quotations about cowardice
Often life asks much of you, and you either honor life by answering with all your heart, or you cower your way into your grave.
JAMES CLEMENS
Hinterland
There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.
ALBERT CAMUS
Notebooks
Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is ... God help him.
KHALED HOSSEINI
The Kite Runner
A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.
MARVIN KITMAN
The Coward's Almanac; Or, The Yellow Pages
Nearly every man is a coward, if confronted by the proper terror.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
So cowards fight when they can fly no further;
As doves do peck the falcon's piercing talons.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VI
Cowardice ... is a timorous dejection of soul, creating imaginary dangers. When such a faint-hearted wretch as this is at sea, he fancies all the promontories are so many hulks of ships wreck'd on the coast. The least agitation of the waters puts him in a panic fear, and makes him enquire whether all that are aboard ar initiated.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
THOMAS FULLER
attributed, And I Quote
Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories
The meek will inherit the earth, but only because they won't have the courage to refuse.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
When in doubt chicken out.
WILLIAM M. HARDY
The Jubjub Bird
In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.
CHARLES DICKENS
Great Expectations
I'm a hero with coward's legs.
SPIKE MILLIGAN
Puckoon
It's when you run away that you are most liable to stumble.
CASEY ROBINSON
attributed, Sura's Quotable Quotes
Cowards die many times before their deaths
The valiant never taste of death but once.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Julius Caesar
Complete courage and absolute cowardice are extremes that very few men fall into. The vast middle space contains all the intermediate kinds and degrees of courage; and these differ as much from one another as men's faces or their humors do.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims and Reflections
Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
The worst cowards, banded together, have their power.
HOMER
The Iliad
Of cowards no history is written.
ENGLISH PROVERB