Just what was the root of his neurosis?

September 23, 1939: Sigmund Freud died at age 83, of cancer of the jaw, brought on by the some two-dozen cigars he smoked daily. His last words have been variously recorded, sometimes as:

"My dear Schur (his doctor), you remember our first talk. You promised to help me (by giving him morphine) when I could no longer carry on. It is only torture now, and it has no longer any sense."

And as:

"It's absurd."

Deathless thoughts of Montaigne

I missed this: Michel de Montaigne, the master of the personal essay (he invented the form) and aphorist extraordinaire, died on September 13, 1592. Of death, he had this to say, among other things:

"If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it."

"It is not death, it is dying that alarms me."

"Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations."

And:

"The ceaseless labour of one's whole life is to build the house of death."

Words Elvis did not live by

Louis XVIII of France died on this day in 1824. Wheelchair-bound for most of his later life because of a severe case of gout, he supposedly uttered these last words as he was about to die:

"A king should die standing."

The quotation has been attributed to others, as well, such as the Roman emperor Vespasian, and the Danish king Liward, who said:

"Let me up that I may die standing, not lying down like a cow."

He was dying to get it off his chest

Spanish playwright Lope de Vega died on this day in 1635. He wrote some 2,000 plays. His supposed last words were:

"All right, then, I'll say it, Dante makes me sick."

I think, therefore I'm dead

A couple of famous philosophers died on this day.

Scottish philosopher David Hume (pictured here) died on this day in 1776.

"The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster," Hume wrote, and also:

“It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”



And German philosoher Friedrich Nietzsche died August 25, 1900.

"In heaven all the interesting people are missing," Nietzsche wrote.

Interesting, and all right

August 21, 1762: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, English aristocrat and writer, died. Her last words:

"It has all been most interesting."




August 23, 1926: Actor and heartthrob Rudolph Valentino died. His last words:

"Don't worry chief, it will be all right."

Deaths updated

August 12, 2007: TV host and quiz-show pioneer Merv Griffin’s headstone reads “I Will Not Be Right Back After This Message.”

August 13, 1946: Author H. G. Wells (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds) died. His last words:

"Go away. I'm all right."

August 14, 1956: Playwright Bertold Brecht died. He wrote:

“Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.”

August 15, 1935: Humorist Will Rogers died. He said:

"This thing of being a hero, about the main thing to it is to know when to die." 

To eradicate mankind, yes

Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge died on July 25, 1834.

"A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation;" Coleridge wrote, "but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind."

Only the worms care

July 23, 1880: American mystery writer Raymond Chandler was born. In The Big Sleep, he wrote:

"Where did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered with things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you."

Chandler also wrote:

"Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already."

And so on

Poet Carl Sandburg died on July 22, 1967. He wrote:

"A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake."