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58 quotes that mention courage and fear in so many words. Each one is checked against the book it comes from.
A little learning is a dangerous thing
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread
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.
To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.
Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
It is much safer to be feared than loved
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
O brave new world
That has such people in ’t!
The better part of valour is discretion
We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears.
Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.
There are not many cowards who know the whole of their fear.
We generally take men to be more dangerous than they are.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
COWARD, n. One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another’s generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
LONGEVITY, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
OVERWORK, n. A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.
RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
VALOR, n. A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler’s hope.
The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.
This clemency of which they make a merit, arises oftentimes from vanity, sometimes from idleness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always from all three combined.
Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.
Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.
The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice.
Reconciliation with our enemies is but a desire to better our condition, a weariness of war, the fear of some unlucky accident.
The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.
Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.
Our repentance is not so much sorrow for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us.
The health of the mind is not less uncertain than that of the body, and when passions seem furthest removed we are no less in danger of infection than of falling ill when we are well.
The defects of the mind are like the wounds of the body. Whatever care we take to heal them the scars ever remain, and there is always danger of their reopening.
Love of glory, fear of shame, greed of fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others are often causes of that bravery so vaunted among men.
Valour in common soldiers is a perilous method of earning their living.
Perfect valour is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world.
We do not wish to lose life; we do wish to gain glory, and this makes brave men show more tact and address in avoiding death, than rogues show in preserving their fortunes.
It is not so dangerous to do wrong to most men, as to do them too much good.
There are wicked people who would be much less dangerous if they were wholly without goodness.
There are matters and maladies which at certain times remedies only serve to make worse; true skill consists in knowing when it is dangerous to use them.
There are virtues which degenerate into vices when they arise from Nature, and others which when acquired are never perfect. For example, reason must teach us to manage our estate and our confidence, while Nature should have given us goodness and valour.
We have not the courage to say generally that we have no faults, and that our enemies have no good qualities; but in fact we are not far from believing so.
The most dangerous folly of old persons who have been loveable is to forget that they are no longer so.
We often believe we have constancy in misfortune when we have nothing but debasement, and we suffer misfortunes without regarding them as cowards who let themselves be killed from fear of defending themselves.
Timidity is a fault which is dangerous to blame in those we desire to cure of it.
The danger in HAPPINESS.—“Everything now turns out best for me, I now love every fate:—who would like to be my fate?”
The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.
Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.
Great passions are hopeless diseases. That which could cure them is the first thing to make them really dangerous.
The German runs no greater danger than to advance with and by the example of his neighbours. There is perhaps no nation that is fitter for the process of self-development; so that it has proved of the greatest advantage to Germany to have obtained the notice of the world so late.
A burnt child dreads the fire; an old man who has often been singed is afraid of warming himself.
Shakespeare is dangerous reading for budding talents: he compels them to reproduce him, and they fancy they are producing themselves.
Art is essentially noble; therefore the artist has nothing to fear from a low or common subject. Nay, by taking it up, he ennobles it; and so it is that we see the greatest artists boldly exercising their sovereign rights.
In your friendships, and in your enmities, let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds: make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business!