COURAGE

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

As a rock on the sea shore, stand firm and let not the dashing of the waves disturb you. Raise your head like a tower on a hill, and the arrows of fortune drop at your feet. In the instant of danger, the courage of your heart will sustain you, and the steadiness of your mind beareth you through.
Khemetic Saying
in Temt Tchaas: Egyptian Proverbs , Muata Ashaya Ashby, ed.

To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle.
Kongfuzi
c. 551-c. 479 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Educator, Political Theorist

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Euripides
c. 485-406 BCE, Greek Dramatist, Poet

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
Thucydides
c. 460-c. 399 BCE, Greek Historian

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
Aristotle
384-322 BCE, Greek Philosopher

Fortune favors the brave.
Terence
c. 190-159 BCE, Carthaginian Dramatist

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
Seneca
c. 4 BCE-65 CE, Roman Philosopher, Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Rhetorician, Statesman

Courage consists not in hazarding without fear, but being resolutely minded in a just cause.
Plutarch
c. 46-c. 120, Greek Biographer, Philosopher

Yize uvalo, inqobo yisibindi.
Fear is nothing, the real thing is courage.
Ndebele Saying

There are some whose bravery increases
At the sight of their own blood,
While some lose all their strength and faint
When it's another's blood they see!
This results from how the mind is set,
In steadfastness or cowardice.
And so I'll scorn all injury,
And hardships I will disregard.
Shantideva
7th Century Indian Buddhist Scholar
The Way of the Boddhisattva , Padmakara, tr.

Great things are done more through courage than through wisdom.
German Saying

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other everything to gain.
Diane de Poitiers
1499-1566, French Mistress of Henri II of France
in Winifred Gordon, A Book of Days

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
William Shakespeare
1564-1616, English Poet, Dramatist, Actor
Julius Caesar

Courage mounteth with occasion.
Shakespeare
King John , II.1

Two-thirds of help is to give courage.
Irish Saying

They can conquer who believe they can.
Voltaire
1694-1778, French Philosopher, Dramatist, Poet, Historian, Writer, Critic

To have courage for whatever comes in life – everything lies in that.
Teresa of Avila
1515-1582, Spanish Carmelite Nun, Mystic, Theologian, Saint

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected. Even when it is associated with vice.
Samuel Johnson
1709-1784, English Lexicographer, Poet, Critic, Essayist

Often the real test of courage is not to die, but to live.
Vittorio Alfieri
1749-1803, Italian Poet

Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?
Marie Antoinette
1755-1793, Austrian/French Consort of Louis XVI of France
- on the way to the guillotine

When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.
Leigh Hunt
1784-1859, English Writer, Poet, Literary Editor

Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances.
John Henry Newman
1801-1890, English Cardinal, Theologian, Poet
Oxford University Sermons

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist, Philosopher

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear; not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
1835-1910, American Writer, Humorist, Journalist

To believe yourself to be brave is to be brave; it is the only essential thing.
Twain

It needs courage to throw oneself forward; but it needs not less to hold oneself back.
Desire-Joseph Mercier
1851-1926, Belgian Cardinal, Philosopher
in John A. Gade, The Life of Cardinal Mercier

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
Vincent Van Gogh
1853-1890, Dutch Painter
Dear Theo: An Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh

Face the terrible, face it boldly … the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them. If we are ever to gain freedom, it must be by conquering nature, never by running away. Cowards never win victories. We have to fight fear and troubles and ignorance if we expect them to flee before us.
Vivekananda
1863-1902, Indian Guru, Writer
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 1984-1987 , 1:339

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?
Logan Pearsall Smith
1865-1946, American/British Essayist, Critic
Afterthoughts

When in doubt, do the courageous thing.
Jan Christian Smuts
1870-1950, South African Militarist, Politician

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
G. K. Chesterton
1874-1936, English Writer, Poet, Critic

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Winston Churchill
1874-1965, English Prime Minister, Historian, 1953 Nobel Laureate

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Churchill

We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most extraordinary, the most singular and the most unexplicable that we may encounter.
Rainer Maria Rilke
1875-1926, Czech/Austrian Poet
Letters to a Young Poet , 1992

Last, but by no means least, courage – moral courage, the courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle – the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.
Douglas MacArthur
1880-1964, American Militarist

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Helen Keller
1880-1968, American Writer, Educator

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
Keller

'Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it.
Hugh Walpole
1884-1941, New Zealander/English Writer

The great virtue in life is real courage, that knows how to face facts and live beyond them.
D. H. Lawrence
1885-1930, English Writer, Poet, Critic
in Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence , Diana Trilling, ed.

