Theme

Death

Last words, elegies, and the ordinary fact that a life ends. Some of these speakers are bargaining. Some are simply looking straight at it.

1. Thomas Jefferson survives.John AdamsReported last words
2. You too, child?Julius CaesarSuetonius, Life of Julius Caesar
3. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.Dante AlighieriInferno
4. Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.John DonneDevotions upon Emergent Occasions
5. Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.John DonneHoly Sonnets
6. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.EcclesiastesEcclesiastes
7. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.T. S. EliotThe Hollow Men
8. Death is nothing to us. When we are, death is not come; and when death is come, we are not.EpicurusLetter to Menoeceus
9. I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.Nathan HaleReported last words
10. Here lies one whose name was writ in water.John KeatsHis epitaph
11. Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.John Gillespie Magee Jr.High Flight
12. To philosophize is to learn how to die.Michel de MontaigneEssays
13. Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar.William ShakespeareJulius Caesar
14. To be, or not to be, that is the question.William ShakespeareHamlet
15. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.William ShakespeareMacbeth
16. The report of my death was an exaggeration.Mark TwainA note sent from London

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