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The Afterlife of Words

by Ed Poll


The following article is from the Secular Humanist Bulletin, Volume 18, Number 3.


Human life may be brief, but words live on. With that in mind, the Hudson Valley Humanists have embarked on The Tombstone Project to collect and display on their Web site inscriptions from tombstones that reflect a humanistic, scientific, or naturalistic view of reality.

Too often, as humanists know, a visitor to a cemetery goes from grave to grave, reading the same old lines about god, angels, and eternity. If you know of any genuine inscriptions that reflect a naturalistic view of life and death, please send them to hvhumans@yahoo.com.

Here's an example found in a little plot in Salisbury, Connecticut:

Mr. Samuel Moore
the eminent Mathematician
1820-1875
Died Feb 20
His LIFE and Services
these the Monument
this marble
but the Tablet
He lived to benefit mankind
Sway'd not by trifles
But by Science led
As land-Surveyor
So like in all things
Like connect


Ed Poll is a member of the Hudson Valley Humanists.


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