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:
"The horizon is not a boundary to fear, but a canvas waiting for the first stroke of your courage."
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Hope awakens courage. He who can implant courage in the human soul is the best physician.
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
Strange that cowards cannot see that their greatest safety lies in dauntless courage.