Last Moment Quotes

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Until her last moment on earth she was unaware that her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman was a daily disaster. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

While everyone adjusted themselves and their packs, Donna sniffed curiously at Louie's nose. Her attitude suggested she might want to make friends with the giant dog; Lou couldn't resist the temptation. Once Donna lured Louie in, she slowly, cautiously, turned about to align her hooves with Louie's head. Perhaps she didn't like dogs. Perhaps she didn't want a rival for Monty's attentions. Perhaps she was merely an impish tarkus much like the Dane himself. Cody watched as the Dane failed to grasp the gravity of his predicament. At the last moment, Cody smacked Louie's hind end, scuttling the devious donkey's murderous trap. ~ Map Whitman

You wish they understood, as you do, that there is no escape and never was, that from the moment two cells combined to become one they were doomed. You wish they understood that there is joy in this fact, greater joy and love in just this one last moment than they experienced in the entirety of their lives. Because even in this last moment there is still Everything, whole galaxies and eons, the sum total of every experience across time, shrunk to the head of a pin, theirs for the asking, right here, right now. And so anything, anything, anything is possible. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

The popularity of disaster movies expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious. ~ David Mamet

[ ... ] death follows us around for a reason. It's because death is our best adviser. There is nothing more powerful than a person who is prepared to live right now, in this instant, fully accepting that this may be their last moment on earth. ~ A.C. Ping

I search for love frantically... and quitting at the last moment by making excuse for myself that I've tried ~ Acha Salim

The grand solid merit of jury trial is that the jurors ... are selected at the last moment from the multitude of citizens. They cannot be known beforehand, and they melt back into the multitiude after each trial. ~ John Henry Wigmore

In the last moment of his life, he turned his fading "flame of life" into a huge fire that enveloped the world. I've never laughed more than on that day...!! I've never cried more than on that day... I've never drank more either..!! He was our captain... and he was a magnificent man...!!! ~ Rayleigh

It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home
only the millions of last moments ... nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh? ~ Aldous Huxley

This book was not written because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death - because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered. Christ suffered pain, and since then pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment to lead him astray, and Temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and at that instant death was vanquished forever. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Moments left, Teddy thought. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. ~ Kate Atkinson

The source of love, as I learned later, is a curiosity which, combined with the inclination which nature is obliged to give us in order to preserve itself. […] Hence women make no mistake in taking such pains over their person and their clothing, for it is only by these that they can arouse a curiosity to read them in those whom nature at their birth declared worthy of something better than blindness. […] As time goes on a man who has loved many women, all of them beautiful, reaches the point of feeling curious about ugly women if they are new to him. He sees a painted woman. The paint is obvious to him, but it does not put him off. His passion, which has become a vice, is ready with the fraudulent title page. 'It is quite possible,' he tells himself, 'that the book is not as bad as all that; indeed, it may have no need of this absurd artifice.' He decides to scan it, he tries to turn over the pages - but no! the living book objects; it insists on being read properly, and the 'egnomaniac' becomes a victim of coquetry, the monstrous persecutor of all men who ply the trade of love.

You, Sir, who are a man of intelligence and have read these least twenty lines, which Apollo drew from my pen, permit me to tell you that if they fail to disillusion you, you are lost - that is, you will be the victim of the fair sex to the last moment of your life. If that prospect pleases you, I congratulate you ~ Giacomo Casanova

I don't know why Alzheimer's was allowed to steal so much of my father before releasing him into the arms of death. But I know that at his last moment, when he opened his eyes, eyes that had not opened for many, many days, and looked at my mother, he showed us that neither disease nor death can conquer love. ~ Patti Davis

I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction. When I want things done, which is always at the last moment, and I am met with such an answer: "It's too late. I hardly think it can be done;" I simply say:

"Nonsense! If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it? ~ Nellie Bly

The smell of peaches and cheese eddied about the car, filling his nose with pleasure. All rarities, for which he had squandered two weeks' salary-borrowed in advance from Mr. Sloat. And, in addition, under the car seat where it could not roll and break, a bottle of Chablis wine knocked back and forth: the greatest rarity of all. He had been keeping it in a safety deposit box at the Bank of America, hanging onto it and not selling it no matter how much they offered, in case at some long, late, last moment a girl appeared. That had not happened, not until now. ~ Philip K. Dick

