“My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied,”

—  Horatio Nelson

Letter from Agamemnon at sea (10 March 1795), in Nelson's letters to his wife and other documents, 1785-1831 edited by Navy Records Society, p. 199
1790s
Context: The lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows best whether to preserve it or no, and to His will do I resign myself. My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied, and, if anything happens to me recollect death is a debt we must all pay, and whether now or in a few years hence can be but of little consequence.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied," by Horatio Nelson?
Horatio Nelson photo
Horatio Nelson38
Royal Navy Admiral 1758–1805

Related quotes

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“They can keep their God, they can keep their Light. I want the world back. I want questions, not the answer. I want my own life back, and my own death!”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Field of Vision” p. 243 (originally published in Galaxy, October 1973)
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

Jim Starlin photo

“My name is Thanos, and my name means Death.”

Jim Starlin (1949) Comic creator

Thanos, in The Thanos Quest (1990), Book 1

Isocrates photo

“Be more careful in guarding against censure than against danger; for the wicked may well dread the end of life, but good men should dread ignominy during life. Strive by all means to live in security, but if ever it falls to your lot to face the dangers of battle, seek to preserve your life, but with honour and not with disgrace; for death is the sentence which fate has passed on all mankind, but to die nobly is the special honour with nature has reserved for the good.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 43.
To Demonicus

Aleister Crowley photo

“There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

III:74.
The Book of the Law (1904)

Marilyn Manson photo

“I've seen my own death in dreams like this and it's helped me appreciate life more. I've also seen my own life in dreams and it's helped me appreciate death more.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Our sky has lost another star,
The earth has claimed its own,
And into dread eternity
A glorious one is gone.
He who could give departed things
So much of light and breath,
He is himself now with the past —
Gone forth from life to death.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(29th September 1832) On the death of Sir Walter Scott
The London Literary Gazette, 1832

Gong Yoo photo

“When I become a character in a movie or drama … I can think about the character only and not the complicated matters of my own life. I feel ecstasy in those moments and it’s what keeps me going as an actor. It’s not about the money, it’s not about the honor.”

Gong Yoo (1979) South Korean actor

Source: "Gong Yoo on becoming South Korea’s leading man" in CNN https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/28/asia/gong-yoo-talk-asia/index.html (30 August 2017)

Oscar Wilde photo

“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Related topics