Caesar speaks the line to Calphurnia in Act 2, scene 2 of Julius Caesar, brushing off her dream and the night’s omens. It is in the play’s only early text, the 1623 First Folio ↗, at through-line numbers 1020–1021 — so the attribution and the wording both check out, which is unusual for a quote this famous.
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once” William Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Julius Caesar, act 2, scene 2 (First Folio, London, 1623) — Caesar to Calphurnia: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
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Provenance
The source text
Work
The Tragedie of Julius Cæsar
Passage
Act 2, scene 2 — Caesar answering Calphurnia (First Folio TLN 1020–1021)
Written
Probably 1599
First printed
First Folio, London, 1623 — no earlier quarto exists
CALPURNIA: When beggars die, there are no comets seen; / The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
CAESAR: Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once. / Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, / It seems to me most strange that men should fear, / Seeing that death, a necessary end, / Will come when it will come.
Julius Caesar, Act 2, scene 2
Modern-spelling text as given in the MIT Complete Works ↗. The 1623 Folio reads “Cowards dye many times before their deaths, / The valiant neuer taste of death but once”. Line numbering differs between modern editions, which is why the Folio’s through-line numbers are cited instead.
The 1623 First Folio prints the lines in old spelling — “Cowards dye many times before their deaths, / The valiant neuer taste of death but once” — at through-line numbers 1020–1021 in the Internet Shakespeare Editions old-spelling transcription ↗, edited by John D. Cox.
There is nothing earlier to check against: the ISE textual introduction ↗ states that “Julius Caesar appeared in only one early version, and all subsequent texts are based on it. This is the version in the First Folio, printed in 1623.”
The Folger Shakespeare Library ↗ lists the line among its famous quotes from the play, gives the speaker as Caesar in Act 2, scene 2, and notes that Shakespeare “may have written Julius Caesar as the first of his plays to be performed at the Globe, in 1599.”
Julius Caesar was first printed in the 1623 First Folio and never issued in quarto, so the text has been out of copyright for centuries; the Online Library of Liberty facsimile ↗ of the Folio sheets states plainly that “the text is in the public domain.” Modern annotated editions carry their own editorial copyright, but the words themselves do not.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The attribution is right. The wording usually isn’t.
This is one of the rare famous quotes where Shakespeare really is the author — so the errors have migrated from who to what. Three versions circulate that the Folio does not support.
✕
Wording“A coward dies a thousand times before his death” Not in the play
This is the form most often shared, and it is credited squarely to Shakespeare: Goodreads carries it with 496 likes ↗, sourced to “William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar”, and even splices it onto Caesar’s later lines. No “thousand” and no “his death” appear in the Folio text, which reads “many times before their deaths”.
✕
AuthorErnest Hemingway Quoting, not coining
“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one” is widely filed under Hemingway — Goodreads credits it to him from A Farewell to Arms ↗. In the novel it is Frederic Henry reciting the tag as a question in chapter XXI ↗; when Catherine asks who said it, he answers “I don’t know.” Hemingway’s own line is Catherine’s rebuttal about the brave dying two thousand deaths.
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SpeakerShakespeare, in his own voice It is Caesar’s bravado
The sentiment is routinely quoted as Shakespeare’s advice. In the play it is given to Caesar in Act 2, scene 2 ↗ to dismiss his wife’s warning — and he is assassinated in the following act. The dramatic point is that the speaker is wrong about his own safety, not that the maxim is endorsed.
✓The genuine line, in the play’s only early printing, is “Cowards dye many times before their deaths, / The valiant neuer taste of death but once” — First Folio, 1623, TLN 1020–1021 ↗.
Context
Why it mattered
Caesar is being talked out of going to the Senate. Calphurnia has dreamed of his death, the augurers have found no heart in the sacrificed beast, and she has just told him that the heavens do not blaze for beggars. His reply is the most quotable thing he says in the play — and, structurally, the setup for the knives. Shakespeare gives his most confident line about death to the man who has one scene left to live.
That double edge is why the passage travelled beyond the theatre. When the political prisoner Sonny Venkatrathnam smuggled a Complete Works onto Robben Island as his one permitted book and passed it around the cells, inmates initialled their favourite passages. Nelson Mandela chose this one: the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust ↗ records that he marked it “M, December 16th 1977”.
“Seeing that death, a necessary end, / Will come when it will come.”
Where Shakespeare got it
Shakespeare built the speech out of Plutarch, whom he read in Sir Thomas North’s 1579 English translation. The ISE general introduction ↗ suggests the passage “may have been inspired” by Plutarch’s brief note that the day before he died Caesar, asked what death was best, “cried out aloud, ‘Death unlooked for’”.
Shakespeare wrote roughly three dozen plays for the London stage, most of them for the company that occupied the Globe from 1599. Julius Caesar is thought to have been written that year and may have been the first of his plays performed there. Eighteen of his plays, this one included, were never printed in his lifetime and survive only because two of his fellow actors gathered them into the First Folio of 1623 — which is the single reason this line exists to be quoted at all.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
William Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Julius Cæsar, act 2, scene 2, in the First Folio (London, 1623), through-line numbers 1020–1021; old-spelling transcription ed. John D. Cox, Internet Shakespeare Editions.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/cowards-die-many-times-before-their-deaths-the-valiant/