Quotes by Writers - Page 27

Courage is generosity of the highest order for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.
Charles Caleb Colton
Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence.
Francois de Fenelon
He who knows how to suffer everything can dare everything.
Vauvenargues
Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death. -General Omar N. Bradley This morning I threw up at a board meeting. I was sure the cat was out of the bag but no one seemed to think anything about it apparently it's quite common for people to throw up at board meetings.
Jane Wagner
That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
Charles Caleb Colton
Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
Cyril Connolly
Knowledge without courage is sterile.
Baltasar Gracián
Physical courage which despises all danger will make a man brave in one way and moral courage which despises all opinion will make a man brave in another. The former would seem most necessary for the camp the latter for the council but to constitute a great man both are necessary.
Charles Caleb Colton
He who finds Fortune on his side should go briskly ahead for she is wont to favor the bold.
Baltasar Gracián
Audacity augments courage hesitation fear.
Publilius Syrus
Nothing but courage can guide life.
Vauvenargues
Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. Because if you haven't courage you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
Samuel Johnson
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected even when it is associated with vice.
Samuel Johnson
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civic courage both as a whole and separately in each country in each government in each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite causing an impression that the loss of courage extends to the entire society.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If one is forever cautious can one remain a human being?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
My advice to you if you should ever be in a hold up is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.
o.henry
A man can believe in a considerable deal of rubbish and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.
Norman Douglas
Every man who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my confidence in it and therefore makes me uneasy and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
Samuel Johnson
Orthodoxy is my doxy - heterodoxy is another man's doxy.
William Warburton
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
La Rochefoucauld
A ceremony of self-wastage - good talkers are miserable they know that they have betrayed themselves that they have taken material which should have a life of its own to disperse it in noises upon the air.
Cyril Connolly
Too much agreement kills a chat.
Eldridge Cleaver
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition no vanity but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.
Samuel Johnson
John Wesley's conversation is good but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do.
Samuel Johnson
Conscience is a coward and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
Oliver Goldsmith
Shame arises from the fear of man conscience from the fear of God.
Samuel Johnson
Some statesmen go to Congress and some go to jail. It is the same thing after all.
Eugene Field
Every man in it is a great man an orator a critic a statesman and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory his criticism and his political abilities.
John Adams
The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.
La Rochefoucauld
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Samuel Johnson
To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it.
Syrus
The difference in men does not lie in the size of their hands nor in the perfection of their bodies but in this one sublime ability of concentration: to throw the weight with the blow to live an eternity in an hour.
Elbert Hubbard
The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration.
Kurt Vonnegut
To do two things at once is to do neither.
Publilius Syrus
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of everything.
Samuel Johnson
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Samuel Johnson
A woman has to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Morality like physical cleanliness is not acquired once and for all: it can only be kept and renewed by a habit of constant watchfulness and discipline.
Victoria Ocampo
Nothing's far when one wants to get there.
Queen Marie of Rumania
As a career the business of an orthodox preacher is about as successful as that of a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through Hell.
Elbert Hubbard
The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.
Samuel Johnson
The path of civilization is paved with tin cans.
Elbert Hubbard
To be a man is to feel that one's own stone contributes to building the edifice of the world.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond and on these faces there are no smiles.
Hilaire Belloc
Civilizations die from philosophical calm irony and the sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.
Joseph Wood Krutch
Respectability is the dickey on the bosom of civilization.
Elbert Hubbard
How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?
Charles de Gaulle
The circumstances of others seem good to us while ours seem good to others.
Syrus
Whenever God erects a house of prayer The devil always builds a chapel there And 'twill be found upon examination The latter has the largest congregation.
Daniel Defoe
I desire no other evidence of the truth to Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.
Mme. De Stael
If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage the life and death of Jesus were those of a God.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Unlike grownups children have little need to deceive themselves.
Goethe
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour for their curiosity their intolerance of shams the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
Aldous Huxley
If children grew up according to early indications we should have nothing but geniuses.
Goethe
A child's a plaything for an hour.
Mary Lamb
Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of man in strong health as color to his cheek and wherever there is habitual gloom there must be either bad air unwholesome food improperly severe labor or erring habits of life.
John Ruskin
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
Samuel Johnson