Live each moment like it's the last moment in your life. ~ Jim MacLaren

...Spike may be the most "hybridized" character in terms of gender, within the show he is presented until the last moment as a failure. ~ Lorna Jowett

It was clear that Chloe, even down to the last moment, was working something out. Her eyes were closed, her face arranged in a look of concentration as she sifted through her thoughts. Just as clear was the moment she figured it all out. Lifting her head, her eyes moved up the aisle to me, and it was as if time stopped and everything else fell away. I could feel myself smile, then see it reflected in the way her entire face seemed to light up, and I did the only thing I could think. I whispered the words, Come here. ~ Christina Lauren

Most people don't die until the last moment; others start twenty years in advance, sometimes more. Those are the unfortunates. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Them till the very last moment, and then what did I do but protect the family from ~ Philippa Gregory

I was abruptly, entirely sick of it - of secrets and lies and almost-truths, things I half knew and half-suspected, patched-together stories that were never told in order from beginning to end. It seemed to be an unspoken agreement in the world that young girls without money or means were simply too insignificant to be told everything. Even my own father had waited until the very last moment to tell me his whole truth. ~ Alix E. Harrow

I didn't know exactly what to say. "Rush" is a word that pretty much covered every initial sexual encounter I had ever had in my life. and the fact that these two young people felt it necessary to deliberate over sex made me feel a little sad. I have known women who withdrew from me at the last moment and women who regretted their passion the next morning, but a precoital committee meeting had never been a part of my experience. ~ Siri Hustvedt

I try to do everything as soon as possible, and not at the last moment. This ensures that, when I am overburdened with work, I will not face the added pressure of knowing that something is still to be done. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

The Elizabethan Failure may engage in battle, but the blow that fells him will most likely be an accidental one. And the cup of water so gallantly offered will, at the last moment, slip from his weak grasp, thus rendering two people thirsty instead of one. ~ Naomi Neale

We must make some effort, but we must forget ourselves in the effort we make ... So it is necessary for us to encourage ourselves and to make an effort up to the last moment, when all effort disappears. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the crime itself. Murder by legal process is immeasurably more dreadful than murder by a brigand. A man who is murdered by brigands is killed at night in a forest or somewhere else, and up to the last moment he still hopes that he will be saved. There have been instances when a man whose throat had already been cut, was still hoping, or running away or begging for his life to be spared. But here all this last hope, which makes it ten times easier to die, is taken away FOR CERTAIN; here you have been sentenced to death, and the whole terrible agony lies in the fact that you will most certainly not escape, and there is no agony greater than that. Take a soldier and put him in front of a cannon in battle and fire at him and he will still hope, but read the same soldier his death sentence FOR CERTAIN, and he will go mad or burst out crying. Who says that human nature is capable of bearing this without madness? Why this cruel, hideous, unnecessary, and useless mockery? Possibly there are men who have sentences of death read out to them and have been given time to go through this torture, and have then been told, You can go now, you've been reprieved. Such men could perhaps tell us. It was of agony like this and of such horror that Christ spoke. No, you can't treat a mean like that. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yet, I didn't understand that she was intentionally disguising her feelings with sarcasm; that was usually the last resort of people who are timid and chaste of heart, whose souls have been coarsely and impudently invaded; and who, until the last moment, refuse to yield out of pride and are afraid to express their own feelings to you. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To the last moment of his breath, On hope the wretch relies; And even the pang preceding death Bids expectation rise. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, "I shall win!"
the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men than it has ever saved. ~ Honore De Balzac

Then, at the last moment, I am forced to admit to myself that I was right after all,
and that it was really impossible to go down into the burrow without exposing the
thing I love best, for a little while at least, to all my enemies, on the ground, in the
trees, in the air. ~ Franz Kafka

