| Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989. | | | |
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| | | NUMBER: | 367 |
| AUTHOR: | Horace (65–8 B.C.) |
| QUOTATION: | Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country.
(Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.) |
| ATTRIBUTION: | HORACE, Odes, book 3, ode 2, line 13.—The Works of Horace, trans. J. C. Elgood, p. 58 (1893).
There have been various translations of this sentence, including that in the Modern Library edition, The Complete Works of Horace, p. 217 (1936), “For country ’tis a sweet and seemly thing to die.” Ernest Hemingway, “Notes on the Next War,” Esquire, September 1935, p. 156, said, “They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying.” |
| SUBJECTS: | Death |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia | | |
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