Writ In Stone

[Dark Muse]

I know there is a thread for death bed quotes here, and this is something a little different. Being the morbind one that I am, I thought this could be kind of fun.

It is a colection of epitaphs for the graves of famous writers.

I am a writer
but then
Nobody's Perfect
~Billy Wilder

Novelist-Citizen of two countries-Interpreter of his generation on both sides of the sea ~Henry James

Over My Dead Body
~George S. Kaufman

A Merry Heart
~Upton Sincliar

HOMO SUM! THE ADVENTURER!
~D.H. Lawrence

Father Breath once more farewell,
Birth you gave was no thing ill,
My heart is still as time will tell,
~William S. Burroughs
(written by Burroughs himself)

All Of This Is Over My Head*
~Robert Benchley

This Is Where The Real Fun Starts*
~Ben Travers

Here Lies The Heart Of
Thomas Hardy O.M.
Son of Thomas and Jemima Hardy
~Thomas Hardy

(Interesting story behind this one. It was Hardy's wish to be burried in Dorset but the Literary Executor and supervisor of Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey insisted Hardy be burried in the Abbey. A comporomise was made. Hardy's heart was burried in Dorset and his ashes were placed in Wesminster Abbey. His heart lies in the same grave as his first and second wives.)

I TOLD YOU SO, DAMMIT!*
~H.G. Wells

Big Deal! I'm Used To Dust*
Erma Bombeck

BE MY EPITAPH WRIT ON
MY COUNTRY'S MIND,
"HE SERVED HIS COUNTRY
AND LOVED HIS KIND"
~Thomas Davis

Pardon Me For Not Getting Up*
~Ernest Hemingway

IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU
ARE STANDING TOO CLOSE.*
~Dorothy Parker

A Talent To Amuse.
~Noel Coward

Good friend, for Jesu's seaks forebare
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Blessed be he that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
~William Shakespeare

Called back.
~Emily Dickinson

*These epitaphs it said were suggusted by the authors themselves, but the book from which I got these, did not make it clear if they were in fact acutally used on the grave.

[Pryderi Agni]

This is Oscar Wilde:

ALIEN TEARS WILL FILL FOR HIM
PITY'S LONG-BROKEN URN,
FOR HIS MOURNERS WILL BE OUTCAST MEN,
AND OUTCASTS ALWAYS MOURN.

Virginia Woolf:

AGAINST YOU I WILL FLING MYSELF,
UNVANQUISHED AND UNYIELDING, O DEATH!

Yeats:

CAST A COLD EYE ON LIFE, ON DEATH
HORSEMAN, PASS BY!

And lastly, Rupert Brooke:

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign
field that is for ever England.

[littlelit]

This one is John Gay's:

Life is a jest, and all things show it.
I thought so once; but now I know it.

[dfloyd]

This of him was said.
All his sins were scarlet,
But all his books were read.

[RaoulDuke]

I am ready to meet my Maker.

Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

- Winston Churchill

[Dori]

I've heard that Søren Kierkegaard requested his epitaph to read: "That Individual."

[dafydd manton]

Spike Milligan (In Irish, but translated!) There you are, I told you I was ill!