Change is part of the world.
Until the last moment,
Anything is possible. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern, put aside all mention of time and distance and, when the whole thing is done, proclaim, or let someone else proclaim, that you have finally, at the last moment, solved the space-time problem. Or you can declare at the very start that it is impossible to write a novel nowadays, but then, behind your own back so to speak, give birth to a whopper, a novel to end all novels. I have also been told that it makes a good impression, an impression of modesty so to speak, if you begin by saying that a novel can't have a hero anymore because there are no more individualists, because individuality is a thing of the past, because man- each men and all men together- is alone in his loneliness and no one is entitled to individual loneliness, and all men lumped together make up a "lonely mass" without names and without heroes. (...) I shall begin far away from me, for no one ought to tell the story of his life who hasn't the patience to say a word or two at least half of his grandparents before plunging into his own existence. And so to you personally, dear reader, who are no doubt leading a muddled life outside this institution, to you my friends and weekly visitors, I introduce Oskar's maternal grandmother ~ Gunter Grass

I was writing a lot of true love songs-true love almost gone wrong but saved at the last moment ... Many of the best songs get written in a state of abject misery. I prefer to write fewer songs and have less cataclysmic events in my life ... Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good. ~ Jorma Kaukonen

Some people think very cleverly, 'Let me
live my whole life the way I want to live.
In the last few moments, I will remember
god and chant His name and enter heaven
somehow.' Please be very clear, only that
which you thought of in your whole life,
will come up when you leave the body.
Don't think that at that last moment you
can play the game! No!
- HDH Bhagavan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivoham, in the book "Living Enlightenment ~ Paramahamsa Nithyananda

I especially love driving down a hill directly at a tree and swerving to one side at the last moment. That's my way to relax. ~ Boris Yeltsin

With my sword and with my life, I vow to keep you safe Penellaphe. From this moment until the last moment, I am yours ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I thought about suicide all the time, but it seemed toomuch effort, swallowing all those pills or jumping off things. If I'd lived out in the country I would have found a quiet stretch of railway track, and lain on it, fallen asleep, so that I would never have known when my last moment came. In London, the minimum tube fare had gone up so much that even to get near the line cost a fortune. Suicide seemed an extravagance I couldn't afford. People never leave you alone, either; I knew that if I'd tried to lie down on the line, any number of commuters would have pulled me off again, so that I didn't delay their train.
There must have been murderers out there who wanted to kill, with no way of finding those who wanted to be dead. If there had been some way of contacting them, a date-with-death line, I would have called them to set up a meeting. The current ways of death seemed too haphazard; it was all left up to chance. Had Chance come up, tapped me on the shoulder, said "Oi, you - long black tunnel, white light, off you go," I wouldn't have complained.
It was like having frostbite all over - feeling numb and in pain at the same time. ~ Helena Dela

I was breaking down, wanting to fade away and cry, yet I feared ever being invisible again. My head lowered to conceal my humiliation behind a curtain of hair where I trembled as if sobbing.
"Hey, Gwen, it's okay. It's okay. Calm down."
I yearned to feel Daniel's soft touch meet my temple and then trace along my ear, brushing back the hairs from my face. What I wanted was the comfort his caress always afforded me. He moved as if he would grant my wish, realizing at the last moment that neither of us possessed the power to touch the other.
"Your hair, Gwen."
I refused to do what he wanted. I didn't care for him to see the shame plainly visible in my features. But the next thing I knew, his blue eyes were staring up at me from the ground, a glare reflecting off his glasses. The guy had dropped his books to fall over for a clear view of my face. His desperation made me laugh.
"It's going to be okay, Gwen, I promise."
- from "Phantom's Veil ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

It wasn't gloom at all, really. There were lights and colors. If it hadn't been for the feel of the water gliding by against his skin he might have imagined himself up in the sky, with meteors and comets blazing past. But these were sea-things, shining in the dark, the luminous life that blazes beneath the southern sea.

First he'd see a tiny twinkling speck, like a star, and it might have been next to his face or a mile away, in that immense, featureless void, with its faint hint of green. It would grow larger. It would turn into a radiant sun of purple or crimson or orange and come rushing at him, and swerve aside at the last moment. There were sinuous ribbons of fire that coiled into bright patterns, and there were schools of tiny fish that flashed by like sparks. Down below, in the deeper abyss, the colors were paler, and once an enormous shape blundered past down there, like the sea-bottom itself moving heavily. Pete watched awhile and then swam up.

