Famous last words

'The trouble with you', I was cruelly, but possibly accurately, reminded the other day, 'is that you always have to have the last word' ... which got me thinking. There have been some pretty memorable 'last words'. Here's a handful -

Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister - 'Die my dear Doctor? That's the last thing I shall do'.
Lytton Strachey, writer - 'If this is dying, then I don't think much of it.'
Beautiful last words from Sir Isaac Newton - '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.'

Only Oscar Wilde could have come up with - 'Either this wallpaper goes or I do.'
How about this terminal utterance from General Sedgwick who, during the American Civil War, peered over the parapet at the Battle of Spotsylvania and mused, 'From way back there, they couldn't hit an elepha ...' .
Of course the last last words have to come from a grammarian, a certain Dominique Bonhours - 'I am about to - or I am going to - die; either expression is grammatically correct.'



Did you think this piece of nonsense was fun? Plenty more where it came from.
You'll find them all filed under Flotsam and Jetsam.

Jun 9, 2020
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