Last words are often disputed. If you'd been with someone you loved when they were dying, and someone put a microphone under your nose
and asked you what their last words were, you'd at best say the last thing you remembered; or, wishing them to be remembered in as positive a
light as possible, you might say the last significant thing you remembered. If the same reporter then did the same to another witness,
they'd probably remember something different. So the obvious moral of this tale is to treat this subject with caution.
I'm quite glad to say that I've never been a witness to anyone's death, but I imagine that very few people, in their last moments,
have the presence of mind to make sure that their last words are anything memorable. Some people, in fact, go out of their way not to do so: see
Karl Marx.
| Noli turbare circulos meos! (Do not disturb my circles!) – attributed – said to a Roman soldier
shortly before his death |
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Archimedes |
| "Jakie, is this my birthday, or am I dying?" (Seeing all her children assembled at her bedside) |
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Nancy Astor |
| "I never should have switched from scotch to martinis" |
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Humphrey Bogart |
| "The executioner is, I believe, very expert; and my neck is very slender" |
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Anne Boleyn |
| "I shall hear in heaven" |
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Ludwig van Beethoven |
| "Vivo!" (I am (still) alive) – Roman Emperor (according to the historian Tacitus) |
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Caligula |
| "Hello … the bow's up … I've gone" |
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Donald Campbell |
| "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone" |
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Edith Cavell |
| "Let not poor Nelly starve" |
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Charles II |
| "It's never too late for a glass of champagne" |
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Anton Chekhov |
| "Take a step or two forward, lads, it'll be easier that way" (English–born Irish republican,
to the firing squad – Dublin, 1922) |
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Erskine Childers |
| "I'm so bored with it all" |
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Winston Churchill |
| "That was the best ice cream soda I ever tasted" (this report has been refuted by his nurse, who claimed
that his last words were, "I think I'll be more comfortable," after asking her to move him onto his side |
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Lou Costello |
| "This is the hand that wrote it, therefore it shall take first punishment" |
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Thomas Cranmer |
| "Don't you dare ask God to help me" (said to her housekeeper, who had begun to pray out loud) |
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Joan Crawford |
| "My design is to make what haste I can to be gone" |
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Oliver Cromwell |
| "That was a great game of golf fellas" |
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Bing Crosby |
| "That guy (up there)'s gotta stop … he'll see us (or he's seen us)" – reportedly |
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James Dean |
| "I finally get to see Marilyn" |
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Joe diMaggio |
| "All my possessions for a moment of time" |
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Elizabeth I |
| "Channel 5 is all shit, isn't it? Christ, the crap they put on there. It's a waste of space" (reportedly) |
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Adam Faith |
| "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia" |
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W. C. Fields |
| "Mother, I'm going to get my things and get out of this house. Father hates me and I'm never coming back" |
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Marvin Gaye |
(Officially reported as) "How is the Empire?"
(Popularly believed to have been in reality) "Bugger Bognor!" |
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George V |
| "Let's do it" |
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Gary Gilmore |
| "Monks! Monks! Monks!" |
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Henry VIII |
| "On the contrary" (when his nurse assured a visitor that he was a little better) |
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Henrik Ibsen |
| "Don't worry – they usually don't swim backwards" (last recorded words – his actual
last words were said to be "I'm dying") |
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Steve Irwin |
| "More milk" ("Milk" was his nickname for the anesthetic propofol, on which he fatally overdosed) |
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Michael Jackson |
| "I would like two lightly poached eggs" |
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Roy Jenkins |
| "Such is life" |
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Ned Kelly |
| "Be of good cheer Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace
as I trust shall never be put out" |
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Bishop Hugh Latimer |
| "Why not? Yeah" (1996) |
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Timothy Leary |
| "It's all been rather lovely" |
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John le Mesurier |
| "I think I'll go to sleep now" |
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Harold MacMillan |
| "I haven't told half of what I saw" |
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Marco Polo |
| "Go on – get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough" |
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Karl Marx |
| "Josephine" |
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Napoleon Bonaparte |
| "Thank god I have done my duty" |
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Nelson |
| "What an artist dies in me" (Or, What an artist I die (as)) (Roman emperor) |
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Nero |
| "I'm just going outside; I may be some time" |
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Capt. Lawrence Oates |
| "Die, my dear Doctor? That is the last thing I shall do!" |
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Lord Palmerston |
| "Get my swan costume ready" |
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Anna Pavlova |
| "I think I could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies" |
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William Pitt the Younger |
| "So little done; so much to do" |
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Cecil Rhodes |
| "I have a terrific headache" |
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Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| "Put out that bloody cigarette" |
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Saki (H. H. Munro) |
| "For God's sake look after our people" (Last written words) |
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Captain Scott |
| "Nonsense, they couldn't hit an elephant at this distance" (US general) |
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John Sedgwick |
| "If this is dying, I don't think much of it" |
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Lytton Strachey |
| "Oh that press will have me now!" (quoted by Andrew Motion on BBC Radio 4 in 2009); previously reported
as "I have opened it" (meaning unknown) |
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
| "Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six" |
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Leo Tolstoy |
| "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" |
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William Tyndale |
| "Woe is me; I think I am becoming a god" |
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Vespasian |
| "Don't let it end like this. Tell 'em I said something" |
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Pancho Villa |
| "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do"
|
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Oscar Wilde |
| "Oh, what's the bloody point?" (Last entry in diary) |
|
Kenneth Williams |