Courage is fear holding on one minute longer.
George Patton
1885-1945, American Militarist

My feeling about life is a curious kind of triumphant feeling about seeing it bleak, knowing it is so, and walking into it fearlessly because one has no choice.
Georgia O'Keefe
1887-1986, American Painter

Every act of courage is a manifestation of the ground of being, however questionable the content of the act may be.
Paul Tillich
1888-1965, German Theologian, Philosopher
The Courage to Be

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.
Edward Rickenbacker
1890-1973, American Aviator

In true courage there is always an element of choice, of an ethical choice, and of anguish, and also of action and deed. There is always a flame of spirit in it, a vision of some necessity higher than oneself.
Brenda Ueland
1892-1985, American Writer

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.
Omar Bradley
1893-1981, American Militarist

To me wisdom and courage are the same thing, for courage is born of an understanding of life; he who completely understands life is always brave. Anyway that type of wisdom which does not give us courage is not worth having at all. Wisdom leads to courage by exercising a veto against our foolish ambitions and emancipating us from the fashionable humbug of this world, whether humbug of thought or humbug of life.
Lin Yutang
1895-1976, Chinese Writer, Dramatist, Translator
The Importance of Living , 1937

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear;
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
Amelia Earhart
1898-1937, American Aviatrix

Courage is grace under pressure.
Ernest Hemingway
1899-1961, American Writer, 1954 Nobel Laureate

Courage is not merely one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
C. S. Lewis
1898-1963, Irish-English Academic, Writer, Critic
in Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Game

The certainty that nothing can happen to us that does not in our innermost being belong to us is the foundation of fearlessness.
Anagarika Govinda
1898-1985, German/Indian Buddhist Lama, Scholar, Writer

We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
Maxwell Maltz
1899-1975, American Writer

To have faith requires courage , the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner.
Erich Fromm
1900-1980, American Psychoanalyst, Writer

Life expands or shrinks in direct proportion to one's courage.
Anaïs Nin
1903-1977, French/American Writer

Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
Leo Rosten
1908-1997, American Writer

Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom … Courage is necessary in every step in a person's movement from the mass – symbolically, the womb – to becoming a person in his own right.
Rollo May
1909-1994, American Psychoanalyst

Courage is the basic virtue for everyone so long as he continues to grow, to move ahead.
May
Man's Search for Himself

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
Peter Drucker
1909-, Austrian/American Management Educator, Writer

Courage comes and goes. Hold on for the next supply.
Thomas Merton
1915-1968, American Trappist Monk, Writer

Courage is a moral quality; it is not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit; an act of renunciation which must be made not once but many times by the power of the will. Courage is will power.
Lord Moran
1924-, British Diplomat, Writer

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
Harper Lee
1926-, American Writer
To Kill a Mockingbird , 1960

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practise any other virtue with consistency.
Maya Angelou
1928-, African-American Writer, Poet, Dramatist

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it. Courageous men never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929-1968, African-American Civil Rights Leader, Cleric, 1964 Nobel Laureate
The Strength to Love , 1963

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear.
M. Scott Peck
1936-, American Psychiatrist, Writer
The Road Less Travelled , 1978

I have accepted fear as a part of life – specifically the fear of change … I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.
Erica Jong
1942-, American Writer

Never yield your courage – your courage to live, your courage to fight, to develop your own lives, to be free. I'm talking about resistance to wrong and fighting oppression.
- Roger Baldwin

Many … miss their greatest chance of happiness through a want of courage in the decisive moments of their lives.
- Winifred Gordon
A Book of Days

True courage is like a kite; a contrary wind raises it higher.
- John Petit-Senn

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."
- Mary Anne Radmacher-Hershey

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
- Paul Whitehead

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