What truly makes a man who he is? Is it the strength of his arms, or the courage of his soul?
Courage Quotes
The quotes worth a second look here are the quiet ones. In Dryden’s Amphitryon (1690) a character says he is “whistling to keep myself from being afraid”, which is still a fair description of how most courage works. Samuel Johnson, according to Boswell (1791), said courage is so necessary to virtue that it is respected even when it goes along with vice. Nassim Taleb, in The Bed of Procrustes (2010), has it the other way round from the usual advice: mental clarity is the child of courage, not the reverse. The psychologist Rollo May is the most-quoted modern writer here.
Two of the page’s better-known quotes are flagged as misattributed: the Churchill line about the courage to continue, which has no traceable source (see Success), and a passage on the courage of our questions that is credited to Carl Sagan.
Most quoted on courage:
Who hath not courage to revenge will never find generosity to forgive.
For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself..
If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgment.
Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.
A hallmark of sanity, Alex, is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.
The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.