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Discussion » Questions » Life and Society » Do You Have A Favourite Epitaph You Would Like to Post?

Do You Have A Favourite Epitaph You Would Like to Post?

I am just finishing a book Didge suggested, on the archaeological excavations of the sunken city on the volcanic island of Thera, in the Mediterranean Sea, prolly the origin of the ATLANTIS legends.

Each chapter begins with a few epigrams, and one of those is this epitaph from the crypt of two astronomers, apparently buried together:

“We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

* * *

And then just for good measure, that chapter also has the original version of the famous quote from Carl Sagan, Carnegie Hall, 1984:

“All the heavy elements that make up the rocks under our feet, the carbon and iron that pulse through our veins – all of these things were created by suns that had reached the ends of their lives and erupted into supernovae.
“We are all dust of the stars.”

* * *
Oh, and the book is UNEARTHING ATLANTIS, by Charles Pellegrini.

Posted - March 24, 2017

Responses


  • 6477
    The one's you posted were truly beautiful - I like Spike Milligan's, "I told you I was ill."
      March 24, 2017 10:57 AM MDT
    4

  • Oh that is truly a classic, I had heard of it but did not know it was him!
    ty, DDB.
      March 24, 2017 11:19 AM MDT
    4

  • From the Royal Tenenbaums.

    Really  had to have seen the movie to appreciate it.
      March 24, 2017 11:00 AM MDT
    4

  • O Glis...yes, I am putting the movie on my to-watch list...very poignant...beautiful.
      March 24, 2017 11:18 AM MDT
    1

  • No, no it's not once you see the film.   It's very, very dry humor.
      March 24, 2017 11:28 AM MDT
    3

  • 'nkay, well now I am curious!
      March 24, 2017 11:31 AM MDT
    3

  • I think you'll enjoy it.
      March 24, 2017 11:35 AM MDT
    2

  • Well, maybe for you and me both? ...dry humour being a speciality...(and speciality being a word I learned from ROSEMARY'S BABY)
      March 24, 2017 12:07 PM MDT
    3

  • Oh Winged Wonder, I should have guessed that you would be familiar with the marvelous work of Ruth Gordon! Yes indeed...prolly the movie in which I really became familiar with her...

    And no doubt you will know also her magnificent line in HAROLD AND MAUDE, I loved that movie SO much, she says to Bud Cort; "Rise above morality!"
      March 24, 2017 1:17 PM MDT
    3

  • 6126
    I loved, loved, loved Ruth Gordon.  Harold and Maude is one of my favorite movies.  The entire cast was perfection.
      March 24, 2017 4:46 PM MDT
    3

  • I completely agree, Harry...saw it when it first began to attain cult status, and could hardly believe there could ever be such a film!
      March 25, 2017 12:29 PM MDT
    1

  • Glad you liked it, Virginia. (I first ran across him in a book he co-authored with Jesse Stoffe about chronic fatigue syndrome.)

    C.S.Lewis once wrote a short verse called Epitaph: 
    I saw it once, upon a tombstone,
    "In memory of Martha Ray.
    Here lies one who lived for others,
    Now she's at rest and so are they."

    I much prefer Robert Louis Stevenson's epitaph:
    Glad did I live and I gladly die,
    And I lay me down with a will.

    But for me? You'd better make it, "He died laughing."
    I think there's a very good chance of that being true -- figuratively if not literally. 
      March 24, 2017 12:20 PM MDT
    2

  • I enjoyed all of those, Dozy...most especially Robert Louis...makes one wonder about the circumstances of his death...in some sense he saw it coming, as we are all aware it will eventually happen...

    I read recently, maybe some research for a Blurt question, that RLS accepted a commission to compose a poem for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee; well he just could not get the creative juices flowing, editors hounding him...until the 11th hour when RECESSIONAL just flowed...became much loved, but certainly not what anyone would have anticipated for that occasion!

    ...And from my point of view, PLEASE arrange for lots of good, high-quality time before the fulfillment of your own beautiful epitaph!
      March 24, 2017 1:31 PM MDT
    1

  • Other things being equal I should have another 10 years or so. My family are long-livers.

    Stevenson! I believe he was diagnosed with a fatal illness (somewhere in the Pacific?) but survived. I think he wrote that during his illness. 

    Recessional ... Stevenson or Kipling? Yes, it is magnificent. Kipling once said that if he didn't write with purple ink on green paper his daemon wouldn't talk to him. He must have used lots of purple ink the day he wrote that. 
      March 24, 2017 1:37 PM MDT
    1

  • Oh of course Recessional is Kipling!
    I think that was because I really loved both of them as a child...I did not know about Kipling's paper and ink, however! This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at March 24, 2017 2:58 PM MDT
      March 24, 2017 1:44 PM MDT
    1

  • 6126
    There are a number of them that I thought were funny and creative.  The one I think I like the best is the simplest.  
    Mel Blanc's epitaph:  That's all folks!"
      March 24, 2017 4:50 PM MDT
    2

  • Oh that is so dear...
    ty Harry.
      March 25, 2017 11:18 AM MDT
    1

  • 3523
    If they can't put the entire score of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique on my headstone, then is should just read, "I told you I was sick!"
      March 24, 2017 9:25 PM MDT
    2

  • Well the Pathetique is certainly worth the tiny bit of extra effort to incorporate there, imo, CallMeIshmael, thank you!
      March 25, 2017 11:20 AM MDT
    0

  • 47
    I envy Guy De Maupassant his epitaph, which he penned himself. It reads:  "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing."
      March 24, 2017 9:33 PM MDT
    3

  • Dear HVVENEZIA,
    I have loved de Maupassant writings, but knew nothing of his life...went online...
    If you know of a biography you consider well-done, please refer me?
    Thank you for your fine post.
      March 25, 2017 11:42 AM MDT
    1

  • 7280
    I disliked Flaubert's Madame Bovary so much that when I saw "de Maupassant" I went "EW."---The commonality of French pronunciation almost did me in.
      March 25, 2017 12:11 PM MDT
    2

  • I just read (for the first time) something about de Maupassant's life...and yes, as you clearly know already, Flaubert was a very important mentor for him.
    I have not read MADAME BOVARY...perhaps a gap in my education!
      March 25, 2017 12:25 PM MDT
    1

  • 7280
    I wish I had that gap---The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.
      March 25, 2017 1:33 PM MDT
    1