Quotes About Courage

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

— C. S. Lewis

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.

— Mark Twain

The man who knows when not to act is wise.  To my mind, bravery is forethought.

— Euripides

To bear other people’s afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.

— Benjamin Franklin

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

— Dolores Ibarruri

A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.

— Marvin Kitman

Courage is grace under pressure.

— Ernest Hemingway

If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?

— Marvin Kitman

Have the courage to act instead of react.

— Earlene Larson Jenks

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards.

— Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

— Marshal Ferdinand Foch

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead.

— William Shakespeare

Fear always springs from ignorance.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

— Joseph Conrad

True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

— Jonathon Swift

Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.

— Thomas Fuller

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else.  They’re just braver five minutes longer.

— Ronald Reagan

Courage is very important.  Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

— Ruth Gordon

It is a brave act of valor to condemn death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.

— Thomas Browne

No one can prove his courage when he has never been in danger.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

But screw your courage to the sticking place, and you’ll not fail.

— William Shakespeare

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight--it is the size of the fight in the dog.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail.

— Ethel Watts Mumford

What cannot be cured must be endured.

— Ignatius Sancho

Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated.  You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

— David Lloyd George

I have not yet begun to fight. (Sometimes quoted as “I have just begun to fight.”)

— Captain John Paul Jones, aboard the Bonhomme Richard, when asked whether he was prepared to surrender to the British, September 13, 1779

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you...you’ll be a Man, my son!

— Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.

— Jean Kerr

The first and great commandment is, Don’t let them scare you.

— Elmer Davis

If blood be shed, let it be our blood.  Cultivate the quiet courage of dying without killing.  For man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

— Mohandas K. Gandhi