The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #76059   Message #1345012
Posted By: Joe_F
01-Dec-04 - 10:07 PM
Thread Name: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
Subject: RE: BS: What do you want on your gravestone?
George Orwell said that if he were a woman, he would like

Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat conveyed,
Lest Charon, seeing, should forget
That he is old and she a shade.

He said it would almost be worth being dead to have that written about you. I feel the same about this one from Mencken's Quotations:

Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy; what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he never forgot his children: and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his whole body.

Mencken also quotes the following by Byron:

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lies the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveler, -------.

There is also something to be said for the end of a famous poem by Goethe:

Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Be patient: soon you will rest too.

In the real world, tho, I expect to follow my mother to the Boston University School of Medicine.