#cowardice

Ah, you coward! Look at you, running." "Actually, it's called improvising. ↗

— Jonathan Stroud

#humor #improvising #humor

I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman. ↗

— Ouida

#cowardice #men #women #men

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaged in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. He would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn't matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad. ↗

— Lev Grossman

#cowardice #fear #martial-heroics #physical-violence #playing-dead

Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice. ↗

— Miguel de Cervantes

#cowardice #halfway #just #lies #rashness

A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#fear #children

He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#french #love #men #women #love

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#constancy #courage #cowardice #steadfastness #truthfulness

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and perceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and last some crisis shows what we have become. ↗

— Brooke Foss Westcott

#courage #cowardice #development #humanity #strength

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

#human-nature #humility #courage

Many would be cowards if they had courage enough. ↗

— Thomas Fuller

#cowardice #courage