Valediction
A parting statement — the last words of a speech, letter, or life.
A valediction is a formal farewell. The term covers three related things that quotation collections tend to file together: the closing formula of a letter ('Yours faithfully'), the final movement of a departure speech, and the reported last words of a dying person.
Valedictions are heavily quoted because endings are structurally emphatic — the last thing said is the thing remembered. Speechwriters exploit this by placing the single most quotable line of an address in the valedictory position rather than the opening.
Reported last words are the least reliable subgenre in all of quotation study. They are typically recorded after the fact, by interested witnesses, and often improved in transmission; a large share of famous deathbed lines fail verification entirely.
Common mistake: treating a valedictory line as a summary of the speaker's whole position. Farewells are shaped by the emotion of parting, and often say less about the argument than the middle of the speech does.
“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”
Keep reading the glossary
A short text written in memory of a dead person — often inscribed on a tombstone.
A speech of praise for someone who has died, often the source of widely-quoted lines.
A rhetorical structure of three parallel clauses, phrases, or words — the most persuasive number in English.
Assigning a quote to the wrong person — the most common error in quotation.