Best 303 quotes in «cowardice quotes» category

I looked at Hurl's lacerated face, her one remaining eye staring ahead. Defiant until the end, for all the good it had done. Brave . . . cowardly . . . she was still dead, so what did it matter?

I'm a fucking coward." "Maybe." Craw jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Whirrun's corpse. "There's a hero. Tell me who's better off.

Indeed, for the last three years, he had carefully avoided her, as a result of the natural cowardice so characteristic of the stronger sex...

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up for me.

I never asked to be a king: it was pushed on me. So if you are going to say 'Son of St Louis: gird on the sword of your ancestors, and lead us to victory' you may spare your breath to cool your porridge; for I cannot do it. I am not built that way; and there is an end of it.

It is better to die courageously than live as a coward.

I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew when the thirtieth anniversary reissue of his Orientalism was published, but his long-precarious condition would hardly argue for giving him a lenient review, let alone denying him one altogether, which would have been the only alternatives. In the introduction he wrote for the new edition, he generally declined the opportunity to answer his scholarly critics, and instead gave the recent American arrival in Baghdad as a grand example of 'Orientalism' in action. The looting and destruction of the exhibits in the Iraq National Museum had, he wrote, been a deliberate piece of United States vandalism, perpetrated in order to shear the Iraqi people of their cultural patrimony and demonstrate to them their new servitude. Even at a time when anything at all could be said and believed so long as it was sufficiently and hysterically anti-Bush, this could be described as exceptionally mendacious. So when the Atlantic invited me to review Edward's revised edition, I decided I'd suspect myself more if I declined than if I agreed, and I wrote what I felt I had to. Not long afterward, an Iraqi comrade sent me without comment an article Edward had contributed to a magazine in London that was published by a princeling of the Saudi royal family. In it, Edward quoted some sentences about the Iraq war that he off-handedly described as 'racist.' The sentences in question had been written by me. I felt myself assailed by a reaction that was at once hot-eyed and frigidly cold. He had cited the words without naming their author, and this I briefly thought could be construed as a friendly hesitance. Or as cowardice... I can never quite act the stern role of Mr. Darcy with any conviction, but privately I sometimes resolve that that's 'it' as it were. I didn't say anything to Edward but then, I never said anything to him again, either. I believe that one or two charges simply must retain their face value and not become debauched or devalued. 'Racist' is one such. It is an accusation that must either be made good upon, or fully retracted. I would not have as a friend somebody whom I suspected of that prejudice, and I decided to presume that Edward was honest and serious enough to feel the same way. I feel misery stealing over me again as I set this down: I wrote the best tribute I could manage when he died not long afterward (and there was no strain in that, as I was relieved to find), but I didn't go to, and wasn't invited to, his funeral.

It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.

It is fashionable to present hate and contempt for humanity as the exasperation and despair of compassion, but in that case rebellion should be against existence itself. When a man who is horrified by the basic evil of the world and his own existence, and who sees no God to rebel against, takes revenge on his fellow beings, he is a coward and a hypocrite. Perhaps the ugly, sordid, and horrifying things of which there is no end have always been produced by hypocritical and cowardly rebellion against existence, but that is not the rebellion of the social anarchist.

In short Donald Trump lies compulsively in large part because of who and what he is - a coward. This is why Mike Brzezinski said recently, "He brings nothing to the table.

Instead, though, as he drew nearer, his mind kept drifting back to Gansey's voice in the cave the day before. The tremulous note in it. The fear - a fear so profound that Gansey could not bring himself to climb out of the pit, though there was nothing physically preventing him. He had not known that Richard Gansey III had it in him to be a coward. Adam remembered crouching on the kitchen floor of his parents' double-wide, telling himself to take Gansey's oft-repeated advice to leave. "Just put what you need in the car, Adam." But he had stayed. Hung in the pit of his father's anger. A coward, too. Adam felt like he needed to reconfigure every conversation he'd ever had with Gansey in light of this new knowledge.

It is a mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day and then every rational satisfaction your nature that you deny now will assault like a savage appetite.

It was cowardice, Mr Stevens. Simple cowardice. Where could I have gone? I have no family. Only my aunt. I love her dearly, but I can’t live with her for a day without feeling my whole life is wasting away. I did tell myself, of course, I would soon find some new situation. But I was so frightened, Mr Stevens. Whenever I thought of leaving, I just saw myself going out there and finding nobody who knew or cared about me. There, that’s all my high principles amount to. I feel so ashamed of myself. But I just couldn’t leave, Mr Stevens. I just couldn’t bring myself to leave.

It takes courage to say things differently: Caution and cowardice dictate the use of the cliché.

It is what you do about the fear you feel that sets you apart, to be a coward or a courageous person.

I wanted to shout down to him, to warn him that he was giving flowers to a monster, but I did not.

I wonder is it because men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and place military valour so far beyond every other quality for reward and worship?

Looking ahead to future applications of electronics, [de Forest] grew even gloomier. He believed that 'electron physiologists' would eventually be able to monitor and analyze 'thought or brain waves', allowing 'joy and grief to be measured in define, quantitative unit.' Ultimately, he concluded, 'a professor may be able to implant knowledge into the reluctant brains of his 22nd century pupils. What terrifying political possibilities may be lurking there! Let us be thankful that such things are only for posterity, not for us.

Men's courage is reflected when he snaps at a women.

