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An Open Invitation To Compose “Dying Sayings” in comments at http://soaringdragons.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/dying-sayings/

This is an invitation that I am posting into the comments of the “About” pages of 188 randomly selected blogs. How did I find you? From Tag Surfer under “Friendship.”

The inspiration for this request comes from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, Centenary Edition, Revised, 1981, Harper and Row, Publishers, New York. This book has 187 “Dying Sayings,” and I’m sure living WordPress bloggers and blog readers can write no less inspiring self-composed epitaphs than the historically famous.

Among the “Dying Sayings,” pp. 369-372, are the below fourteen entries plus my own:

Newton: “I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Richard I: “Youth, I forgive thee!” (Said to Bertrand du Gourdon, who shot him with an arrow at Challus. Then, to his attendants, he added): “Take off his chains, give him 100 shillings, and let him go.”

Augustus (to his friends): “Do you think I have played my part pretty well through the farce of life?”

Beecher (Henry Ward): “Now comes the mystery.”

Goethe: “Light, more light!”

Hannibal: “Let us now relieve the Romans of their fears by the death of a feeble old man.”

Jackson (“Stonewall“): “Let us pass over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”

More (Sir Thomas): “See me safe up [i.e. on ascending the scaffold]; for my coming down, let me shift for myself.”

Mozart: “You spoke of a refreshment, Emile; take my last notes, and let me hear once more my solace and delight.”

Poe (Edgar Allan): “Lord, help my soul!”

Roland (Madame; on her way to the guillotine): “O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!”

Saladin: “When I am buried, carry my winding-sheet on the point of a spear, and say these words: Behold the spoils which Saladin carries with him! Of all his victories, realms and riches, nothing remains to him but this.”

Webster (Daniel): “Life, life! Death, death! How curious it is!”

Wordsworth: “God bless you! Is that you, Dora?”

Soaringdragons: “I have been waiting for this moment since my youth, and it is with extreme anticipation that I wait now.”

Feel free to compose as many of your own “dying sayings” as you wish in comments. Please bear in mind that this blog is P.G. and contains 19,000 words, none of which are swear words. So, the rule is that if your response includes ‘swear words’ (my own private definition being the standard) I will either edit the response or delete it, my option.

I hope everyone contributes. Cheers!