Epitaph

Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: — surely that may be his epitaph of which he need not be ashamed.

An epitaph is an inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.

The epitaph engraved on the headstone was a meaningful, succinct poem.

"What do the Hebrew letters in that epitaph mean?" "May her soul be bound up in the bond of life."

A splendid marble monument records her name, titles, and virtues, while her victims remain undistinguished by tomb or epitaph.

The epitaph was written in Berber.

He wrote an epitaph to the one he loved, telling her everything he had never gotten to tell her, despite knowing it was already too late. If she were still alive and had gotten the chance to hear it, maybe her story would have turned out differently.

The church itself, or at all events the squat and tiny tower, has not altered much since Lamb saw it. But the epitaphs have gone. Search among the ivies and yews of the shady little churchyard will discover a number of flat, weatherworn slabs of stone, but the verses and the signatures have vanished.

Ayot St Lawrence's most famous inhabitant, George Bernard Shaw, moved into the New Rectory in 1906 because, it is said, of a gravestone epitaph in the churchyard. This recorded the death of a woman who lived to be 70 with the comment 'Her time was short'. Shaw thought that a place that considered a life of 70 years short was the right place for him.