I am a casual collector of potential epitaphs.  In the early days of my blog I posted each of the candidates separately. I’ve had a request to compile them, so here they all are.

This one happened by me during an email exchange at work. The original comment referred to a scientific paper. Way too good to waste there:

Not without a few errors, but provocative nonetheless.

I can see having this on my headstone (Except that I won’t have a headstone.):

Wait! I’m not done yet!

On my optimistic days, this is the epitaph I favor:

The adventure continues…

For the last word in petty revenge:

Not even the dog will miss him.

Yup, sounds familiar:

Lived at the corner of Skepticism and Rebellion.

Death comes to all of us and yet:

They told me to expect the unexpected but here I am.

No more fooling around:

Next time I come back as a cat.

This offhand comment from a biologist deserves immortality:

She wondered about genetic drift.

Or maybe the reverse is more meaningful:

He never wondered about genetic drift.

I know, right?:

Damn, just when I was getting the hang of it.

Although debate with the universe is not recommended:

But –

You know who you are:

Death. The last word in writer’s block.

A final disclaimer:

It wasn’t always like this for me.

Disgruntled past the end:

Was that all there was?

An epitaph for my cat Boink:

Peace, love, and asparagus.

Strolling down the lane with the Buddha:

Once a life, always alive.

Epitaph for a joke-teller:

Three worms walk into a bar…

Ouch. Description of a graveyard with headstones from William Faulkner’s only mystery novel, Intruder in the Dust:

…carved mottoless with simple names and dates as though there had been nothing even their mourners remembered of them than that they had lived and they had died…