Cowardice Quotes - Page 20

• If suicide be supposed a crime, it is only cowardice can impel us to it. If it be no crime, both prudence and courage should engage us to rid ourselves at once of existence when it becomes a burden. It is the only way that we can then be useful to society, by setting an example which, if imitated, would preserve every one his chance for happiness in life, and would effectually free him from all danger or misery.

  David Hume

  Suicide, Example, Way

  David Hume (2006). “Essays: Moral, Political and Literary”, p.595, Cosimo, Inc.

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• We do not choose to be born.We do not--most of us, choose to die, or the times or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live--Courageously or in cowardice, Honorably or dishonorably, With purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial. What makes us significant is what we DO, Or REFUSE TO DO. WE DECIDE and WE CHOOSE--and so we give definition to our lives.

  Joseph Epstein

  Giving, Important, Adrift

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• Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice.

  Norman Mailer

  Courage, Dull, Firsts

  Norman Mailer (2003). “The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing”, p.106, Random House

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• To let God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to follow the path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in grateful service,—this is to keep the laws that give us the freedom of the city in which there is no longer any night of bewilderment or ignorance or uncertainty.

  Sarah Orne Jewett

  Flower, Grateful, Ignorance

  Sarah Orne Jewett (2008). “A Country Doctor”, p.238, Bantam Classics

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• Christianity is not a law of bondage; and if it respect the hand of God which sometimes raises up tyrants, it draws up where obedience degenerates into guilty cowardice.

  Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

  Hands, Law, Tyrants

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• I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It's how rats are. It's what makes them rats. But a human doesn't run and hide in dark places, because he's something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.

  Nancy Farmer

  Running, Lying, Dark

  Nancy Farmer (2002). “The House of the Scorpion”, p.134, Simon and Schuster

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• Retreat itself is often a plan of resistance and may be a precursor of great bravery and sacrifice. Every retreat is not cowardice which implies fear to die.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Sacrifice, Bravery, May

  Mahatma Gandhi (1979). “Collected Works”

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• In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin.

  Dean Koontz

  Self, Defense, Sin

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• I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "The Book of Disquiet".

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• 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

  Believe, Thinking, Differences

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• There is no lack of bravery in the ranks of our armed forces, but bureaucratic cowardice rules in our intelligence establishment (as well as at the higher levels of military command).

  Ralph Peters

  Military, Bravery, Levels

  Ralph Peters (2002). “Beyond Terror”, p.134, Stackpole Books

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• I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religious, Order, People

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.37, Routledge

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• Let us be wary of ready-made ideas about cowardice and courage: the same burden weighs infinitely more heavily on some shoulders than on others.

  Francois Mauriac

  Ideas, Burden, Made

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• It is this unquiet self-love that renders us so sensitive. The sick man, who sleeps ill, thinks the night long. We exaggerate, from cowardice, all the evils which we encounter; they are great, but our sensibility increases them. The true way to bear them is to yield ourselves up with confidence to God.

  Francois Fenelon

  Sleep, Night, Men

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• It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Blow, Holes, Fortune

  Michel de Montaigne (1925). “The essays of Montaigne”

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• Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don't understand and never will.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Mean, Responsibility, Thinking

  "Solaris". Book by Stanisław Lem, translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. Chapter 11: "The Thinkers", p. 158, 1970.

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• Bravery is a mean state concerned with things that inspire confidence and with things fearful ... and leading us to choose danger and to face it, either because to do so is noble, or because not to do so is base. But to court death as an escape from poverty, or from love, or from some grievous pain, is no proof of bravery, but rather of cowardice.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Mean, Bravery

  Aristotle (1869). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.84

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• It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world - we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death - the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Suicide, Cat, Dark

  "Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy" edited by S. T. Joshi, (p. 71), 2006.

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• Classic is our daring, classic our cowardice. Classic is our cruelty, classic our charity.

  Robert Ardrey

  Charity, Classic, Cruelty

  Robert Ardrey (1977). “The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man”

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• So it is the fear, weakness, selfishness, and cowardice of onlookers that permit evil behavior to persist.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Evil, Selfishness, Weakness

  Dr. Laura Schlessinger (2011). “Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land): Overcoming Betrayal and Dealing with Revenge”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• The greatest obstacle in the apostolate of the Church is the timidity or rather the cowardice of the faithful.

  Pope Pius X

  Catholic, Faithful, Church

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• In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Confidence, Comfort, Bottles

  Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt (1854). “Johnson's Lives of the British Poets”, p.66

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• For peace, with justice and honor, is the fairest and most profitable of possessions, but with disgrace and shameful cowardice, it is the most infamous and harmful of all.

  Polybius

  Peace, Justice, Honor

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• The trouble is that nonviolence is so often defined as refusal to fight, and that is the American definition of cowardice. In fact, marching unarmed against the guns and dogs of the police requires more courage than does aggression. The perverted idea of manhood coming from the barrel of a gun is what keeps people from understanding nonviolence.

  Jesse Jackson

  Dog, Fighting, Gun

  Interview with Arthur Kretchmer, www.playboy.com. October 14, 2011.

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• Fear has its use, but cowardice has none. I may not put my finger into the jaws of a snake, but the very sight of the snake need not strike terror into me.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Sight, Snakes, Needs

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

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