This won’t take five minutes

Famous Last Words

"It will only take a couple of minutes" is something my father says when he wants me to do a job for him. Which always has me thinking yeah famous last words? So I thought I would do some research into some things that people have said before dying.

The most obvious one that came to mind was "Et tu Brute" which were supposedly Caesar's last words. "The earth is suffocating... swear to make them cut me open so that I won't be buried alive" these were Frederick Chopin's last words.

Some of the quotes I found were interesting, strange and sometimes comical. "They couldn't hit an elephant from that dist..." Was General Sedgwick Union commander 1864. This falls into the latter category.

Churchill was heard to have said "I'm bored with it all "before slipping into a coma that he never awoke from. Other famous leaders' last words: - "I know you have come to kill me. Shoot coward, you are only going to kill a man." Che Guevara's final rambling.

More poetically Stonewall Jackson's final words were "Let us cross the river and sit in the shade of the trees". Spoken after being shot by friendly fire. Malcolm X said to his three assassins "Let's cool it my brothers"

Other last words that I liked were. "Here I am dying of a hundred good symptoms" Alexander Pope.

"I have a terrific headache" Franklin D. Roosevelt before dying of a cerebral haemorrhage.

"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 by George Bernard Shaw to his nurse. Trotsky's last words in 1940 were "I feel here, that this time they have succeeded" after several assassination attempts.

"I've had eighteen straight whiskies; I think that's the record...." Dylan Thomas's last words.

"Woe is me, I think I am turning into a god" Emperor Vespasian's final words. My favourite last words come from Pancho Villa the Mexican Revolutionary "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said nothing". Oscar Wilde's last words were simply "Either that wallpaper goes or I do". The best last words from an American president were George Washington's "I die hard but am not afraid to go"

My history teacher said to me once always end an essay with a quote because somebody has already written better than you.

"GO ON GET OUT. LAST WORDS ARE FOR FOOLS WHO HAVEN'T SAID ENOUGH" Karl Marx.