Lu You 陸游
1210 · Song China · At eighty-five, the last poem he wrote before he died
I have always known that once I am dead all things are empty. My only grief is not to have seen the land made one. On the day the king's armies take back the Central Plain in the north, do not forget, at the family sacrifice, to tell your father.
死去元知萬事空，但悲不見九州同。
王師北定中原日，家祭無忘告乃翁。"To Show My Sons," in the Complete Song Poems
In the same thread
Sima Qian 司馬遷
c. 91 BC · Han China · A letter explaining why, after his disgrace, he did not die but lived on to write his book
Everyone must die once. A death may be heavier than Mount Tai or lighter than a goose feather. The difference lies in what it is used for.
人固有一死，或重於泰山，或輕於鴻毛，用之所趨異也。"Letter in Reply to Ren An"
Wen Tianxiang 文天祥
1279 · Song China · Captured by the Yuan army and told to write a letter urging surrender, he answered with this poem
Since ancient times, who has lived and not died? Let me leave a loyal heart to shine in the pages of history.
人生自古誰無死，留取丹心照汗青。"Crossing the Lonely Sea," in the Complete Song Poems
Hadrian Publius Aelius Hadrianus
AD 138 · Roman Empire · Said to have been made just before his death
Little soul, little wanderer, little charmer, guest and companion of my body, where are you off to now, to places pale, stiff and bare, never again to make your usual jokes?
animula vagula blandula, hospes comesque corporis, quae nunc abibis in loca pallidula rigida nudula nec, ut soles, dabis iocos!Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 25
Vespasian Titus Flavius Vespasianus
AD 79 · Roman Empire · Rome made gods of its dead emperors. Suetonius writes that even in fear of death and in the face of danger he never stopped joking
At the very first attack of his illness he said, "Dear me, I think I am becoming a god."
prima quoque morbi accessione: "Vae," inquit, "puto, deus fio."Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Vespasian 23
Mark Twain
1894 · Missouri, USA · Connecticut
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Pudd'nhead Wilson, a chapter epigraph from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1 in 100 Billion · The social network of those who came before us