They're often etched in stone

Usage examples of epitaphs.

And with the same sad smile he looked round on the figures, some marble, some painted stone, of departed Brandons and Wylders, with garrulous epitaphs, who surrounded them in various costumes, quite a family group, in which the attorney was gratified to mingle.

And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs, How do you like your silence from mouths stopped With the dust of my triumphant career?

But later, as I lived among the people here, I knew how near to the life Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them as they died.

Sometimes during his daylight dog walks, when he was trying to think something through in his unresolved personal life or his confused work, he would read the epitaphs as carefully as a decoder, while Kitty sat pensively on the other end of the lead.