? ‘Le Morte de Author’ . . .

Last Words:

“See in what peace a Christian can die.”
- Joseph Addison, d. June 17, 1719

“Is it not meningitis?”
- Louisa M. Alcott, d. 1888

“Nothing, but death.”
(when asked by her sister, Cassandra, if there was anything she wanted)
- Jane Austen, d. July 18, 1817

“I can't sleep.”
- James M. Barrie, d. 1937

“I am about to—or I am going to—die: either expression is correct.”
- Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, d. 1702

“Oh, I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.”
(spoken to her husband of 9 months, Rev. Arthur Nicholls)
- Charlotte Bronte, d. March 31, 1855

“Beautiful.”
(in reply to her husband, who had asked how she felt)
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, d. June 28, 1861

“Now I shall go to sleep. Goodnight.”
- Lord George Byron, d. 1824

“I am dying. I haven't drunk champagne for a long time.”
- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, d. July 1, 1904

“Goodnight my darlings, I'll see you tomorrow.”
- Noel Coward, d. 1973

“I must go in, the fog is rising.”
- Emily Dickinson, poet, d. 1886

“Come my little one, and give me your hand.”
(spoken to his daughter, Ottilie)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, d. March 22, 1832

“Shoot straight you bastards and don't make a mess of it!”
(executed by firing squad)
- Harry Harbord "Breaker" Morant, Australian poet & national hero, d. 1902

“God will pardon me, that's his line of work.”
- Heinrich Heine, poet, d. February 15, 1856

“Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark.”
- O. Henry (William Sidney Porter), d. June 4, 1910

“I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”
- Thomas Hobbes, d. 1679

“I see black light.”
- Victor Hugo, d. May 22, 1885

“Does nobody understand?”
- James Joyce, d. 1941

“Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers.”
- Walter De La Mare, d. 1956

“It's all been very interesting.”
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, d. 1762

“I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room.”
- Eugene O'Neill, d. November 27, 1953

“Good-bye . . . why am I hemorrhaging?”
- Boris Pasternak, d. 1959

“Lord help my poor soul.”
- Edgar Allan Poe, d. October 7, 1849

“Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.”
- Alexander Pope, d. May 30, 1744

“I owe much; I have nothing; the rest I leave to the poor.”
- François Rabelais, d. 1553

“Sister, you're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die.”
(spoken to his nurse)
- George Bernard Shaw, playwright, d. November 2, 1950

“I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that's the record . . .”
- Dylan Thomas, poet, d. 1953

“Moose . . . Indian . . .”
- Henry David Thoreau, d. May 6, 1862

“God bless... God damn.”
- James Thurber, humorist, d. 1961

“Go away. I'm all right.”
- H. G. Wells, d. 1946

“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
- Oscar Wilde, d. November 30, 1900

Suicide Notes:

“And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead.”
- Nicolas-Sebastien Chamfort, French writer, d. 1794

“Goodbye, everybody!”
(last words as he jumped off the cruise ship ‘Orizaba;’ his body was never found)
- Hart Crane, poet, d. April 27, 1932

“All fled--all done, so lift me on the pyre;
The feast is over, and the lamps expire.”
-Robert E. Howard, d. June 11, 1936

“They tried to get me - I got them first!”
(suicide by drinking Lysol)
- Vachel Lindsay, poet, d. December 4, 1931

“When I am dead, and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain drenched hair,
Tho you should lean above me broken hearted,
I shall not care.
For I shall have peace.
As leafey trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough.
And I shall be more silent and cold hearted
Than you are now.”
(to her lover, who had left her)
- Sara Teasdale, poet, d. 1933

“I feel certain that I'm going mad again. I feel we can't go thru another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices.”
- Virginia Woolf, d. March 28, 1941