Early review, cited in Frank Muir's Book of Comedy Sketches.
“Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear.”
Last words, to his niece, according to A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison (1865) by Paul Jennings, p. 20; his testimony on his death reads:
:: I was present when he died. That morning Sukey brought him his breakfast, as usual. He could not swallow. His niece, Mrs. Willis, said, "What is the matter, Uncle Jeames?" "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear." His head instantly dropped, and he ceased breathing as quietly as the snuff of a candle goes out.
Variant:
I always talk better lying down.
Last words, according to a listing of "Last Words of Famous Americans" in A Conspectus of American Biography (1906) edited by George Derby, p. 276; no prior publication of such an attribution has been located; in recent years, without any sources cited, the two divergent accounts of his last words have sometimes been combined into the form: "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear. I always talk better lying down."
1830s
“Casanova! My dear man, Casanova is not worthy to untie my bootstrings!”
A. I. Tobin and Elmer Gertz Frank Harris: A Study in Black and White (1931) p. 324.
“Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear.”
"Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer" (1721).
Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: Whenever in my dreams, I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle-tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.
"Dreaming of My Deceased Wife on the Night of the Twentieth Day of the First Month" (《江城子·乙卯正月二十日夜记梦》), in Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, trans. Yuanchong Xu (Beijing: New World Press, 1994), p. 202
"To Janet Merriman", quoted in Letters of Lewis Carroll to his Child-Friends (1933) p. 81