("Before I Wake...") ~ Henry Kuttner

I prefer preparedness to a last-moment scramble, thank you." We ~ William Ritter

When the last moment arrives, praise and blame will be the same to you, to me, and to others. We are here to work, and will have to leave all when the call comes. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Moments left, thought Teddy. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. Life was as fragile as a bird;s heartbeat, fleeting as the bluebells in the wood. It didn't matter, he realized, he didn't mind, he was going where millions had gone before and where millions would follow after. He shared his fate with the many. And now. This moment. This moment was infinite. He was part of the infinite. The tree and the rock and the water. The rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Now. ~ Kate Atkinson

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal, while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before ~ Herodotus

It made it easier that they both believed in the simplest kind of afterlife - that my father could say to her, even in those last days, joking but without irony, 'You're going to get tired of hearing from me. I'll be asking you for this that and the other thing twenty-four hours a day. JESUS, you'll be saying, here comes another prayer from Dennis.' And my mother would reply, her voice hoarse with pain, 'Jesus might advise you to take in a movie once in a while. Give your poor wife a rest. She's in heaven, after all.'
It was a joke, but they believed it, and they believed, too, I think, that their love, their loyalty to one another, was no longer a matter of chance or happenstance, but a condition of their existence no more voluntary or escapable than the pace of their blood, the influx of perception...There was, in their anticipation of what was to come, a queer self-satisfaction. It was clear now that they would love each other until the last moment of her life - hadn't that been the goal from the beginning? They would love each other even beyond the days they had lived together; was there any greater triumph? ~ Alice McDermott

This act is as horrible as killing a cancer cell. It must be done for the sake of the future of the whole. So be it: be prepared for the selection process which is now beginning. We, the elders, have been patiently waiting until the very last moment before the quantum transformation, to take action to cut out this corrupted and corrupting element in the body of humanity. It is like watching a cancer grow; something must be done before the whole body is destroyed ... The destructive one fourth must be eliminated from the social body. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

What did one see if one looked in any depth into the world of this writer's fiction? Elegant self-control concealing from the world's eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously marred and worsted, which nevertheless is able to fan its smouldering concupiscence to a pallid impotence, which from the glowing depths of the spirit draws strength to cast down a whole proud people at the foot of the Cross and set its own foot upon them as well; gracious poise and composure in the empty austere service of form; the false, dangerous life of the born deceiver, his ambition and his art which lead so soon to exhaustion
~ Thomas Mann

Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved him well - too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes, would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it - I would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup. ~ Charlotte Bronte

There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work or enjoy one's life; but what can never be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Nature knows nothing about right and wrong, good and evil, pleasure and pain; she simply acts. She creates a beautiful woman, and places a cancer on her cheek. She may create an idealist, and kill him with a germ. She creates a fine mind, and then burdens it with a deformed body. And she will create a fine body, apparently for no use whatever. She may destroy the most wonderful life when its work has just commenced. She may scatter tubercular germs broadcast throughout the world. She seemingly works with no method, plan or purpose. She knows no mercy nor goodness. Nothing is so cruel and abandoned as Nature. To call her tender or charitable is a travesty upon words and a stultification of intellect. No one can suggest these obvious facts without being told that he is not competent to judge Nature and the God behind Nature. If we must not judge God as evil, then we cannot judge God as good. In all the other affairs of life, man never hesitates to classify and judge, but when it comes to passing on life, and the responsibility of life, he is told that it must be good, although the opinion beggars reason and intelligence and is a denial of both. Emotionally, I shall no doubt act as others do to the last moment of my existence. With my last breath I shall probably try to draw another, but, intellectually, I am satisfied that life is a serious burden, which no thinking, humane person would wantonly inflict on some one else. ~ Clarence Darrow

For action, whatever its immediate purpose, also implies relief at doing something, anything, and the joy of exertion. This is the optimism that is inherent in, and proper and indispensable to action, for without it nothing would ever be undertaken. It in no way suppresses the critical sense or clouds the judgment. On the contrary this optimism sharpens the wits, it creates a certain perspective and, at the last moment, lets in a ray of perpendicular light which illuminates all one's previous calculations, cuts and shuffles them and deals you the card of success, the winning number. ~ Blaise Cendrars

