Inspirational Quotes on Cowardice

“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”

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

“There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general: (1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction; (2) cowardice, which leads to capture; (3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults; (4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame; (5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble.”

“You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!”

“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.”

“He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.”

“Indeed, for the last three years, he had carefully avoided her, as a result of the natural cowardice so characteristic of the stronger sex...”

“Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it.”

“Young man, be of good courage. Care not for what the world says or thinks: you will not be with the world always. Can man save your soul? No. Will man be your judge in the great and dreadful day of account? No. Can man give you a good conscience in life, a good hope in death, a good answer in the morning of resurrection? No! no! no! Man can do nothing of the sort. Then "fear not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings: for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool" (Isa. 51:7,8). Call to your mind the saying of good Colonel Gardiner: "I fear God, and therefore I have none else to fear." Go and be like him.”

“Cowards can handle Arms, can strike where they are sure to meet with no Return, can wound, mangle and murder; but it belongs to brave Men to spare, and to protect.”

“This cult of the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age.”

“We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.”

“Where courage is not, no other virtue can survive except by accident.”

“We have attempted to reduce all virtues to kindness. Plato rightly taught that virtue is one. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues. If being cowardly, conceited, and slothful, you have never done a fellow creature great mischief, that is only because your neighbors welfare has not yet happened to conflict with your safety, your self approval, or ease. Every vice leads to cruelty. Even a good emotion, pity, if not controlled by charity and justice leads through anger to cruelty. Most atrocities are stimulated by accounts of the enemies atrocities and pity for the suppressed classes when separated from the moral law as a whole leads by a very natural process to the unremitting brutalities of a rein of terror.”

“Let us pin our faith in the almighty Zeus, who governs all mankind and the gods as well. Fight for your country - that is the best and only omen. But why should you, of all men, shirk from battle? Even if the rest of us are slaughtered wholesale by the argive ships, you need have no fear for your own safety - you are not the man to stand and fight it out. None the less, if you do shirk, or dissuade any of the others from fighting, I shall not hesitate to strike you with this spear and take your life.”

“Yes, we might have ‘righteous anger’ as we see our culture destroyed, but if our anger spills over into our Christian witness, it only fuels the stereotype that the world already has of us. Yes, we are called to expose the sins of the world, but to do so with redemption, in humility and compassion. And, yes, with courage. And tears. Anger and rebuke change nothing. In fact, they cause our leftist friends to entrench themselves every deeper into their hatred of Christians. Moreover, these actions don’t represent our Master who ‘when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly’ (1 peter 2:23). Anger, vengeance and a spirit of retaliation are not the ways of the Master. But as we shall see later in this book, neither is silence nor cowardice.”