Cowardice Quotes - Page 21

• The wildest hath not such a heart as you. Run when you will, the story shall be changed: Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase; The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed, When cowardice pursues and valour flies.

  William Shakespeare

  Running, Heart, Apollo

  William Shakespeare (2016). “The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works”, p.1097, Oxford University Press

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• They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

  Tim O'Brien

  Memories, Grief, Emotional

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

  Andre Gide

  Fear, Worst, Ridicule

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• I hold it cowardice To rest mistrustful where a noble heart Hath pawned an open hand in sign of love.

  William Shakespeare

  Heart, Hands, Noble

  William Shakespeare, John D. Cox, Eric Rasmussen (2001). “King Henry VI Part 3: Third Series”, p.306, Cengage Learning EMEA

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• Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Suicide, Pain, Complaining

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.584, Delphi Classics

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• I know you'll probably get angry with me for that, shout, stamp your feet: "speak just for yourself and your miseries in the underground, and don't go saying 'we all.'" Excuse me, gentleman, but I am not justifying myself with this allishness. As far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway, and, what's more, you've taken your cowardice for good sense, and found comfort in thus deceiving yourselves. So that I, perhaps, come out even more "living" than you.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Taken, Feet, Gentleman

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• Perfect courage and utter cowardice are two extremes which rarely occur.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Two, Perfect, Extremes

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• The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille

  Karl Marx

  Humility, Self, Quality

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1963). “The Communist manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels”

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• There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.

  Thomas Paine

  Book, Sleep, Nurse

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar”, p.123

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• I often say to people that producing is the best paid form of cowardice. When you produce things you almost always get credit, if it's a good record, but you hardly ever get the blame if it's not! You don't really take responsibility for your work.

  Brian Eno

  Responsibility, People, Credit

  Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. November 2, 2009.

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• What we want is not mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts with free men-to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the State, it is cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or bow much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Freedom, Men, Odds

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.135, David M Gross

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• You disappoint yourself more often by not doing things because of cowardice and temerity than you ever did by doing things that turn out to be wrong.

  Fred Hollows

  Disappoint, Turns

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• Each of us has his cowardice. Each of us is afraid to lose, afraid to die. But hanging back is the way to remain a coward for life. The Way to find courage is to seek it on the field of conflict. And the sure way to victory is willingness to risk one's own life.

  Mas Oyama

  Risk, Victory, Coward

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• Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.

  Jose Rizal

  Selfishness, Noli Me Tangere, Shame

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• How many times did someone have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice?

  Michael Herr

  Running, Gun, Machines

  Michael Herr (2011). “Dispatches”, p.66, Vintage

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• Innocence can be redefined and called stupidity. Honesty can be called gullibility. Candor becomes lack of common sense. Interest in your work can be called cowardice. Generosity can be called soft-headedness, and observe : the former is disturbing

  Abraham Maslow

  Honesty, Generosity, Common Sense

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• But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?

  Markus Zusak

  Glad, Acknowledgment

  Markus Zusak (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.110, RH Childrens Books

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• The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saints in popery, and holy dervises in MAHOMETANISM. The place of, HERCULES, THESEUS, HECTOR, ROMULUS, is now supplied by DOMINIC, FRANCIS, ANTHONY, and BENEDICT. Instead of the destruction of monsters, the subduing of tyrants, the defence of our native country; whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abject submission and slavish obedience, are become the means of obtaining celestial honours among mankind.

  David Hume

  Country, Hero, Mean

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.1245, Delphi Classics

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• I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Clever, Lying, People

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1896). “Recollections”, p.230, Library of Alexandria

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• Sloth is the great enemy -- the inspirer of cowardice, irresolution, self-pitying grief, and trivial, hairsplitting doubts. Sloth may also be a psychological cause of sickness. It is tempting to relax from our duties, take refuge in ill-health and hide under a nice warm blanket.

  Patanjali

  Nice, Grief, Self

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• If commissars in Soviet Russia agreed to subordinate themselves to state power, they could at least plead fear in extenuation. Their counterparts in more free and open societies can plead only cowardice.

  Noam Chomsky

  Russia, States, Soviet

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• It is fear and terror that make all men brave, except the philosophers. Yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice.

  Plato

  Men, Brave, Philosopher

  Source: www.goodreads.com

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• Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

  Plato

  Government, Lust, Lovers

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• Fear has its uses but cowardice has none.

  Anne McCaffrey

  Life, Use

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• Suspicious.- To admit a belief merely because it is a custom - but that means to be dishonest, cowardly, lazy! - And so could dishonesty, cowardice and laziness be the preconditions for morality?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Lazy, Laziness

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.59, Cambridge University Press

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