I was standing in a line, balanced between reality and the ever-after. I could go either way. I wasn't his yet. "One day a week," I said, knees wobbling.
"I give you Newt's mark, you give me my name," Al said, then wiggled his fingers as if he needed me to take them to finish the deal.
I reached for it, and at the last moment, Al's glove melted away, and I found myself gripping his hand. ~ Kim Harrison

INT. NEWT'S HOUSE - NIGHT
NEWT opens the front door cautiously. Inside, a baby Niffler is swinging from the brass cord of a table lamp, causing the light to flicker on and off. The baby Niffler succeeds in stealing the brass cord before spotting NEWT. It scampers away, knocking all manner of objects to the floor.
NEWT spots a second baby Niffler sitting on a set of weighing scales, pinned down by gold-colored weights it is clearly attempting to steal.
As the first baby makes it to the dining table, NEWT lightly drops a saucepan on top of it, which continues moving across the table. NEWT tosses an apple into the opposite weighing scale, sending the baby Niffler flying into the air. NEWT catches both baby Nifflers as they fall, then tucks them into his pockets.
Satisfied, NEWT heads toward the door to his basement but turns at the last moment to see a third escaped baby Niffler climbing onto a bottle of champagne on the counter. With a sense of inevitability, the champagne bottle pops and the baby Niffler zooms toward NEWT on top of the cork, soaring past him and down the stairs to the basement. ~ J.K. Rowling

I think that when you've only lived 17 years, you don't have, you haven't had a full canon of experiences, so every moment that you have here feels like the last moment in the world, because you've only had a handful of whatever those moments are. ~ Eric Mabius

We desire some pleasure, and the material means of obtaining it are lacking. "It is a mistake," Labruyère tells us, "to be in love without an ample fortune." There is nothing for it but to attempt a gradual elimination of our desire for that pleasure. [...] But the pleasure can never be realised. If we succeed in overcoming the force of circumstances, nature at once shifts the battle-ground, placing it within ourselves, and effects a gradual change in our heart until it desires something other than what it is going to obtain. And if this transposition has been so rapid that our heart has not had time to change, nature does not, on that account, despair of conquering us, in a manner more gradual, it is true, more subtle, but no less efficacious. It is then, at the last moment, that the possession of our happiness is wrested from us, or rather it is that very possession which nature, with diabolical cleverness, uses to destroy our happiness. After failure in every quarter of the domain of life and action, it is a final incapacity, the mental incapacity for happiness, that nature creates in us. The phenomenon, of happiness either fails to appear, or at once gives way to the bitterest of reactions. ~ Marcel Proust

You didn't want to die. Most mortals don't, even if they find themselves in as desolate and soul-destroying a spot as you. Almost all of those who take their own lives wish at the last moment that they hadn't. They see at the end how much they've given up, how precious life is, even when it's treated them like dirt and crushed their dreams. Many think they've passed beyond hope, but they never really have, not until they pass beyond life itself. Alas, that knowledge comes too late for most would-be-suicides and they die with regret. Very few are offered the chance that you have been handed. ~ Darren Shan

She walked Toby to Victoria Station and left him at the barrier. On her way into the underground she thought he'd followed her, but there was nobody to be seen behind her on the escalator that sailed downwards with a faint inconsolable squeal. She sat on a bench on the empty platform, the breaths of oncoming trains stirring the hairs on the back of her neck. She leafed through Graham's notebook, but couldn't concentrate; she found she had to keep glancing along the platform towards the tunnel. Some fault in the mechanism made the train doors reopen after she boarded, as if someone had leapt on at the last moment. The galloping rush of the wheels made her think of a hunt in the dark. ~ Ramsey Campbell

Since he'd killed Newt, he hadn't thought once about what he had set out to do. Free of WICKED, finally, and here he was voluntarily going back.
He didn't care anymore. Whatever happened, happened. He knew that for the rest of his life he'd be haunted by what he'd seen. Chuck gasping for air while he bled to death, and now Newt screaming at him with raw, terrifying madness. And that last moment of sanity, eyes begging for mercy.
Thomas closed his own, and the images were still there. It took a long time for him to fall asleep. ~ James Dashner

