Cowardice Quotes - Page 9

• My flesh winced, in cowardice, from such a death.

  Sylvia Plath

  Flesh

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.78, Hamilton Books

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• It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination... If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldnt believe the world existed.

  Annie Dillard

  Believe, Imagination, Judging

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.146, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Time eventually convinces most of us that forgiveness is a virtue. Conveniently, cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a certain distance.

  Jonathan Nolan

  Distance, Looks, Virtue

  "Memento Mori". www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• cowardice more than any other failing demands a ruthless paying of the price from those who give it hospitality.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Giving, Demand, Hospitality

  Elizabeth Goudge (1944). “Green Dolphin Street”

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• Despair swallows up cowardice.

  William Hazlitt

  Despair

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• The infantile cowardice of our time which demands an external pattern, a nonhuman authority.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Atheism, Demand, Patterns

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• Rashness is oftener the resort of cowardice than of courage.

  Duke of Wellington

  Resorts, Rashness

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• On the whole, however, it is only out of pride or gross ignorance, or cowardice, that we refuse to see in the present the lineaments of times to come.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Ignorance, Pride, Investing

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• Cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices - thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. 'No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice!

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  Vices, Philosopher, Spokes

  Mikhail Bulgakov (2016). “THE MASTER AND MARGARITA: 50th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.231, Penguin

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• Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.

  Rollo May

  Opposites, People, Our Society

  "Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice". Book by Napoleon Hill, p. 104, 1991.

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• What is to be expected of them is not treachery, or physcial cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing.

  George Orwell

  Stupidity, Instinct, Sabotage

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.272, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers.

  Lionel Trilling

  Horse, Wrath, Intellectual

  "The Portable Matthew Arnold " by Lionel Trilling, Viking Press, 1949.

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• Unless we realize our sins enough to call them by name, it is hardly worth while to say anything about them at all. When we pray for forgiveness, let us say, "my temper," or "untruthfulness," or "pride," "my selfishness, my cowardice, indolence, jealousy, revenge, impurity." To recognize our sins, we must look them in the face and call them by their right names, however hard. Honesty in confession calls for definiteness in confession.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Revenge, Honesty, Pride

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• Humour is the most engaging cowardice. With it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot.

  Robert Frost

  Play, Enemy, Able

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• Envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame that nobody ever had the confidence to own it.

  John Wilmot

  Passion, Envy, Shame

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• We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, War, Humility

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• There is danger in courage. Cowardice is a power for good. We hardly know what it prevents.

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Danger, Knows

  Ivy Compton-Burnett (1972). “The last and the first”

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• people are capable of profound metamorphosis, though unfortunately they rarely avail themselves of this genius, force of habit being an even greater enemy of change than cowardice.

  Robin Morgan

  Change, People, Profound

  Robin Morgan (2014). “Saturday's Child: A Memoir”, p.367, Open Road Media

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• Before thy undertaking of any design, weigh the glory of thy action with the danger of the attempt; if the glory outweigh the danger, it is cowardice to neglect it; if the danger exceed the glory, it is rashness to attempt it; if the balances stand poised, let thy own genius cast them.

  Francis Quarles

  Design, Balance, Genius

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• However long the horror continued, one must not get to the stage of refusing to think about it. To shrink from direct pain was bad enough, but to shrink from vicarious pain was the ultimate cowardice. And whereas to conceal direct pain was a virtue, to conceal vicarious pain was a sin. Only by feeling it to the utmost, and by expressing it, could the rest of the world help to heal the injury which had caused it. Money, food, clothing, shelter - people could give all these and still it would not be enough; it would not absolve them from paying also, in full, the imponderable tribute of grief.

  Jan Struther

  Pain, Grief, Thinking

  Jan Struther (1956). “A pocketful of pebbles”

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• It seems priggish or pollyannaish to deny that my intention in writing the work was to titillate the nastier propensities of my readers. My own healthy inheritance of original sin comes out in the book and I enjoyed raping and ripping by proxy. It is the novelist’s innate cowardice that makes him depute to imaginary personalities the sins that he is too cautious to commit for himself.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Writing, Personality

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• Ever the characteristic manners of cowardice.

  Edward Everett

  Manners, Characteristics

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• To die, and thus avoid poverty or love, or anything painful, is not the part of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is cowardice to avoid trouble, and the suicide does not undergo death because it is honorable, but in order to avoid evil.

  Aristotle

  Suicide, Men, Order

  Aristotle (1871). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.74

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• Who, with tame cowardice familiar grown, would hear my thoughts, but fear to speak their own.

  Charles Churchill

  Speak, Familiar, My Thoughts

  Charles Churchill (1774). “The Works of C. Churchill”, p.23

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• Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.

  Herbert Spencer

  Revenge, Sacrifice, Men

  Herbert Spencer (1910). “Works: The study of sociology”

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