Coward Quotes - Page 21

• If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good -- which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward -- this man, and he alone, is truly brave.

  Josef Pieper

  Fall, Taken, Ambition

  Josef Pieper (1966). “The four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not brave enough to be a coward; I see the consequences too clearly.

  Ayn Rand

  Brave, Enough, Consequence

  6 Copy quote

• I was a bit of a coward when I was small. I was terribly frightened of the dark.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Dark, Frightened, Bits

  4 Copy quote

• Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

  William Shakespeare

  Truth, Honesty, Creativity

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 1, l. 56

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world -- a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.

  Virginia Woolf

  Beautiful, Dark, Self

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Monday or Tuesday: Eight Stories”, p.28, Courier Corporation

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!

  William Shakespeare

  Conscience

  'Richard III' (1591) act 5, sc. 3, l. 178

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is slicked o'er with the pale cast of thought

  William Shakespeare

  Doe, Hue, Hamlet And Ophelia

  33 Copy quote

• A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn't tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.

  Betty Smith

  Lying, Mean, Should Have

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.

  Hermann Hesse

  Steppenwolf, Willing, Dies

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.216, Macmillan

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are all born cowards.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Cowardice, Born

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1424, Manonmani Publishers

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• To cowards what advice shall I offer? - nothing whatsoever have I to say.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Advice, Cowardice, Offers

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3943, Manonmani Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This world is not for cowards.

  Swami Vivekananda

  World, Cowardice, This World

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Work and Its Secret”, p.11, Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math)

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Think of Jonathan Edwards who thundered the terrors of God and what Hell was like until men grasped their seats and hung on to them, fearing they were falling into Hell itself. Men were moved by fear to escape damnation. That was believed to be Christianity. Why any coward wanted to keep out of Hell. He might not have had one idea in his soul of what was the real true earmark of Christianity.

  John G. Lake

  Real, Fall, Men

  31 Copy quote

• The coward, afraid of the lash, with one hand wipes his eyes and gives with the other. Of what avail are such gifts?

  Swami Vivekananda

  Eye, Hands, Giving

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1875, Manonmani Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes I think I'm a nihilist because it doesn't matter, none of this matters. We're all following the will of some unknowable higher power, probably the stars manipulating our cellular magnets. We think we have all this agency, but do we? Do we really? Can you choose to be brave when you were born a coward? Can we be deprogrammed from the brainwashing that we grew up in? I think we can, but I think we need a lot of help.

  Ottessa Moshfegh

  Thinking, Brave, Helping

  Source: logger.believermag.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.

  Jim Butcher

  Suicide, Feel Better, Trying

  Jim Butcher (2006). “Dead Beat: A Novel of The Dresden Files”, p.352, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Fighting, Men, Bully

  Nobel Lecture, delivered 5 May 2010, Oslo, Norway

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of Lust, Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold. Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.

  Oscar Wilde

  Kissing, Men, Hands

  The Ballad of Reading Gaol pt. 1, st. 7 (1898) See Roberts 1

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.

  Homer

  Men, Brave, Rage From The Iliad

  Homer (2012). “The Iliad”, p.74, Courier Corporation

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel....You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs.

  Elizabeth Moon

  Heart, Fighting, Sheep

  Elizabeth Moon (1988). “Sheepfarmer's Daughter”, p.708, Baen Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• God will not make himself manifest to cowards

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Manifest, Gods Will

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.65, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are for ever trying to make our weakness look like strength, our sentiment like love, our cowardice like courage, and so on.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Like Love, Trying, Weakness

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2382, Manonmani Publishers

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Reflection, Thinking, Action

  John Christopher (2015). “Beyond the Burning Lands”, p.164, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And yet, something inside you is so horrible or you're such a coward or whatever the reason that you decide that you have to end it. Robin Williams, at 63, did that today.

  Shepard Smith

  Robins, Today, Reason

  "Fox News' Shepard Smith Apologizes For Comments About Robin Williams' Suicide" by David Edwards, www.businessinsider.com. August 12, 2014.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I must speak the truth, even at the risk of being ostracized by my fellow scribblers. In fact, anticipating their rage, I have already applied for a place in the Canada Council's witness-protection program. This because, much as it pains me to turn on my kind, I fear the time has come to admit that far too many celebrated writers were outrageous liars, philanderers, drunks, druggies, unsuitable babysitters, plagiarists, psychopaths, parasites, cowards, indifferent dads or moms and bad credit risks.

  Mordecai Richler

  Mom, Pain, Dad

  9 Copy quote