An article in today's Guardian by Ian McKie about last lines and the truth behind them got me wondering (not thinking, I did that earlier) about other famous people and their alleged deathbed utterings. Here are a few gems, believe them or not, they make for good reading."Wait 'till I have finished my problem!"
— Archimedes
"Only from the cold, my friend."
— Bailly, Jean Sylvain: On the scaffold, awaiting the guillotine, he was heckled by a spectator who noticed that he was trembling.
"How were the circus receipts in Madison Square Gardens?"
— P T Barnum
"Now comes the mystery."
— Henry Ward Beecher
"Nostiitz, you have learned many a thing form me. Now you are to learn how peacefully a man can die."
— Gebhardt von Blucher
"Do you know where I can get any shit?"
— Lenny Bruce
"Take a step forward, lads. It will be easier that way."
— Robert Childers: Childers had been fighting with the Republican Forces when he was captured by pro-treaty troops at Annamore. He was tried before a military court, found guilty of possessing an automatic pistol, and executed by firing squad at Beggars Bush Barracks.
"That guy's got to stop. . . . He'll see us."
— James Dean
". . . the fog is rising"
— Emily Dickinson
"Shakespeare, I come."
— Theodore Dreiser
— Amelia Earhart
"All my possessions for a moment of time."
— Elizabeth I
"God damn the whole fuckin' world and everyone in it but you, Carlotta."
— W C Fields
"My dear Schur, you remember our first talk. You promised to help me when I could no longer carry on. It is only torture now, and it has no longer any sense."
— Sigmund Freud: He was bedridden and in intense pain when he pressured his personal physician for relief and received several large doses of morphine. He slipped into a coma and died the next day.
More to come at a later date
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