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:
Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.
Valour lies just halfway between rashness and cowheartedness.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Gird your hearts with silent fortitude, Suffering, yet hoping all things.
My dear friend, venture to take the wind on your face for Christ.
In adversity it is easy to despise life; he is truly brave who can endure a wretched life.
The brave man, indeed, calls himself lord of the land, through his iron, through his blood.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.
And each man stands with his face in the light
Of his own drawn sword,
Ready to do what a hero can.