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Dec 2, 2009
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Dictionary of Phrase and Fable—D

Die

The die is cast. The step is taken, and I cannot draw back. So said Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon.

I have set my life upon the cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die.

Shakespeare: Richard III., v. 4.

Die

Whom the gods love die young. This is from Menander's fragments (Hon hoi theoi philousin apothneskei neos). Demosthenes has a similar apophthegm. Plautus has the line, “Quem Di diligunt adolescens moritur. ” (See Byron: Don Juan, canto iv. 12.) Those who die young are “taken out of the miseries of this sinful life” into a happy immortality.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
Die-hards
Dido
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