This staff report mentions that Mel Blanc’s epitaph reads:
“That’s all, folks.”
That’s so perfect, I was wondering about other well-known people’s epitaphs that give a nod to their fame. Know any?
He’s not famous outside Texas, and I wouldn’t have known about it had not Molly Ivins written it up in a column, but one Texas legislator was told that “No one ever had, carved on his tombstone, that he ever passed a tax bill”. He replied “I will” and, as Ivins said, he did. On a pink granite tombstone in the shape of the state of Texas, it reads “Author of a Tax Bill”.
Many moons ago, I lived not too far from Congressional Cemetery in DC. It’s a lovely and interesting place to visit.
One of the epitaphs there is that of Leonard Matlovich, which reads:
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When I was in the military
They gave me a medal for killing two men
And a discharge for loving one
Hic jacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Or Virginia Woolf’s final words: “Against you I will fling myself, / Unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!”
Years ago a civil right leader whose name escapes me had, “I tried.”
Steve Forbes, “While Alive; He Lived.”
Thanks to uncounted Asterix books, I think I actually know what that means! 
“See, I told you I was sick.”
You mean Malcolm Forbes, don’t you.
Dorothy Parker: Excuse my dust
Si monumentum requiris circumspice
(If you seek a monument, look around – On Christopher Wren’s tomb in St Paul’s Cathedral in London)
Although it was proposed by the man himself, W.C.'s epitaph wasn’t actually used, as far as I know.
“Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia.”
Just…wow. What a statement.
In a similar thread, a long time ago, somebody suggested “Well, this sucks.”
Anonymous doper, I have forgotten who you were, but that was one of the few true belly laughs I’ve had out of this place.
Just last week I mentioned to a friend that I wanted “I Told You So” on my headstone.
Only thing is, I’m guessing I won’t be around to find out if it’s there.
Mine’s going to say:
“You should see the other guy”
that is, if my wife will let me . . .
Victorian memsahib Lady Florentia Sale has the finest and most moving epitaph ever written: “Under this stone reposes all that could die of Lady Sale”.
I dont know it verbatim but isn’t there one in Greece that says something to the effect of …
Stranger passing by go tell the Spartans that we did our duty.
Or some such,obviously about the Three Hundred.
Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona.
He’s buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona.
“Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les No More.”
It’s pretty inlikely that this one’s real. As others have pointed out, in that period it would be much more likely to say “four balls from a 44” than “four slugs from na 44”. But the whole thing, even without that, smacks of “Too Good to be True”
By the way, Les Moore, even if he existed, certainly wasn’t famous, and doesn’t really belong in this thread. If the topic of the thread was simply “funny epigraphs”, then I’ve got a stackl of them that I memorized from old Ripley’s Believe it or Not books. But I’m not going to inflict them on you, because a.) The people involved weren’t otherwise famous; and b.) Sometimes the answer is definitely “Not”. Ripley, for instance, cites Lester Moore’s doggerel-inscribed tombstone on more than one occasion.
It’s the Epitaph of Simonides (a contemporary poet) that lay on the burial mound of the Spartans at Thermopylae, to the north of Athens. The original is lost, but there is a modern replacement. There are various translations, but I like:
Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell
That here, obeying her behests, we fell.
Lacedaemon is an alternative name for Sparta. It gave us the word laconic, perfectly illustrated by this epitaph.
The real history of Leonidas and his 300 troops is so much cooler than any weird, homoerotic movie.