Cowardly Quotes - Page 9

• A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.

  John Steinbeck

  Beautiful, Clever, Book

  John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.372, Penguin

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• Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds -- a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents

  Albert Camus

  Sacrifice, Vanity, Civilization

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• When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Real, Stupid, Silly

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• Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.

  Lionel Shriver

  Children, Generations, Purpose

  Lionel Shriver (2011). “We Need to Talk about Kevin”, p.255, Counterpoint Press

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• This avoidance of the difficult things of Scripture — of sinfulness and hell and God’s notable severity — is idolatrous and cowardly. If a man or a woman who teaches the Scriptures is afraid to explain to you the severity of God, they have betrayed you, and they love their ego more than they love you.

  Matt Chandler

  Love You, Men, Ego

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• A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

  John Steinbeck

  Beautiful, Clever, Book

  "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Fourth Series". Book edited by George Plimpton. Chapter "On Publishing", 1977.

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• And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.

  Saul Bellow

  People, Trying, Terrorism

  Saul Bellow (2008). “Humboldt's Gift”, Penguin Classics

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• There was more courage in bearing trouble than in escaping from it; the brave and the energetic cling to hope, even in spite of fortune; the cowardly and the indolent are hurried by their fears,' said Plotius Firmus, Roman Praetorian Guard.

  Tacitus

  Escaping, Brave, Trouble

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• I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true.

  Mary Ann Shaffer

  Book, Thinking, Suitors

  Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows (2009). “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”, p.101, A&C Black

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• Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Self, Heroism, Preservation

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• Think of the beginning of the story of the beginning of everything: Adam (without Eve and without divine guidance) names the animals. Continuing his work, we call stupid people bird-brained, cowardly people chickens, fools turkeys. Are these the best names we have to offer? If we can revise the notion of women coming from a rib, can’t we revise our categorizations of the animals that, draped with barbecue sauce, end up as the ribs on our dinner plates — or for that matter, the KFC in our hands?

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Stupid, Animal, Thinking

  "Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, books.google.ru. March 4, 2010.

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• Lots of people think that bisexual means cowardly lesbian.

  Sandra Bernhard

  Mean, Bisexual, Thinking

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• Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist!

  Charles Studd

  Lying, Blood, Lame

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• Suicide isn't cowardly. I'll tell you what's cowardly; treating people so badly that they want to end their lives.

  Ashley Purdy

  Suicide, Bvb, People

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• When a war is over I think it's a cowardly thing to leave the war behind you in minefields that hit women and children and the most vulnerable. Imagine the war is finished and you go to work and there are snipers shooting at you. Imagine taking your kids to the beach and you find that the beach is blowing up beneath you. Like there's nowhere safe.

  Paul McCartney

  Beach, Children, War

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• Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," . "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men.

  Jan Egeland

  Children, Men, Thinking

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• Remember, the only thing to fear is Fear, and - well, don't even fear Fear, for he's a cowardly chap at the best, who will run if you show a brave front.

  William Walker Atkinson

  Running, Fear, Brave

  William Walker Atkinson (2016). “THOUGHT VIBRATION - The Law of Attraction in the Thought World (Unabridged): From the American pioneer of the New Thought movement, known for Practical Mental Influence, The Secret of Success, The Arcane Teachings, Nuggets of the New Thought, Reincarnation and the Law of Karma”, p.29, e-artnow

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• I really think it would be cowardly to pull back and not challenge the status quo, when the status quo may not be the right way for the field to go.

  Mehmet Oz

  Thinking, Challenges, Would Be

  "Dr. Oz on Complementary Medicine: 'Challenge the Status Quo'" by Lana Zak, abcnews.go.com. August 31, 2009.

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• In general, higher education does not know how to speak for its interests. It offers a stance that is defensive, cowardly and likely to be ineffective.

  Stanley Fish

  Doe, Speak, Higher Education

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• Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis -- German National Socialism.

  Hermann Goring

  Party, Class, Goering

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• I've sworn off agnosticism, which I now call cowardly atheism. I've come to the position that in the complete absence of any supporting data whatsover for the persistence of the individual in some spiritual form, it is necessary to operate under the provisional conclusion that there is no afterlife and then be ready to amend that if I find out otherwise.

  James Cameron

  Spiritual, Persistence, Data

  "The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron". Book by Rebecca Keegan, 2009.

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• Girls like you are responsible for all the tiresome colorless marriages; all those ghastly inefficiencies that pass as feminine qualities. What a blow it must be when a man with imagination marries the beautiful bundle of clothes that he's been building ideals around, and finds that she's just a weak, whining, cowardly mass of affectations!

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Beautiful, Girl, Blow

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2012). “Bernice Bobs Her Hair and Other Stories”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament.

  Christopher Lasch

  Sake, Despise, Clinging

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• Mohammed knew that most people are terribly cowardly and stupid. That is why he promised two beautiful women to every courageous warrior who dies in battle. This is the kind of language a soldier understands. When he believes that he will be welcomed in this manner in the afterlife, he will be willing to give his life, he will be enthusiastic about going to battle and not fear death. You may call this primitive and you may laugh about it, but it is based on deeper wisdom. A religion must speak a man's language.

  Heinrich Himmler

  Beautiful, Stupid, Believe

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• It was a book [George Packer written on our presence in Nigeria] that was killed by the response of other people. Which sounds quite cowardly, perhaps, but it was the first manifestation of what is currently a really big issue: how political correctness defines the limits of what you can do. In that sense, it was super-exciting and maybe the most magical project we did, but at the same time fraught with mixed feelings.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Book, Issues, People

  "'Lagos shows how a city can recover from a deep, deep pit': Rem Koolhaas talks to Kunlé Adeyemi". Interview with Chris Michael, www.theguardian.com. February 26, 2016.

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