“For those that fly may fight again,
Which he can never do that's slain.”
Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist
Canto III, line 243
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)
“For he who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is in battle slain
Can never rise and fight again.”
The Art of Poetry on a New Plan (1761), vol. ii. p. 147.
The saying "he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day" dates at least as far back as Menander (ca. 341–290 B.C.), Gnomai Monostichoi, aphorism #45: ἀνήρ ὁ ϕɛύγων καὶ ράλίν μαχήɛṯαί (a man who flees will fight again). The Attic Nights (book 17, ch. 21) of Aulus Gellius (ca. 125–180 A.D.) indicates it was already widespread in the second century: "...the orator Demosthenes sought safety in flight from the battlefield, and when he was bitterly taunted with his flight, he jestingly replied in the well-known verse: The man who runs away will fight again".
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May live to fight another day;
But he who is in battle slain
Can never rise and figh…" by Oliver Goldsmith?
Oliver Goldsmith134
Irish physician and writer 1728–1774Related quotes
“The man who runs may fight again.”
Menander (-342–-291 BC) Athenian playwright of New Comedy
Variant translation: The man who runs away will fight again.
Monosticha.
“He who flees will fight again.”
Qui fugiebat, rursus sibi proeliabitur.
Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian
De Fuga in Persecutione, 10
“I am sore wounded but not slain
I will lay me down and bleed a while
And then rise up to fight again”
John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century
George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general
Speech to the Third Army (1944)
Context: Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.
George Eliot book Scenes of Clerical Life
" Janet's Repentance http://classiq.net/george-eliot/janets-repentance/index.html" Ch. 6 <br class="br">Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)
Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician
Speech at the Labour Party conference (5 October 1960) in opposition to a motion endorsing unilateral nuclear disarmament.
José Hermano Saraiva (1919–2012) Historian, Jurist, Politician
"A Alma e a Gente - D. Maria II, A Rainha da Regeneração"
Original: (pt) Quem luta pela unidade para mim é grande. Quem se bate pela divisão para mim...
Original: (pt) abana a cabeça reprovadoramente
V. 407–409 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet
A Poet's Advice (1958)
Context: Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.