“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!”

— Joseph Addison , book Cato

Act IV, scene iv
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

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Joseph Addison 226

politician, writer and playwright 1672–1719

Related quotes

“What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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!

“Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“After death the sensation is either pleasant or there is none at all. But this should be thought on from our youth up, so that we may be indifferent to death, and without this thought no one can be in a tranquil state of mind. For it is certain that we must die, and, for aught we know, this very day. Therefore, since death threatens every hour, how can he who fears it have any steadfastness of soul?”
Post mortem quidem sensus aut optandus aut nullus est. Sed hoc meditatum ab adulescentia debet esse mortem ut neglegamus, sine qua meditatione tranquillo animo esse nemo potest. Moriendum enim certe est, et incertum an hoc ipso die. Mortem igitur omnibus horis impendentem timens qui poterit animo consistere?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

section 74 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0039%3Asection%3D74
Cato Maior de Senectute – On Old Age (44 BC)

“How many of our virtues originate in the fear of Death — & that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian Sensibility over the sorrows of our human Brethren and Sisteren, we are in fact, tho' perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own End — for who sincerely pities Sea-sickness, Toothache, or a fit of the Gout in a lusty Good-liver of 50?”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)
Letters

“To die for one’s country is such a worthy fate
That all compete for so beautiful a death.”

Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) French tragedian

Mourir pour le pays est un si digne sort,
Qu’on briguerait en foule une si belle mort.
Horace, act II, scene iii.
Horace (1639)

“Who would not at the present moment wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief glory of France.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

Qui ne voudrait pas rester persuadé que ces femmes sont vertueuses?Ne sont-elles pas la fleur du pays?Ne sont-elles pas toutes verdissantes, ravissantes, étourdissantes de beauté, de jeunesse, de vie et d'amour?Croire à leur vertu est une espèce de religion sociale; car elles sont l'ornement du monde et font la gloire de la France.
Part I, Meditation II: Marriage Statistics.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

“When love once pleas admission to our hearts,
(In spite of all the virtue we can boast),
The woman that deliberates is lost.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
Variant: "When love once pleads admission to our hearts..."

Act IV, scene i. The last line has often been misreported as "He who hesitates is lost", a sentiment inspired by it but not penned by Addison. See Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 3.