death. — Sylvia Plath

O summer day beside the joyous sea!
O summer day so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Forever and forever shalt thou be
To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
To some the landmark of a new domain. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Without You"

My Pillow gazes upon me at night
Empty as a gravestone;
I never thought it would be so bitter
To be alone,
Not to lie down asleep in your hair.

I lie alone in a silent house,
The hanging lamp darkened,
And gently stretch out my hands
To gather in yours,
And softly press my warm mouth
Toward you, and kiss myself, exhausted and weak-
Then suddenly I'm awake
And all around me the cold night grows still.
The star in the window shines clearly-
Where is your blond hair,
Where your sweet mouth?

Now I drink pain in every delight
And poison in every wine;
I never knew it would be so bitter
To be alone,
Alone, without you. — Hermann Hesse

Words, so much more readily remembered, gradually replace our past with their own. Our birth pangs become pages. Our battles, our triumphs, our trophies, our stubbed toes, will survive only in their descriptions; because it is the gravestone we visit, when we visit, not the grave. It is against the stone we stand our plastic flowers. Who wishes to bid good morrow to a box of rot and bones? We say a name, and only a faint simulacrum of its object forms itself (if any at all does)- forms itself in that grayless gray area of consciousness where we put imaginary maps and once heard music; where we hunt for lost articles and diagram desire. — William H Gass

'A collected poems' is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival. — Al Purdy

Why did you do this?" He was shaking. "Just tell me why."
I tried to muster up some of the righteous indignation that I'd felt on Friday night as I said, "You knocked over my gravestone!" But even to my ears the words sounded tinny and pathetic.
Dan's face was pale. "It was just a gravestone, Chelsea. And it was a mistake. I told you that already, and I meant it. I've never lied to you. My God, can't you tell the difference between a gravestone and a person you love? Can't you tel which one matters?"
But if I had to point to the real problem in my life, it's that I've never known the difference between a gravestone and a person I love. I have never known which is which until it's too late.
"All's fair in love and war," I reminded him, aiming for Tawny's tone. But my voice came out sounding just like me.
"Oh, yeah? And which is this?" he asked. "Love or war? — Leila Sales

Anybody who has spent time with cameras and photographs knows that images, like gravestone rubbings, are no more than impressions of the truth. — Michael Light

Epitaphs for a gravestone: 'Please: no hooliganism'; or 'Es prohibe se hace agua aqui'; or 'No comment'. — Edward Abbey

'Learn your lines.' I want that on my gravestone. — John C. McGinley

Ivan had contrived somehow in the dark of night to replace every watermelon in the watermelon patch with a gravestone, and every gravestone in the engraver's lot with a watermelon — Kristin Cashore

Social media is basically standing at a bucket filled with other people's vomit and you suck the vomit through a straw, and gag and wince at the unbearable taste of other people's vomit. Yet strangely we continue to suck through the straw as if we've never tasted such lovely vomit. And then before you know it you're old and you're grey. And that's the end of you. A lonely death. Your gravestone is marked with the six saddest words:

Social Media Drained My Soul Away

And they all mourn your loss at a budget funeral service while updating their social media statuses on mobile phones apps. And in years to come nobody remembers any of your updates; even those updates that you deep-down believed were going to bring about world peace. The Digital Age is more disposable than nappies and just as full of shit. — Rupert Dreyfus

Let love be the gravestone
Lying on my life. — Anna Akhmatova

When you die in a hundred years, they'll probably write on your gravestone, 'Here Lies Harper Price - Damn It, She Still Had Stuff to Do! — Rachel Hawkins

When I die of heart failure the next time you frighten me like that, you can put that on my gravestone - 'I didn't mean to startle her. — Patricia Briggs

My name is Scarlet Stone. I was offered useful traits the day I entered this world. I passed on common sense, opting for the-edge-of-a-knife journey. When I die, I want my gravestone to have the word 'epic' on it somewhere. — Jewel E. Ann

What do you get the man who has everything? Might I suggest a gravestone inscribed with the words: so what? — Simon Munnery

There must have been a real mess on the tracks,' Lorna said, 'They shut down the F train line for a whole two hours for you. Two hours! And in rush hour!'
My final achievement. Man, I hoped Mom was getting that put on my gravestone. Here lies Charlotte Feldman. She pissed off commuters. A lot. — Suzy Cox

How unfortunate it is to be constrained by what people might say at our funeral or on our gravestone. — Lawrence Fagg

Natalie was buried in the family plot, next to a gravestone that already bore her parents' names. I know the wisdom, that no parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward. But it's the only way to truly keep your child. Kid grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you. The Keenes, however, will remain the purest form of family. Underground. — Gillian Flynn

I tried and failed. I tried again and again and succeeded.
[Epitaph from Gail Borden's gravestone.] — Gail Borden

Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe. — Clifford D. Simak

Why should death make a man truthful, or even clever? The dead are likely dull fellows, full of tedious complaints - the ground's too cold, my gravestone should be larger, why does he get more worms than I do ... — George R R Martin