Man is weak. Purpose makes him strong.

Mercy and cowardice are the same," she snapped out. "But you want their land, not their lives, no? Dead men can't obey.

Michael Ledeen—a contributing editor of National Review and a Freedom Scholar at the influential neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute—wrote on the National Review blog in November 2006: 'I had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy'. I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place.' Ledeen, however, wrote in August 2002 of 'the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein' and when he was interviewed for Front Page Magazine the same month and asked, 'Okay, well if we are all so certain about the dire need to invade Iraq, then when do we do so?' Ledeen replied: 'Yesterday.' There is obvious, substantial risk in falsely claiming that one opposed the Iraq War notwithstanding a public record of support. But that war has come to be viewed as such a profound failure that that risk, at least in the eyes of some, is outweighed by the prospect of being associated with Bush's invasion.

Most men wait to move until victory is guaranteed.

Mission motto, sir," said Carrot cheerfully. "Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it." "I imagine he did," said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly. "And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?" "Er..." Rincewind hesitated, but there really was no escape. "Er... roughly speaking, it means, 'We who are about to die don't want to', sir.

Naphta loathed the bourgeois state and its love of security. He found occasion to express this loathing one autumn afternoon when, as they were walking along the main street, it suddenly began to rain and, as if on command, there was an umbrella over every head. That was a symbol of cowardice and vulgar effeminacy, the end product of civilization. An incident like the sinking of the Titanic was atavistic, true, but its effect was most refreshing, it was the handwriting on the wall. Afterward, of course, came the hue and cry for more security in shipping. How pitiful, but such weak-willed humanitarianism squared very nicely with the wolfish cruelty and villainy of slaughter on the economic battlefield known as the bourgeois state. War, war ! He was all for it – the universal lust for war seemed quite honorable in comparison.

No moon rose that night. We walked on the tracks, hot and sticky, in displeased gusts of wind that slapped and whipped and pushed, and did more to keep us restless than the events of the day could do to exhaust us. One fact about that night can never be denied — Bright Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Orion and Perseus, the starry heroines and heroes of one-million human nights, marched over our heads in a great procession across the dome of heaven, and sank to the west, undisturbed, silently ashamed of the cowardice of man.

Never be a coward person; but if necessary you can pretend to be coward!

Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence.

No one is born to courage, Juliet. Courage is a habit you develop after cowardice has gotten you nothing.

...one of the new conscripts, a useless, terrified little creature.... These boys are no use out here. Why send them? Why not recognise that cowardice is a fact and most cowards wish they weren't, and it's not their fault and it's not under their control, and keep them the hell out of our way while we get on with it?

Now civilization has banished chance, there is no more of the unexpected. If it comes up in ideas there aren't enough epigrams to throw at it; if it comes up in action no amount of cowardice is enough to cope with our fears.

One sin leads to another Brother kills brother When time: all spare The burden of war Who wants to bear Cowards what we are!

One needs to be either more brave or more good, because if courage is lacking goodness can substitute, while cowardice is the deficiency of both.

Our drums strike nothing but discouragement, Our trumpets sound dishonor and retire; The spirit of fear, that feareth nought but death, Cowardly works confusion on it self. Charles – Act IV, scene 7

Only cowards cave. The brave get assassinated.

Part of the art of survival as a coward is not letting things get to the point where that cowardice is exposed.

Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender themselves--their convictions and their aspirations--every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them.

Pacifism is a virtue indistinguishable from cowardice.

​Pass on bravery and wisdom to the future generations, not some ragged traditions and baseless cowardice.

People who run away from challenges are cowards and no coward deserves a reward.

people often mistake cautiousness for cowardice. and vice versa.

Politics really must be a rotten profession considering what awful moral cowards most politicians become as soon as they get the job.

Pity does not validate cowardice

Remember, the opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity.

Possession is not only when the devil plays hide and seek in your brain or poison your medula oblongata with negativity, but it is also when you are under the influence of the same specie as you!

Running was not always the coward's route; it was a matter of survival. The fewer violent encounters one invited, the longer the life.

Say 'No' when you must. It is not cowardice.

She has her helmet, shield and sword. Does she finish him or take pity on the gutless thing before her? Does she set fire and smoke him out, forcing him to fight, or does she let him live with himself and take satisfaction from knowing that he has never been in a real fight in his life and that one day he will have to face his demons in person, along with the consequences, and that both can be far more painful than anything she could ever do to him.

She had been born knowing that boldness erased fear, while cowardice invited it and earned her only more ill treatment. No matter how she shook with dread in private, she would never show fear before her questioners or her guards. In men's minds fear was a certain mark of guilt.

She loved sinking into her bed on evenings like this, but apparently she shouldn't, because it worried her aunts, who thought she ought to be out dancing. It worried her a little bit, too, because what if they were right, and because sometimes a great loneliness welled up in her and threatened all the dams she built to hold it back. You couldn't cure loneliness by wallowing in it, up above the world, on an island removed from everything. She knew that. But she had such a hard time with all the cures. They seemed rough and brusque and brutal, as if they abused her skin with a pot scrubber . . . forcing herself into a mass of people, a stranger among strangers. . . . But it was much more tempting to curl up with a book under her thick white comforter. Still, sometimes after she curled up, she regretted her lack of courage and felt bleakly lonely. It was important to have a really good book.