When you’re busy dying, it can be hard to think of a pithy exit line. Actual last words:

• Pancho Villa: “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”
• Roman emperor Gaius Caligula: “I am still alive!”
• Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian: “I am about to — or I am going to — die: either expression is correct.”
• Henrik Ibsen, after his housekeeper told a guest he was feeling better: “On the contrary!”
• Karl Marx, to his housekeeper, who had just asked whether he had any last words: “Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”
• British surgeon Joseph Henry Green, after checking his own pulse: “Stopped.”
• Union general John Sedgwick, sizing up enemy sharpshooters: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist–“

On her way to the guillotine, Marie Antoinette stepped on the executioner’s toe. Her last words were “Pardonez-moi, monsieur.”