Honor and death

Prince. Why, thou owest God a death.

[Exit Prince.]

Falstaff. 'Tis not due yet: I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg?  No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air—a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon—and so ends my catechism.

Exit.

—William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1  (1597), Act 5, Scene 1. An attack on the value of "honor" to those who fight to the death. A soliloquy by the cowardly Sir John Falstaff at the Battle of Shrewsbury.