Staff Picks: Books
Staff-recommended reading from the
KPL catalog.
Dying Words of Gandhi, Hitler, Hobbes, Booth
Every time I browse the enormous collection of reference books on the central branch second floor, I find a gem like this Dictionary of Last Words. Some that I found:
John Donne [click for books on or by Donne]: “I were miserable if I might not die…They Kingdom come, Thy Will be done.”
Thomas Jefferson: “Is it the Fourth?”
William James (American philosopher/psychologist): “It’s so good to get home!”
Henry James (writer): “So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!”
Beethoven: (when the wine he asked for came late) “Too bad! Too bad! It’s too late!”
Alexander Graham Bell: “So little done. So much to do.”
Jeremy Bentham (utilitarian): “I now feel that I am dying; our care must be to minimize pain. Do not let the servants come into the room, and keep away the youths; it will be distressing to them, and they can be of no service.”
John Wilkes Booth: “Tell my mother—I died—for my country…I thought I did for the best…Useless! Useless!”
Emily Dickinson: “I must go in, the fog is rising.”
Charles Darwin: “I am not the least afraid to die.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau: “See the sun, whose smiling face calls me; see that immeasurable light. There is a God! Yes, God Himself, who is opening His arms and inviting me to taste at last that eternal and unchanging joy that I had so long desired.”
Hitler: “Above all, I enjoin the government of the nation and the people to uphold the racial laws to the limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoner of all nations, interational Jewry…My wife and I choose to die in order to escape the shame of overthrow or capitulation. It is our wish for our bodies to be cremated immediately on the place where I have performed the greater part of my daily work during twelve years of service to my people.”
Thomas Hobbes: “I shall be glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at.”
Gandhi: “Oh, God.”
Book
Dictionary of Last Words
dictionary-of-last-words
http://www.catalog.kpl.gov/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/5?searchdata1=dictionary+of+last+words{TI}+AND+comte{AU}&library=BRANCHES&language=ANY&format=ANY&item_type=ANY&location=ANY&match_on=KEYWORD&item_1cat=ANY&item_2cat=ANY&sort_by=-PBYR