“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room in heaven.”
Muhammad Ali did not have any final spoken words because he was unable to talk in the days leading up to his passing, but his gravestone bears this famous maxim on humanitarianism attributed to him.
The professional boxer and activist, a global cultural icon, was hospitalised in Scottsdale Arizona with a respiratory illness. Ali’s condition worsened and he died the next day at the age of 74 from septic shock.
“This is the fight of day and night. I see black light.”
These were the deathbed words of the Romantic writer and human rights activist, most well known for his masterpiece Les Misérables, as he lay dying from pneumonia. Victor Hugo passed away at his home in Paris at the age of 83, he was interred in the Panthéon and buried in a pauper’s coffin at his own request.
“Throw up the window that I may see once more the magnificent scene of nature.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau uttered these last words after suffering an apoplectic stroke as a result of bleeding on the brain – it’s believed that repeated falls may have contributed to Rousseau’s stroke. The philosopher and writer, author of ‘The Social Contract,’ passed away at a cottage on the estate of his benefactor Marquis de Girardin, he was 66 years old.
“I often say next year I’ll slow down, but I keep being asked to do shows in great places and I love what I do.”
The singer and music icon reflected on her career and enduring passion for performing in a poignant final televised interview before her death at the age of 75. Bonnie Tyler underwent emergency surgery for a perforated intestine at a hospital near her home in Portugal, and passed away two months later from complications resulting from the illness.
“I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death, and pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited upon France.”
Louis XVI delivered this speech to his executioners prior to his execution by guillotine at the Place de la Révolution, Paris. The last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution was given the death penalty after being found guilty of high treason and crimes against the state, he was 38 years old at the time of his death.
“Damn. This is funny.”
The dentist and gunfighter, best known for his role in the shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone Arizona, uttered these final words as he lay dying to a nurse after she refused him a shot of whiskey. Doc Holliday succumbed to tuberculosis (consumption) at the age of 36 in the Hotel Glenwood, Colorado.
“The readiness is all”
There are no recorded or documented last words spoken by Alec Guinness before his death, but this is the epitaph on his gravestone, a famous line from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The stage and screen actor, best known for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars movies, died from cancer in King Edward VII’s Hospital in Midhurst England, he was 86 years old.
“Water”
The final recorded verbal word uttered by the Empress of Russia before her death was reportedly a request for some water. Catherine the Great was found collapsed on the floor of her bathroom by a servant, and a court doctor diagnosed that she had suffered a severe stroke. Attempts were made to revive her but she fell into a coma and was given the last rites. Catherine passed away the following evening in the Winter Palace Saint Petersburg she was aged 67.
“God bless Captain Vere!”
These were the last words that Herman Melville muttered on his deathbed, a reference to a character from his final then-unpublished novella ‘Billy Budd, Sailor.’ The novelist and poet, most famous for his masterpiece Moby Dick, died at his residence in New York City he was 72 years old. The death certificate showed cardiac dilation / heart failure as the cause.
“If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now.”
The novelist and poet, author of Wuthering Heights, uttered these final audible words to her sister Charlotte, asking for medical help which she had previously rejected. But it was too late and Emily Brontë died later that same day in her family home at the age of 30. The cause of death was given as inflammation of the lungs which may have accelerated an existing condition such as tuberculosis.
