Quotations on Courage

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Culture," The Conduct of Life (1860).) 

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

(Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), U.S. lawyer, orator. Speech, May 29, 1882, New York City.)

As to moral courage, I have rarely met with two o'clock in the morning courage; I mean instantaneous courage.

(Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), French general, emperor. quoted in Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, vol. 1, pt. 2, E.A. de Las Casas (1823). Said by Napoleon at the end of December 1815.)

... fiction never exceeds the reach of the writer's courage.

(Dorothy Allison (b. 1949), U.S. author and lesbian feminist. Skin, ch. 22 (1994). Allison wrote novels and short stories, as well as poetry and essays.)

So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.

(Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), African-American novelist, short story writer, folklorist, playwright and anthropologist. High John de Conquer, American Mercury (1943).)

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

(E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster (1879-1970), British novelist, essayist. Pharos and Pharillon, "The Poetry of C.P. Cavafy," in the Pharillon section (1923).)

Courage overrides self-doubt, but does not end it.

(Mason Cooley (b. 1927), U.S. aphorist. City Aphorisms, Eleventh Selection, New York (1993).)  

I always disliked dogs, those protectors of cowards who lack the courage to fight an assailant themselves.

(J. August Strindberg (1849-1912), Swedish dramatist, novelist, poet. A Madman's Defense, pt. 3, ch. 1 (1968).) 

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.

(François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), French writer, moralist. Sentences et Maximes Morales, no. 216 (1678).)

The great epochs of our lives occur when we gain the courage to rechristen what is evil in us as what is best.

(Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, classical scholar, critic of culture. Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 5, p. 93, eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin, de Gruyter (1980). Beyond Good and Evil, "Fourth Part: Maxims and Interludes," section 116 (1886).)
The above quotation is copied from www.poemhunter.com