Best 303 quotes in «cowardice quotes» category

True courage lies in the middle, between cowardice and recklessness.

True valor lies in the middle between cowardice and rashness.

Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though it be prosperous.

Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.

What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.

We shall never know how many acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of appearing not sufficiently progressive.

We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.

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.

When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.

When would he realize that it wasn't his infidelity I couldn't bear, but his cowardice?

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.

With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.

You must be fearless. It is the coward who fears and defends himself

When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.

When faced with a choice between violence and cowardice, always choose violence

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.

A bull that allows a he goat to deter it from moving forward is nothing but a mere he goat

A coward I might be, but at least I was a free one.

A cowardly critique starts with a compliment.

A cowardly warrior is like a toothless lion.

A crust of lard, habit, and cowardice envelops the soul; no matter what it craves from the depths of its prison, the lard, habit, and cowardice carry out something entirely different.

Accepting reality requires wisdom, impatience, cowardice, or laziness.

A coward: a man or woman who is unsatisfied by his condition and believes he was destined to accept it that way

A coward,' he declared with dignity, when he'd stopped coughing and had got his breath back, 'dies a hundred times. A brave man dies but once. But Dame Fortune favours the brave and holds the coward in contempt.' — Dandelion

A coward is a man who'd rather live dead than die alive

¿A cuántos sofismas acudes diariamente para ocultarte que eres un cobarde? Yo soy un cobarde.

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.

A man defying an extinct volcano is only declaring his cowardice!

A golden opportunity may turn into silver if you wait too long to take advantage of it.

A man don't need to act tough if he is. Men that put on a show are spineless more often than not.

A man who is cowardly at heart and has not emancipated his mind will be afraid of non-existent ghosts and gods.

Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end.

And it was only then that I realized what I had let myself in for, and only then I realized how bloody thick I had been not to have predicted it. It would seem that the combination of elements--woman, desert, camels, aloneness--hit some soft sport in this era's passionless, heartless, aching psyche. It fired the imaginations of people who seem themselves as alienated, powerless, unable to do anything about a world gone mad. And wouldn't it be my luck to pick just this combination. The reaction was totally unexpected and it was very, very weird. I was now public property. I was now a kind of symbol. I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer (though not as crazy as I would have been had I failed). But worse than all that, I was now a mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for. And that was the antithesis of what I wanted to share. That anyone could do anything. If I could bumble my way across a desert, then anyone could do anything. And that was true especially for women, who have used cowardice for so long to protect themselves that it has become a habit.

And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with his evil chuckle. "Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense--to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart--if you have one--you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built.

All of us are cowards at some time in our lives...

At times it is what we do not say, or not saying a thing, that says a lot about us.

A writer is merely a reader that had the guts to be read, and, heard.

At dusk, Wakefield “had my most important thought that day.” Wading into chest-deep water at first light that morning, “I found that my legs would hardly hold me up. I thought I was a coward.” Then he had discovered that his sea bags with their explosives had filled with water and he was carrying well over 100 pounds. He had used his knife to cut the bags and dump the water, then moved on to do his job. “When I had thought for a moment that I wasn’t going to be able to do it, that I was a coward, and then found out that I could do it, you can’t imagine how great a feeling that was. Just finding out, yes, I could do what I had volunteered to do.

Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment - when you took out the gun, threw the bomb, pressed the detonator, did away with the tyrant, and away with yourself as well. But to be a coward was to embark on a career that lasted a lifetime. You couldn't ever relax. You had to anticipate the next occasion when you would have to make excuses for yourself, dither, cringe, reacquaint yourself with the taste of rubber boots and the state of your own fallen, abject character. Being a coward required pertinacity, persistence, a refusal to change - which made it, in a way, a kind of courage.

As I hear him, I understand that he's not more moronic because of the brandy than he is because of his cowardice.

But my walls were so high for a coward to climb …

Blood has an oder faint but distinct, of conceit and modesty, of courage and cowardice, of charity and greed, of faith and doubt, in short the fragrance of what we might have been and the smell of what we are...

Bold people dance happily when they are confronted with life’s adventures... they see themselves going through with smiles... Give no excuse for being a coward. Be bold!

Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability.

Chipmunks have the best instinct: run and hide.

Cowardice can be defended bravely without self-­refutation, because the opposite of cowardice is not courage but bravado.

Beware instinct--the lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter.

But was it cowardice to call out a lie, to insist on truth?

Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion? Thus wisdom creates cowards. And thus you miss Opportunity while spending your life on the lookout for it.

But often life asks much of you, and you either honor life by answering with all your heart, or you cower your way into your grave.