I believed from my first attack that I should not survive it — my breath cannot last long.
The first sentence here is sometimes presented as being his last statement before dying, but they are reported as part of the fuller statement, and as being said in the afternoon prior to his death in Life of Washington (1859) by Washington Irving, and his actual last words are stated to have been those reported by Tobias Lear below.
1790s
“I am not the least afraid to die”
“I was afraid I was going to die and then I was afraid I wasnt.”
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Source: Dance with the Devil
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 601.
As quoted in Massoud's Smile https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBR8V8YWEAI9OWu?format=jpg, by Hiromi Nagakura
“I am afraid that those comments go back to the late 80's.”
Personal communication (4 April 2006) quoted in "Well, someone has to do it" at Moment of Science (July 2006) http://momentofscience.blogspot.com/2006/07/well-someone-has-to-do-it.html
Context: I am afraid that those comments go back to the late 80's. At that time I was a skeptic — the argument based on Koch's postulates to try to distinguish between cause and association. … Today I would regard the success of the many antiviral agents which lower the virus titers (to be expected) and also resolve the failure of the immune system (only expected if the virus is the cause of the failure) as a reasonable proof of the causation argument
“To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.”
“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid.”
Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath
