Some people have the gift of the gab when they know they’re going to go, while others say something meaningful and poignant without knowing it’ll be their last words.
Here are 20 of the best last words we’ve found! Feel free to add any others…
1. Frank Sinatra died in 1998 after saying, “I’m losing it”.
2. Nostradamus predicted, “Tomorrow, at sunrise, I shall no longer be here”…he was right.
3. Sir Isaac Newton was modest until the end. He said, “I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”.
4. Leonardo da Vinci was also overly modest, saying, “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have”. The Mona Lisa wasn’t good enough?
5. Johnny Ace died in 1954 while playing with a pistol during a break at his show. His last words were, “I’ll show you that it won’t shoot”. He was sadly wrong!
6. Richard Feynman, a physicist, author, musician, professor, and traveler, died in Los Angeles in 1988. He last words? “This dying is boring”.
7. Benjamin Franklin’s daughter told him to change position in bed so he could breathe more easily. Franklin’s last words were, “A dying man can do nothing easy”.
8. US murderer James W. Rodgers was put in front of a firing squad and asked if he had a last request. He hilariously replied, “Bring me a bullet-proof vest”.
9. According to Steve Jobs’ sister Mona, the Apple founder’s last words were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow”. I wonder what he saw…
10. Percy Grainger was an Australian composer whose dying words were to his wife Ella, “You’re the only one I like”.
11. Surgeon Joseph Henry Green was checking his own pulse as he lay dying. His last word: “Stopped”.
12. Humphrey Bogart’s last words were funny despite his grim death from oesophageal cancer in 1957 – “I should never have switched from Scotch to martinis”
13. Emily Dickinson’s last words were, “I must go in, for the fog is rising”
14. As Truman Capote lay dying, he repeated, “Mama…Mama…Mama”
15. Donald O’Connor was a singer, dancer and actor. He also hosted the Academy Awards in 1954 and joked, “I’d like to thank the Academy for my lifetime achievement award that I will eventually get”. He still hasn’t gotten one.
16. Charles Gussman was a writer and TV announcer, who wrote the pilot episode of Days of Our Lives, among other shows. As he became ill, he said he wanted his last words to be memorable. When he daughter reminded him of this, he gently removed his oxygen mask and whispered: “And now for a final word from our sponsor…”
17. As he was dying, Alfred Hitchcock said, “One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes”
18. Sir Winston Churchill’s last words were, “I’m bored with it all”.
19. James Brown said, “I’m going away tonight”, before he died in 2006.
20. Oscar Wilde’s last words are said to have been “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us must go.”
What are some of the best last words you’ve ever heard? What funny or apt one-liner do you want to say before you go? Tell us in the comments below!
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