I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don't know how it is, but I never do know whether I've packed my tooth-brush.
My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I'm travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven't packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like
mercury then gathered up only at the last moment. ~ Jeanette Winterson

In the days of the Roman Colosseum, captured soldiers were regularly thrown to the lions. But one soldier earned a reputation for bravery and managed to save his life by a bold act. When a lion sprang toward him with lunch on its mind, the man whispered something in the lion's ear just at the last moment. The lion cowered, turned a sickly green, and then slunk back into its cage. This happened again and again, with even the empire's fiercest lions turning tail once they had heard what the man whispered. The emperor, curious to understand the man's power over these beasts, promised him his life in exchange for the secret of how he caused the lions to leave him alone. "It's simple," the soldier told the emperor. "When a lion is about to attack, I just whisper, 'After you've eaten, they're going to ask you to make a short speech.' Works every time.
~ Arthur H. Bell

Oh, and one thing. Please, please don't depend on me too much. I mean that. I'm not going to be of much help. If your plots come to a head - if things go wrong at the last moment and you're in danger or distress - don't think of me. I will fail you. That I promise from my heart with absolute sincerity. - Lightsong ~ Brandon Sanderson

suddenly understood perfectly why Abraham had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him to do so. It was not obedience. It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son. Abraham was testing God. By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right - in Abraham's eyes and the hearts of his offspring - to become the God of Abraham. Sol ~ Dan Simmons

When I think about, say, 1995, or whever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago ... Time passed in fairly large units, or at least not in milliseconds and constant updates. A few hours wasn't such a long time to go between moments of contact with your work, your people or your trivia. ~ Rebecca Solnit

It's always very pure, that last moment before an ugly, unsettling truth hits someone. The most stark of before-and-afters. ~ Sarah Dessen

What you absolutely must not do is turn around and walk out. Otherwise, you will miss the party, and that would be a pity, because - please believe me - we did not come all this great distance, and make all this great effort, only to miss the party at the last moment. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The end is what people talk about. How they died.
Why does the end always have to be what people talk about? Think about?
Because it's the last thing we knew of you. And it breaks our hearts because we can picture it. We don't want to, and we know we might get it wrong, but we do. We can't stop. Those last moments keep coming to our minds, awake, asleep.
At the end, everyone is alone.
You were alone.
But other times you were not.
You clomped around onstage, your face red with embarrassment, your knees knobby in your cargo shorts, and you looked back at your wife and kids who laughed and cheered.
You rolled down a hill. You had been crying but now you smiled. There was grass on the back of your shirt and in your hair and your eyes were bright. I put my arms around you.
Your last moment was the worst moment, but you had other moments.
And people were with you for some of them.
I was with you for some of them.
There were times when we were all, all around you. ~ Ally Condie

I'm not too good with packing. I always have every intention of doing it the week before and then leave it until the last moment - but at least I do it myself, I don't leave it to the missus. ~ Andrew Flintoff

Was he being devoured by one of those secret rages, all the more terrible because contained, and which only burst forth, with irresistible force, at the last moment? ~ Jules Verne

I believe that none of us can conceive the full import of what Christ did for us in Gethsemane, but I am grateful every day of my life for His atoning sacrifice in our behalf. At the last moment, He could have turned back. But He did not. He passed beneath all things that He might save all things. In doing so, He gave us life beyond this mortal existence. He reclaimed us from the Fall of Adam. To the depths of my very soul, I am grateful to Him. He taught us how to live. He taught us how to die. He secured our salvation. ~ Thomas S. Monson

I understood that now. I wished I could have understood it then. I wished I could have said something in that last moment, before he let go.
He'd told me it was okay. His last words to me.
Why couldn't they have been my last words to him? ~ Kelley Armstrong

I am not going to Heaven because I have preached to great crowds or read the Bible many times. I'm going to Heaven just like the thief on the cross who said in that last moment: 'Lord, remember me.' ~ Billy Graham

A sudden, uncontrollable fury rose in him, and he cast around for something to smash. He snatched the whiskey bottle from the table and was about to launch it at the wall, but changed his mind at the last moment.

