quotations about cowardice
He that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Revenge,", Essays
Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.
JOSE RIZAL
Touch Me Not
It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.
HERODOTUS
The Histories
A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.
QUINTUS CURTIUS RUFUS
De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni
You've revised history to keep conscience at bay;
In your bunker of pragmatism--your cowardice clear
CRUX
"Not See", Cakewalk
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess--unless he is a coward.
RAFAEL SABATINI
Scaramouche
Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and perceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and last some crisis shows what we have become.
CANON WESTCOTT
attributed, The Boy's Own Annual, 1897
A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.
MICKEY MANTLE
attributed, Living Thoughts: Inspiration, Insight, and Wisdom from Sources Throughout the Ages
It is vain for the coward to fly; death follows close behind; it is by defying it that the brave escape.
VOLTAIRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
I believe there is no other difference between those who are called courageous and those who are branded craven than that the second are fearful before the danger and the first after it. No one can be much frightened, certainly, during a period of great and immanent peril -- the mind is too much concentrated on the thing itself, and on the actions necessary to meet or avoid it. The coward is a coward, then, because he has brought his fear with him; persons we think cowardly will sometimes amaze us by their bravery, if they have had no forewarning of their danger.
GENE WOLFE
The Claw of the Conciliator
The coward fears the prick of Fate, not he who dares all, becoming himself the dreaded one.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
I think before I act--and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do.
JOHN CHRISTOPHER
Beyond the Burning Lands
Patience is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
He who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world.
THOMAS HUGHES
Tom Brown's Schooldays
A coward's courage is in his tongue.
BURKE
attributed, Day's Collacon
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Merchant of Venice
When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.
GEORGE SEWELL
The Suicide
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God