The American people are not cowardly. But, living in prosperous isolation, they have been the spoiled children of modern history.
To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime. To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn't.
Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual.
A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth.
I can no more preach nonviolence to a cowardly man than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes.
There is a prayer intended to give strength to people faced with circumstances they don’t want to accept. The power of the prayer comes from it's insight into human nature. Because so many of us rage against the hand that life has dealt us. Because so many of us are cowardly. And afraid to stand up for what is right. Because so many of us give into despair when faced with an impossible choice. The good news for those who utter these words is that God will hear you and answer your prayer. The bad news is that sometimes the answer is no.
Teach positively, never abuse kids in the teaching process. I believe it is cowardly to teach in a negative way, to insult players, or challenge their manhood.
Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die - but this is sensuality's cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.
An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.
For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice.
Courageous men never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
As the representatives of the people we are here to declare that our resolve has not been weakened by these horrific and cowardly acts.
I was stricken by news and television pictures coming from the United States this morning. It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would have conjured up such a cowardly and depraved assault upon thousands of innocent people. There can be no cause or grievance that could ever justify such unspeakable violence. Indeed, such an attack is an assault not only on the targets but an offense against the freedom and rights of all civilized nations.
It is cowardly to fly from natural duties and take up those that suit our taste or temperament better; but it is also unwise to take an exaggerated view of personal duties, which shuts out the proper care of the mind and body entrusted to us.
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. . . . The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.
I am religious by nature, I'm not a nihilist. I don't follow, I don't even know what the tenets of things like deconstructionism are, and all those schools that come up and their way of looking at things that people strive to incorporate into what they write. I don't even know what they are. Because I sense from a distance that I don't want to know. And therefore even if I had no politics, actual politics, my cultural point of view is hopelessly out of date with the modern literary sensibility. Which is nihilistic, and ironic, detached, cool, and cowardly.
Just because I'm a murdering, thieving, cowardly, traitorous sort doesn't mean I can't do my job properly.
There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die—that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he too is brave and afraid like the all rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer.
I do not at all have the mind of a bully... in my mind bullies are intolerant of contrary opinion, domineering and rather cowardly. I would hope that none of those terms could be fairly used in describing me.
"Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior
War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other.
But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack.
Better to die for my people in my own land than rule in another and suffer a lifetime of cowardly guilt.
Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere.
I never quite got the hang of the getting drunk & fondling the thighs [of all the cumbersome young males] business... whether that makes me a gallant & proper gentleman, a cowardly wuss or an unadventurous prude, I cannot make out
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