Thomas Edison...Arguably America's foremost inventor, received only three months of scholling in his entire childhood. Plagued by life by lifelong and worsening hearing loss, Edison's gifts to the world were more sound, phonograph and talking movies, more light, the light bulb, and better communication, the telegraph.

Near death in 1931, his second wife, Mina, asked him if he was suffering. "NO", Edison replied.
"JUST WAITING." THen he looked out his bedroom window and uttered his last words.
"IT's VERY BEAUTIFUL OVER THERE."

Sigmund Freud....A recent refugee from the Nazis and in great pain from the jaw cancer that plauged him for the last 15 years of his life, the 83-year-old founder of psychoanalysis reminded his physician of his promise to provide sedation. He received several large doses of morphine and died peacefully the next day.

His last words, "You promised me that you would help me when I could no longer carry on. It is only torture now and it has no longer any sense."

Pablo Picasso....What would you expect from one of the world's most prodigious and egotistical talents but a command to be toasted on his demise in 1973 at the age of 91?

The brillianr Spanish artist, unflaggingly productive and endlessly provocative, was fond of paying people by check, knowing that his creditors usually preferred keeping his valuable autograph to cashing it.

His last words...."DRINK TO ME!"

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.....It's possible that after a lifetime in cloudy Germany, the 83-year-old poet and novelist just wanted someone to open a window and let in the sun.

More likely, his last words were metaphorical. In Goethe lyrical drama, Faust, the word "LIGHT" comes up again and agian as a spiritual metaphor. Goethe's light light went out in 1831, when he died in his favorite armchair.

John Keats....Lyrical to the last, the precocious British poet, the son of a livery stable keeper, succumed at 26 to tuberculosis, with his friend Joseph Severn at his side.
Keat's writing career lasted little more than five years, ending with his death in 1821, but his work has achieved immortality.

His last words, "Lift me up, for I am dying. I shall die easy. Don't be frightened. Thank God it has come."