Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941)

“I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.”

Influential author, this is the final line in the suicide note left to her husband. She drowned by filling her coat pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse, her body was found three weeks later.

Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.”

Spoken jokingly shortly before his death, the impoverished poet and playwright died of meningitis in Paris.

Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011)

“Oh wow oh wow oh wow”

According to his sister, these were the Apple co-founder’s final words after taking one long last look at his family. Steve Jobs died at his Palo Alto home in California due to complications resulting from pancreatic cancer. He was 56.

Gandhi (1869 – 1948)

“Oh God”

The final words of the revolutionary and pacifist spoken after being shot three times in the chest by a Hindu nationalist. Mohandas Gandhi (also known as Mahatma meaning great soul) was with his grandnieces in the garden of Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti) in New Delhi India.

George S Patton (1885 – 1945)

“This is a hell of a way to die.”

Paralysed from the neck down after a car accident, these were the general’s last words before dying in his sleep. ‘Old blood and guts’ died from pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure at a hospital in Heidelberg Germany.