Tombstone Quotes

-- Here are some funny epitaphs from real tombstones

  • Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880's. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:

    Here lies Lester Moore
    Four slugs from a .44
    No Les No More.

  • In a Georgia cemetery:

    "I told you I was sick!"

  • On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

    Here lies Ezekial Aikle
    Age 102
    The Good Die Young.

  • In a London, England cemetery:

    Ann Mann
    Here lies Ann Mann,
    Who lived an old maid
    But died an old Mann.
    Dec. 8, 1767

  • In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:

    Anna Wallace
    The children of Israel wanted bread
    And the Lord sent them manna,
    Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
    And the Devil sent him Anna.

  • Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:

    Here lies
    Johnny Yeast
    Pardon me
    For not rising.

  • Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:

    Here lies the body
    of Jonathan Blake
    Stepped on the gas
    Instead of the brake.

  • In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:

    Here lays Butch,
    We planted him raw.
    He was quick on the trigger,
    But slow on the draw.

  • A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:

    Sacred to the memory of my husband John Barnes
    who died January 3, 1803
    His comely young widow, aged 23, has many qualifications of a good wife, and yearns to be comforted.

  • A lawyer's epitaph in England:

    Sir John Strange
    Here lies an honest lawyer,
    And that is Strange.

  • Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:

    I was somebody.
    Who, is no business
    Of yours.

  • John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:

    Reader if cash thou art
    In want of any
    Dig 4 feet deep
    And thou wilt find a Penny.

  • On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:

    She always said her feet were killing her
    but nobody believed her.

  • In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:

    On the 22nd of June
    Jonathan Fiddle -
    Went out of tune.

  • Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont has an epitaph that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:

    Here lies the body of our Anna
    Done to death by a banana
    It wasn't the fruit that laid her low
    But the skin of the thing that made her go.

  • More fun with names with Owen Moore in Battersea, London, England:

    Gone away
    Owin' more
    Than he could pay.

  • Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:

    In Memory of Beza Wood
    Departed this life
    Nov. 2, 1837
    Aged 45 yrs.
    Here lies one Wood
    Enclosed in wood
    One Wood
    Within another.
    The outer wood
    Is very good:
    We cannot praise
    The other.

  • On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:

    Under the sod and under the trees
    Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
    He is not here, there's only the pod:
    Pease shelled out and went to God.

  • The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania is almost a consumer tip:

    Who was fatally burned
    March 21, 1870
    by the explosion of a lamp
    filled with "R.E. Danforth's Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"

  • Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:

    Born 1903--Died 1942
    Looked up the elevator shaft to see if
    the car was on the way down. It was.

  • In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:

    Here lies an Atheist
    All dressed up
    And no place to go.
    But does he make house calls?

  • Dr. Fred Roberts, Brookland, Arkansas:

    Office upstairs