Lifelong training in self-control, he thought, opening the bottle and putting it to his mouth. ~ Jo Nesbø

Fingers encircle a blackberry and pluck it from its stem. I roll it gently between my thumb and forefinger. Suddenly, I turn to him and toss it in his direction. "And may the odds - " I say. I throw it high so he has plenty of time to decide whether to knock it aside or accept it. Gale's eyes train on me, not the berry, but at the last moment, he opens his mouth and catches it. He chews, swallows, and there's a long pause before he says " - be ever in your favor. ~ Suzanne Collins

the taste for Victorian-era sci-fi futures is more than anything else a nostalgia for the last moment, before the carnage of World War I, when everyone could safely feel a redemptive future was possible. ~ David Graeber

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we we ~ Charles Darwin

And I was so tempted that night in Cippanhamm's royal church. There is such joy in chaos. Stow all the world's evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will be opened because there is pure joy in destruction. At one moment, when Ragnar was bellowing with laughter and slapping my shoulder so hard that it hurt, I felt the words form on my tongue. That is Alfred, I would have said, pointing at him, and all my world would have changed and there would have been no more England. Yet, at the last moment, when the first word was on my tongue, I choked it back. Brida was watching me, her shrewd eyes calm, and I caught her gaze and I thought of Iseult. In a year or two, I thought, Iseult would look like Brida. They ~ Bernard Cornwell

It was nearly winter. I had just seen a friend die, and was again beginning to take pleasure in my own existence. This friend, who thought of himself as the "first man to experience pain", had nevertheless tried up to the last moment to wish death away. I was thankful for all things and decreed: Enjoy yourself, take advantage of your days of good health. ~ Peter Handke

Oh, the vanity of plans! Our lives proceed regardless. All the things we work out in such minute detail slip away from us at the last moment, or change. ~ Georges Rodenbach

If I knew you were going to die, I'd make your last moment on earth last forever. I'd take you to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and make sure that you have the most romantic dinner your life. I'd fill your room with hundreds of wild sunflowers, so that even in death, you may carry the scent of something beautiful. If you were to die I'd make sure to drag you through an amusement park and ride all the crazy rides with you, eat all that ice cream with you, win all those stuffed animals for you.
If you were to die, I'd beat up every single person in the world who has ever hurt you. I'd protect you with my life. I'll protect you with everything I own, everything I have, everything I can give. If I knew you were going to die, I'd cut out my own heart for you. I'd cut it out so you could have it. So that you could live. Because I sure as hell can't live without you. ~ Anonymous

My sister Naomi and I always wanted to go to Tahiti. We planned a fantastic holiday to visit several islands, but at the last moment, Naomi cancelled. It was the first time I'd holidayed alone, and it was absolutely the best. ~ Marie Helvin

Better use medicines at the outset than at the last moment. ~ Publilius Syrus

He said that those five minutes seemed to him an infinite length of time, an immense richness; it seemed to him that during those five minutes he would live so many lives that there was no point in thinking about the last moment yet, so he made various allocations: he calculated the time he needed to say goodbye to his companions, and allotted some two minutes to it, then he allotted another two minutes to think about himself for the last time, and then look around him for the last time. He ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I've asked around and haven't found a B.A. yet who doesn't still have nightmares (and I don't speak figuratively) about not being able to find the room where the exam is to be given or about realizing at the last moment that he has not once attended the course. ~ Elizabeth Savage

I declare I don't know which of her three lovers she may not summon at the very last moment to act the part of bridegroom. I'm determined to be surprised at nothing; and will give her away with a good grace to whoever comes. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old ... I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all that racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

You go first.
Go through the door before me.
Enter the limousine while I wait by your side.
Enter the shops while I stand behind, guarding your back.
Sit at the table before me.
Please, sample the tastiest morsels while I sit quietly.
My desire is that you go first, in every occasion of earthly life.
Only once will I go before you,
And that will be at my last moment.
For when death claims us, you must go last.
Because I can't live one second without you. ~ Jean Sasson

A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur. ~ Mark Twain

However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance - so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature. ~ Graham Greene

