Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Monuments
The tap’ring pyramid, the Egyptian’s pride,
And wonder of the world, whose spiky top
Has wounded the thick cloud.
Blair—The Grave. L. 190.
Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men’s ashes.
Sir Thomas Browne—Hydriotaphia. Ch. III.
To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, wore a contradiction to our belief.
Sir Thomas Browne—Hydriotaphia. Ch. V.
But monuments themselves memorials need.
Crabbe—The Borough. Letter II.
You shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
Lay down the wreck of power to rest,
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him that was “the scourge of God.”
Edward Everett—Alaric the Visigoth.
He made him a hut, wherein he did put
The carcass of Robinson Crusoe.
O poor Robinson Crusoe!
Samuel Foote—Mayor of Garratt. Act I. Sc. 1.
Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered.
Fuller—The Holy and Profane States. Bk. III. Of Tombs.
Exegi monumentum ære perennius
Regalique situ pyramidum altius,
Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere aut innumerabilis
Annorum series et fuga temporum.
Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei
Vitabit Libitinam.
I have reared a memorial more enduring than brass, and loftier than the regal structure of the pyramids, which neither the corroding shower nor the powerless north wind can destroy; no, not even unending years nor the flight of time itself. I shall not entirely die. The greater part of me shall escape oblivion.
Horace—Carmina. III. 30. 1.
Incisa notis marmora publicis,
Per quæ spiritus et vita redit bonis
Post mortem ducibus.
Marble statues, engraved with public inscriptions, by which the life and soul return after death to noble leaders.
Horace—Carmina. IV. 8.
Cœlo tegitur qui non hatet urnam.
He is covered by the heavens who has no sepulchral urn.
Lucanus—Pharsalia. Bk. VII. 831.
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a life-long monument.
Milton—Epitaph. On Shakespeare.
For men use, if they have an evil tourne, to write it in marble; and whoso doth us a good tourne we will write it in duste.
Thos. More—Richard III.
Towers of silence.
Robert X. Murphy, according to Sir George Birdwood, in a letter to the London Times, Aug. 8, 1905.
Soldats, du haut ces Pyramide quarante siècles vous contemplent.
Soldiers, forty centuries are looking down upon you from these pyramids.
Napoleon. To his army before the Battle of the Pyramids, July 2, 1797. Also quoted “twenty centuries.”
Factum abiit; monumenta manent.
The need has gone; the memorial thereof remains.
Ovid—Fasti. Bk. IV. 709.
Where London’s column, pointing at the skies,
Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. III. L. 339.
Jove, thou regent of the skies.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 320.
Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit.
Daniel Webster—Address on Laying the Corner Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument. Works. Vol. I. P. 62.
If we work upon marble it will perish. If we work upon brass time will efface it. If we rear temples they will crumble to dust. But if we work upon men’s immortal minds, if we imbue them with high principles, with the just fear of God and love of their fellow men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.
Daniel Webster—Speech in Faneuil Hall. (1852).