Epitaphs

are also known as headstone inscriptions.

As some epitaphs are not written by the person who is being honoured, the format shall be as follows:

• Honouree (by author) - Year of birth - Year of Death
  • Text of Epitaph
    • More explanation text

Sorted alphabetically by lastname.

---

• Johny Quincey Adams (by himself) - -
  • "This is the last of Earth! I am content!"

• Alexander the Great (unknown) -
  • "A tomb now suffices for him whom the world was not enough"

• Gracie Allen and George Burns (themselves) -
  • "Together again."

• Mel Blanc (by himself) -
  • "That's all, folks!"

• Al Capone (by himself) -
  • "My Jesus, mercy"

• Bette Davis (unknown) -
  • "She did it the hard way"

• Emily Dickinson (herself) -
  • "Called back"

• W.C. Fields (unknown) -
  • "W. C. Fields 1880 - 1946"
  • In a 1925 article in Vanity Fair Fields had proposed the epitaph "Here lies W.C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia." because of his long standing jokes about Philadelphia, and the grave being one place he might actually not prefer to be (he was actually born there). This is often repeated as "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia." which he might have stated at other times, and sometimes is distorted into a last dig at Philadelphia: "Better here than in Philadelphia." His actual tomb at Forest Lawn in Glendale, California simply reads "W. C. Fields 1880 - 1946".

• Benjamin Franklin (himself) -
  • "The Body of
    B. Franklin, Printer
    Like the Cover of an old Book
    Its Contents turn out
    And Stript of its Lettering & Guilding
    Lies here. Food for Worms
    For, it will as he believed
    appear once more
    In a new and more elegant Edition
    corrected and improved
    By the Author

• Robert Frost (himself) -
  • "I had a lover's quarrel with the world"

• Jackie Gleason (himself) -
  • "And away we go!"

• Winifred Holtby (by herself) - -
  • "God give me work while I may live, and life till my work is done."

• John Keats (by himself) - -
  • "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

• Kent (by himself) -
  • "Grim death took me without any warning
    I was well at night and dead at nine in the morning"

• Bela Lugosi (his children) -
  • "Beloved father"

• George McDonald (Scottish Children's Writer) (by himself) -
  • "Here lie I Martin Elginbrodde.
    Have mercy on my soul Lord God
    As I would do were I Lord God
    And ye were Martin Elginbrodde"

• H. L. Mencken (by himself) - -
  • "If after I depart this vale you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wink your eye at some homely girl"

• Spike Milligan (by himself) - -
  • "I told you I was ill!"

• Dorothy Parker (by herself) -
  • "Excuse my dust"

• Fritiof Nilsson Piraten (by himself) - -
  • "Här under är askan av en man som hade vanan att skjuta allt till morgondagen. Dock bättrades han på sitt yttersta och dog verkligen den 31 januari 1972."
    • Text in Swedish, roughly translated "Here lies the dust of a man who had the habit to postpone everything. He bettered at last and died really 31st of January 1972."

• Will Rogers (himself) -
  • "If you live life right
    death is a joke
    as far as fear is concerned"

• William Shakespeare - baptized April 26, - April 23,
  • "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
    To dig the dust enclosèd here.
    Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
    And cursed be he that moves my bones."
    • It was not unusual, at the time of Shakespeare's death, for corpses to be removed from graves and burnt allowing for the reuse of the grave site. Shakespeare's grave remains undisturbed.

• Robert Louis Stevenson (by himself) - -
  • "Here he lies where he longed to be;
    Home is the sailor home from the sea,
    and the hunter home from the hill."

• Lucius Cornelius Sulla (by himself) died
  • "No better friend - No worse enemy"

• Peter Ustinov (suggested by himself) - -
  • "Do not walk on the grass"
    • According to an obituary in DIE ZEIT, Ustinov's answer to the question what he would like to see written on his headstone.

• H. G. Wells (by himself) - -
  • "I told you so, you damned fools."

• Oscar Wilde (himself) -
  • "And alien tears will fill for him
    Pity's long-broken urn,
    For his mourners will be outcast men,
    And outcasts always mourn."
    • From

• Hank Williams (his wife) -
  • "Thank you for the love you gave me
    There could be nobody stronger
    Thank you for many beautiful songs
    They will live long, and longer

• Virginia Woolf (herself) -
  • "Against you I will fling myself
    unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"

• W. B. Yeats (by himself) -
  • "Cast a cold eye
    On life, on death.
    Horseman, pass by!"
    • This epitaph is from Under Ben Bulben, one of Yeats' last poems. The last section of Under Ben Bulben describes Yeats' resting-place-to-be. See W.B. Yeats at Wikisource

• [Unknown] child's grave in Miami, FL
  • "What a small amount of time they share
    Who are so wondrous sweet and fair"

• Unknown Infant (unknown author) -
  • "Since I am so quickly done for
    I wonder what I was begun for?"

• Unknown soldiers
  • HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD
    • Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

(See also Famous last words)