C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Coward—Cowardice
Cowards die many times before their death.
All men would be cowards if they durst.
Cowards have no luck.
Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
To wish for death is a coward’s part.
Cowardice, the dread of what will happen.
A plague of all cowards, I say.
A coward’s fear can make a coward valiant.
It is the misfortune of worthy people that they are cowards.
What masks are these uniforms to hide cowards!
The craven’s fear is but selfishness, like his merriment.
A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.
A coward; a most devout coward; religious in it.
It is only in little matters that men are cowards.
The native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.
Commonly they use their feet for defence, whose tongue is their weapon.
To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.
Fear is the virtue of slaves; but the heart that loveth is willing.
Mankind are dastardly when they meet with opposition.
Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare.
Strange that cowards cannot see that their greatest safety lies in dauntless courage.
Plenty and peace breed cowards; hardness ever of hardiness is mother.
I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.
When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
Men lie, who lack courage to tell truth—the cowards!
My valor is certainly going!—it is sneaking off!—I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands.
He who fears to venture as far as his heart urges and his reason permits, is a coward; he who ventures further than he intended to go, is a slave.
All mankind is one of these two cowards—either to wish to die when he should live, or live when he should die.
It is the coward who fawns upon those above him. It is the coward that is insolent whenever he dares be so.
It is vain for the coward to fly; death follows close behind; it is by defying it that the brave escape.
For cowards the road of desertion should be left open. They will carry over to the enemy nothing but their fears.
Dangers are light, if they seem light; and more dangers have deceived men than forced them.
Some are brave men one day and cowards another, as great captains have often told me, from their own experience and observation.
To be afraid is the miserable condition of a coward. To do wrong, or omit to do right from fear, is to superadd delinquency to cowardice.
Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves.
Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.
If cowardice were not so completely a coward as to be unable to look steadily upon the effects of courage, he would find that there is no refuge so sure as dauntless valor.
Lie not, neither to thyself, nor man, nor God. Let mouth and heart be one; beat and speak together, and make both felt in action. It is for cowards to lie.
It is a law of nature that faint-hearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countries, for we never find that the same soil produces delicacies and heroes.
To die, and thus avoid poverty or love, or anything painful, is not the part of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is cowardice to avoid trouble, and the suicide does not undergo death because it is honorable, but in order to avoid evil.
What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity, and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men’s evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice.
The fact is, that to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
The courage that grows from constitution very often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; and when it is only a kind of instinct in the soul, it breaks out on all occasions, without judgment or discretion.
When the passengers gallop by as if fear made them speedy, the cur follows them with an open mouth; let them walk by in confident neglect, and the dog will not stir at all; it is a weakness that every creature takes advantage of.
The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed “the reign of cowardice.” One knows not which most to execrate,—the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and blood-thirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.
A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.