Any Famous Last Words?

For every “Et tu brute” and “The comedy is over,” there’s gotta be a 100 groans and delusional ravings. Here are some of my faves …

Stating the Obvious

• Why am I hemorrhaging?  /  Boris Pasternak
• I feel pain here.  /  Charles de Gaulle

Last year was the 50th anniversary of de Gaulle's passing

Feelings

• I don't feel good.  /  Luther Burbank
• Never felt better. / Douglas Fairbanks
• I feel great. / Pete Maravich

Pistol Pete was born with a single coronary artery
(most of us have a left one too)

Dying Is Boring

• This dying is boring.  /  Richard Feynman
• I’m bored with it all.  /  Winston Churchill 
• I’m bored, I’m bored.  /  Gabriele D'Annunzio.
• I’m so bored.  /  St John Philby

I Command Thee!

• That's good. Go on, read some more!  /  Warren Harding
• Give Dayrolles a chair!  /  Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
• Send Mike immediately!  /  LBJ
• James, take good care of the horses!  /  Winfield Scott
• Have you brought the chequebook, Alfred?  /  Samuel Butler

Don’t Struggle

• Put your hands on my shoulders and don't struggle!  /  W.S. Gilbert
• Let me go! Let me go!  /  Clara Barton

Who Turned out the Light?

• More light! / Goethe
• I can't see a damned thing.  /  Morgan Earp, brother of Wyatt
• Please put out that light, James!  /  Teddy Roosevelt
• Give me my glasses!  /  Mark Twain

Goethe's death mask

Dying Is Thirsty

• Water!  /  US Grant, Samuel Tilden
• More milk!  /  Michael Jackson
• Ah, that tastes nice.  Thank you.  /  Johannes Brahms
• One last drink, please!  /  Jack Daniel
• It's a long time since I drank champagne.  /  Anton Chekov
• Codeine … bourbon.  /  Tallulah Bankhead
• That was a great game of golf, fellas. Let's get a Coke.  /  Bing Crosby

Care for a Smoke?

• Put that bloody cigarette out!  /  Saki (HH Munro), in the trenches in WWI
• Shit, a bullet wound!  /  Antonio José de Sucre, Venezuela independence leader

Lance Sergeant Munro

Miscellaneous

• All right then, I'll say it. Dante makes me sick.  /  Lope de Vega
• Doctor, do you think it could have been the sausage?  /  Paul Claudel
• Now I'm oiled [drunk]. Keep me from the rats.  /  Pietro Aretino
• Damn, this is funny!  /  Doc Holliday
• Wait a second.  /  Madame de Pompadour, applying rouge to her cheeks

Of TB no less

Death Makes No Sense

• That's Article 98; now go on to the next!  /  Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister
• That picture is awful dusty.  /  Jesse James
• Where is my clock?  /  Salvador Dali
• How did the Mets do today?  /  Moe Berg
• I’m going to the bathroom to read.  /  Elvis Presley
• Good dog.  /  Vladimir Lenin
• Hershey bars will be good enough – they'll be fine. / F Scott Fitzgerald
• Bugger Bognor! / George V (when told by his physician that he would soon be well enough to visit the seaside town)

• I want the world to be filled with white fluffy duckies.  /  Derek Jarman, English film director
• Do you know what linen is? Linen is a great thing – I want to make a book of it!  /  Jules Michelet, French historian
• One hundred and forty-four.  /  French mathematician Thomas Fantet de Lagny, responding to the question “What is the square of 12?” on his deathbed
• My Florida water! / Lucille Ball  (Florida water is a kind of eau de cologne.)
• Warry, shift!  /  Walt Whitman  (E.g., "Warren [his aide]!  Shift me [from one side to the other]!") 
• House.  /  Otto van Bismark
• I think I could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies.  /  William Pitt the Younger
• Now comes good sailing. Moose. Indian.  /  Henry David Thoreau

So Long!  Walt Whitman's Poetry of Death
Harold Aspiz, Univ. of Alabama Press

Needless to say, though, nothing quite compares with the deranged last words of the gangster Dutch Schultz:

You get ahead with the dot/dash system. Didn't I speak that time last night? Whose number is that in your pocket book, Phil 13780?  Who was it? Oh, please, please. Reserve decision. Police, police, Henry and Frankie. Oh, oh, dog biscuits.  And when he is happy, he doesn't get happy.  Please, please, to do this. Then Henry, Henry, Frankie you didn't even meet me. The glove will fit what I say.  Oh Kayiyi, oh Kayiyi. Sure who cares when you are through? How do you know this? How do you know this? Well then, oh, Cocoa know, thinks he is a grandpa again. He is jumping around. No Hobo and Poboe I think he means the same thing.

No. If he wanted to break the ring.  No. Please. I get a month. They did it. Come on. [Unintelligible] cut me off and says you are not to be the beneficiary of this will. Is that right? I will be checked and double-checked.  And please pull for me. Will you pull? How many good ones and how many bad ones? Please. I had nothing with him.  He was a cowboy in one of the seven-days-a-week fight. No business, no hangout, no friends, nothing.  Just what you pick up and what you need. I don't know who shot me. Don't put anyone near this check.  You might have.  Please do it for me. Let me get up.  Heh?  In the olden days, they waited and they waited. Please give me a shot.  It is from the factory. Sure, that is a bad... Well, oh good ahead.  That happens for trying. I don't want harmony.  I want harmony.  Oh, mamma, mamma! Who give it to him? Who give it to him? Let me in the district fire-factory that he was nowhere near. It smoldered. No, no. There are only ten of us and there ten million fighting somewhere of you. So, get your onions up and we will throw up the truce flag. Oh, please let me up. Please shift me. Police are here. Communistic... strike... baloney... honestly ...  This is a habit I get.  Sometimes I give it and sometimes I don't.  Oh, I am all in. That settles it. Are you sure? Please let me get in and eat. Let him harass himself to you and then bother you. Please don't ask me to go there. I don't want to. I still don't want him in the path. It is no use to stage a riot. The sidewalk was in trouble and the bears were in trouble and I broke it up. Please put me in that room. Please keep him in control. My gilt-edged stuff and those dirty rats have tuned in. Please mother, don't tear, don't rip.  That is something that shouldn't be spoken about. Please get me up, my friends. Please, look out. The shooting is a bit wild, and that kind of shooting saved a man's life. No payrolls. No wells. No coupons. That would be entirely out. Pardon me, I forgot I am plaintiff and not defendant. Look out. Look out for him. Please. He owed me money; he owes everyone money. Why can't he just pull out and give me control? Please, mother, you pick me up now. Please, you know me. No. Don't you scare me. My friends and I think I do a better job. Police are looking for you all over. Be instrumental in letting us know. They are Englishmen and they are a type.  I don't know who is best, they or us. Oh, sir, get the doll a roofing. You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it. I take all events into consideration. No. No. And it is no. It is confused and its says no. A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kin. Did you hear me?

I don't know. I didn't even get a look. I don't know who can have done it. Anybody. Kindly take my shoes off. No, there is a handcuff on them. The Baron says these things. I know what I am doing here with my collection of papers. It isn't worth a nickel to two guys like you or me but to a collector it is worth a fortune. It is priceless. I am going to turn it over to... Turn your back to me, please Henry. I am so sick now. The police are getting many complaints. Look out. I want that G-note. Look out for Jimmy Valentine for he is an old pal of mine. Come on, come on, Jim. Okay, okay, I am all through. Can't do another thing. Look out mamma, look out for her. You can't beat him. Police, mamma, Helen, mother, please take me out. I will settle the indictment. Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Talk to the sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please help me up, Henry. Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.