The pony preserved his character for independence and principle down to the last moment of his life; which was an unusually long one, and caused him to be looked upon, indeed, as the very Old Parr of ponies. He often went to and fro with the little phaeton between Mr. Garland's and his son's, and, as the old people and the young were frequently together, had a stable of his own at the new establishment, into which he would walk of himself with surprising dignity. He condescended to play with the children, as they grew old enough to cultivate his friendship, and would run up and down the little paddock with them like a dog; but though he relaxed so far, and allowed them such freedoms as caresses, or even to look at his shoes or hang on by his tail, he never permitted anyone among them to mount his back or drive him; thus showing that even their familiarity must have its limits, and that there were points between them far too serious for trifling.
He was not unsusceptible of warm attachments in his later life, for when the good Bachelor came to live with Mr. Garland upon the clergyman's decease, he conceived a great friendship for him, and amiably submitted to be driven by his hands without the least resistance. He did no work for two or three years before he died, but lived on clover; and his last act (like a choleric old gentleman) was to kick his doctor. ~ Charles Dickens

Kami launched herself at Holly, trying to hug her and hit her on the arm and let out a triumphant war cry all at once. She almost punched Holly in the chest but stopped herself at the last moment. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

Just because they were homey didn't mean they were ordinary. Most versions of this recipe relied on butterscotch chips, waxy little chunks of hydrogenated oil and synthetic butterscotch flavor. Bev's used malted milk powder and a truckload of butter, relying on the interaction between the oven's heat and the milk powder to give that toasty, caramelized flavor that suggested rather than screamed butterscotch. Melody's version also subbed brown sugar for some of the white with a healthy shot of molasses to add a deep, earthy note. At the last moment, she added some chopped hazelnuts from a little glass jar in the cabinet for extra texture and flavor.
Thoughts of Justin faded as she mixed and spread the batter, then slid the shallow jelly roll pan into the oven where it would bake into a sheet of butterscotchy, nutty deliciousness. When it came out dozens of minutes later, fragrant and golden brown, she inhaled the aroma, basking in her sense of accomplishment at a perfect result. There was nothing like taking basic ingredients and transforming them into something both beautiful and tasty. ~ Carla Laureano

We hold one another close in this, our last moment and kiss. Your goodbye is in our lips, good luck wishes shine in those robin's egg blue eyes. ~ J.D. Holiday

Prep things in advance so that you don't have to cook everything at the last moment. ~ Wolfgang Puck

At the very last moment, just before its lips claimed hers, its grip on her face relaxed slightly and she did the only thing she could think of: She head-butted it. Snapped her head back, then forward again, and bashed it square in the face as hard as she could. So hard, in fact, that it made her woozy and gave her an instant migraine, making her wonder how Jean-Claude Van Damme always managed to coolly continue fighting after such a stunt. Obviously, movies lied. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Nature is not affected by finance. If someone offered you ten thousand dollars to let them touch your eyeball without blinking, you would never collect the money. At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own. ~ Dick Gregory

Jack,do me a favor?" I said.
"Anything,Becks."
"Don't let go of my hand. And if the Tunnels come for me,don't let go until the last moment."
"If the Tunnels come for you,I'll hold on, and they won't be able to take you."
I smiled at the sentiment, even though I knew that no one would be able to hold on. ~ Brodi Ashton

...there was about five minutes of time left for him to live.

"...he seemed to be living, in these minutes, so many lives that there was no need as yet to think of that last moment, so that he made several arrangements, dividing up the time into portions--one for saying farewell to his companions, two minutes for that; then a couple more for thinking over his own life and career and all about himself; and another minute for a last look around. He remembered having divided his time like this quite well. While saying good- bye to his friends he recollected asking one of them some very usual everyday question, and being much interested in the answer. Then having bade farewell, he embarked upon those two minutes which he had allotted to looking into himself... He wished to put it to himself as quickly and clearly as possible, that here was he, a living, thinking man, and that in three minutes he would be nobody; or if somebody or something, then what and where? He thought he would decide this question once for all in these last three minutes. A little way off there stood a church, and its gilded spire glittered in the sun. He remembered staring stubbornly at this spire, and at the rays of light sparkling from it. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky