
“It is the lot of man but once to die.”
Book V, no. 7.
Emblems (1635)
Feeble, Act III, scene ii.
Henry IV, Part 2 (1597–8)
“It is the lot of man but once to die.”
Book V, no. 7.
Emblems (1635)
Waldersee in November, 1877, as quoted by Gordon Alexander Craig, "Germany, 1866-1945" (Oxford University Press, 1978) p.133
“What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!”
Act IV, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
Context: How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!
“I can die but once; and it is all one to me, now or another time.”
Speech at Point Pleasant, on his mission to warn the settlers that other Shawnee intended to attack them, just prior to his death (November 1777), as quoted in "Cornstalk, the Shawanee Chief" by Rev. William Henry Foote, in The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. 16, Issue 9, (September 1850) pp. 533-540 http://victorian.fortunecity.com/rothko/420/aniyuntikwalaski/cornstalk.html
Context: When I was a young man and went to war, I thought that might be the last time, and I would return no more. Now I am here among you; you may kill me if you please; I can die but once; and it is all one to me, now or another time.
“If we can remember the feeling of love we once had, we can die without ever going away.”
Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)
As quoted in The Underground Railroad (1987) by Charles L. Blockson
The Dublin Nation, Sept. 28, 1844, Vol. ii. p. 809, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“When he is forsaken,
Withered and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?”
Spring it is cheery; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century