Inspired by this blog entry - Captain Oates’ “I am just going outside & may be some time.” - can Dopers come up with any similarly great parting - not necessarily last - words?
This is a true story. Words have been changed to reflect the forgetfulness of the author.
The setting: The American Civil War
Grunt Jim: “Captain, we should move camp. Confederate snipers are close.”
Commander: “Nonsense, those confederate bumpkins couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn…”
<gunshot>
Grunt Jim: “…”
Army Doctor: “He’s dead, Jim”
“Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home.” -Eric Cartman (Dual finger waving and pointing required.)
“You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”
- Davy Crockett
(He showed them!)
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” Gen. John Sedgwick.
So long and thanks for all the fish. It’s a message from the dolphins who left Earth right before it was blown up. From **The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. **
My supervisor actually sent this out to the home company on the day our station shut down. It was his way of saying we’re smarter than you and are getting out before it all blows up in your face. We were, and it did.
I was talking to my friend Vince at a drunken fraternity party. He told me of a friend of his whose last words to him were, “Don’t get yourself killed.” Vince left the party at that point. Instead of taking his own car, he grabbed a Corvette owned by a fraternity brother. He was going pretty fast when he ran a stop sign at the edge of campus and crashed into a bartender going home after work. Both men were killed. I couldn’t sleep, so I went outside to see what all the flashing lights were about. The bodies were gone by then, but a cop told me what happened and who had died.
My late husband’s last words to me were “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
No. I didn’t kill him. [trying to decide which emoticon would be appropriate here]
“Am I dying or is it my birthday?”
Lady Nancy Astor (on all the people gathered around her bedside)
“Let’s see how lucky I am…”
Actor Jon Eric Hexum, before fatally shooting himself in the head with a blank (I’ve read variants, but they’re always roughly the same)
“I am about to die. Or I am going to die. Either expression is used.”
Fr. Dominique Bouhours (1628-1702), Jesuit priest and grammarian (really was)
My father was a literature teacher and renowned for his oratory. He was flown to Utah and to Oregon to give Masonic eulogies because of his eloquence and his deep voice. The eloquent old man’s last words, addressed to me (on a night when our plumbing was frozen and there was only one flush left in the toilet) were:
What a great thread. I dunno if I can think of any particularly famous ones, but a favorite immediately springs to mind:
(slowly) “I fix, Hogarth. You, stay … I, go. No following.” - The Iron Giant
What, no one’s mentioned “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”?
There’s one I’ve heard but can’t remember who said it. A staunch athiest on his deathbed was asked to renounce Satan and accept Christ as his saviour. His reply was something like, “Father, now is not the time to make enemies.”
Google didn’t turn up anything. Anyone know who this was and what the actual quote is?
Those were supposedly Voltaire’s last words, though I cannot speak for the validity of that claim.
“Indians, what indians?”
Custer may have said this
“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
-attributed to a dying Oscar Wilde
And just before that, Wilde reputedly said “I am dying beyond my means”.
So the ex-wife has all her shit loaded in the car, leaving for the last time. She starts the car, then gets back out to yell at me across the driveway:
“The only thing you’re worth a damn at doesn’t pay anything.”
Not exactly parting words, but shortly before his death, Oscar Wilde remarked, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go.”
Noted western character Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, CO. He woke up and asked for a glass of whiskey. After drinking it, he said, “This is funny” and died.
Orson Welles: “One more french fry with mayo isn’t gonna kill me.”
John F. Kennedy: “What’s that in the bushes?”
Anna Nicole Smith: “What the hell ever happened to Sugar Pie? Oooh… I wonder what the red ones do…”
Isadora Duncan: “These new scarves are to die for.”
Adolf Hitler:“And send this memo to Truman… Harry-stop-Best two out of three?-stop- Eva put that down…”
Saddam Hussein: “This isn’t a fucking surprise party!”
In a speech to students at Washington and Lee University in 1956, former Vice President Alben W. Barkley, an old-school orator, said “I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the seats of the mighty.”
While the crowd applauded, Barkley collapsed and died.