Last Words of Famous People
Fearful Last Words:
Cardinal Borgia: “I have provided
in the course of my life for everything except death,
and now, alas, I am to die unprepared.”
Elizabeth the First: “All my
possessions for one moment of time.”
Kurt Cobain (suicide note): “Frances
and Courtney, I’ll be at your altar. Please keep
going Courtney, for Frances. For her life will be so
much happier without me. I love you. I love you.”
Ludwig van Beethoven: “Too
bad, too bad! It’s too late!”
Thomas Hobbs: “I am about to
take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”
Anne Boleyn: “O God, have pity
on my soul. O God, have pity on my soul.”
Prince Henry of Wales: “Tie
a rope round my body, pull me out of bed, and lay me
in ashes, that I may die with repentant prayers to an
offended God. O! I in vain wish for that time I lost
with you and others in vain recreations.”
Socrates: “All of the wisdom
of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must
set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was
a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some
divine word.”
Sigmund Freud: “The meager
satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves
him starving.”
Tony Hancock (British comedian):
“Nobody will ever know I existed. Nothing to leave
behind me. Nothing to pass on. Nobody to mourn me. That’s
the bitterest blow of all.”
Phillip III, King of France: “What
an account I shall have to give to God! How I should
like to live otherwise than I have lived.”
Luther Burbank: “I don’t
feel good.”
Voltaire (skeptic): “I am abandoned
by God and man! I will give you half of what I am worth
if you will give me six months’ life. Then I shall
go to hell; and you will go with me. O Christ! O Jesus
Christ!” (The talented French writer once said
of Jesus, “Curse the wretch!” He stated,
“Every sensible man, every honorable man, must
hold the Christian sect in horror ...Christianity is
the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion
that has ever infected the world.”) He also boasted,
“In twenty years Christianity will be no more.
My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve
apostles to rear.” Some years later, Voltaire’s
house was used by the Geneva Bible Society to print
Bibles.
Philosophical Last Words:
Aldus Huxley (humanist): “It
is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the
human problem all one’s life and find at the end
that one has no more to offer by way of advice than
‘Try and be a little kinder.’”
Karl Marx: “Go on, get out!
Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”
Napoleon: “I marvel that where
the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and
of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean
peasant—Jesus—should be able to stretch
his hands across the centuries, and control the destinies
of men and nations.”
Leonardo da Vinci: “I have
offended God and mankind because my work did not reach
the quality it should have.”
Tolstoy: “Even in the valley
of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”
Benjamin Franklin: “A dying
man can do nothing easy.”
Grotius: “I have lived my life
in a laborious doing of nothing.”
Unexpected Demise:
H. G. Wells: “Go away: I’m
alright.”
General John Sedgwick (during the heat of
battle in 1864): “They couldn’t
hit an elephant at this dist——!”
Bing Crosby: “That was a great
game of golf.”
Mahatma Ghandi: “I am late
by ten minutes. I hate being late. I like to be at the
prayer punctually at the stroke of five.”
Diana (Spencer), Princess of Wales:
“My God. What’s happened?” (per police
files)
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.: “Never
felt better.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt: “I have
a terrific headache.”
Sal Mineo: (stabbed through the heart):
“Oh God! No! Help! Someone help!”
Jesse James: “It’s awfully
hot today.”
Lee Harvey Oswald: “I will
be glad to discuss this proposition with my attorney,
and that after I talk with one, we could either discuss
it with him or discuss it with my attorney, if the attorney
thinks it is a wise thing to do, but at the present
time I have nothing more to say to you.”
Unusual Last Words:
Vincent Van Gogh: “I shall
never get rid of this depression.”
James Dean: “My fun days are
over.”
Oscar Wilde: “My wallpaper
and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other
of us has to go . . .”
W. C. Fields: “I’m looking
for a loophole.”
Louis XVII: “I have something
to tell you . . .”
Assurance of Salvation:
Jonathan Edwards: “Trust in
God and you shall have nothing to fear.”
Patrick Henry: “Doctor, I wish
you to observe how real and beneficial the religion
of Christ is to a man about to die . . .” In his
will he wrote: “This is all the inheritance I
give to my dear family. The religion of Christ which
will give them one which will make them rich indeed.”
John Owen: “I am going to Him
whom my soul loveth, or rather who has loved me with
an everlasting love, which is the sole ground of all
my consolation.”
D. L. Moody: “I see earth receding;
heaven is opening. God is calling me.”
Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur):
“Thy will be done.”
Alexander Hamilton: “I have
a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through
the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner.
I look to Him for mercy.”
William Shakespeare: “I commend
my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and
assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus
Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting;
and my body to the earth, whereof it was made.”
Martin Luther: “Into Thy hands
I commend my spirit! Thou hast redeemed me, O God of
truth.”
John Milton (British poet): “Death
is the great key that opens the palace of Eternity.”
Sir Walter Raleigh (at his execution):
“So the heart be right, it is no matter which
way the head lieth.”
Daniel Webster (just before his death): “The
great mystery is Jesus Christ—the gospel. What
would the condition of any of us be if we had not the
hope of immortality? . . . Thank God, the gospel of
Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light.”
His last words were: “I still live.”
General William Booth (to his son):
“And the homeless children, Bramwell, look after
the homeless. Promise me . . .”
David Livingstone: “Build me
a hut to die in. I am going home.”
Charles Dickens: “I commit
my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to
try and guide themselves by the teaching of the New
Testament.”
Andrew Jackson: “My dear children,
do not grieve for me . . . I am my God’s. I belong
to Him. I go but a short time before you, and ...I hope
and trust to meet you all in heaven.”
Isaac Watts (hymn-writer): “It
is a great mercy that I have no manner of fear or dread
of death. I could, if God please, lay my head back and
die without terror this afternoon.”
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