Quotes about Fear and Courage

• Adversity introduces a man to himself.
• And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. (Anais Nin)
• Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile...initially scared me to death. (Betty Bender)
• Better to die once and for all, than live in continual terror. (Aesop)
• The best way out is always through. (Robert Frost)
• The brave don't live forever, but the cautious don't live at all. (Timothy Luce)
• Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow. (Mary Anne Radmacher)
• Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared. (Eddie Rickenbacher)
• Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. (George S. Patton)
• Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. (Ambrose Redmoon)
• Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow. (Alice Mackenzie Swaim)
• Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave. (Mark Twain)
• Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway. (Robert Anthony)
• Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. (Winston Churchill)
• Courage often consists as much in refraining to do, as in doing. (Farmers Almanac)
• Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. (William Shakespeare)
• Creativity takes courage! (Henry Matisse)
• Dawn begins at midnight.
• The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult.
• Do the thing you are afraid to do and the death of fear is certain. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so. (Belva Davis)
• Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is. Just don't break a limb doing it!
• 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)
• Don't die until you're dead
• Driving down the wrong road and knowing it, the fork years behind, how many have thought to pull up on the shoulder and leave the car empty, strike out across the fields; and how many are still mazed among dock and thistle, seeking the road they should have taken? (Damon Knight, The Man in the Tree)
• Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway. (Mary C. Crowley)
• Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
• Face the thing you fear, and you do away with that fear.
• Faith is courage; it is creative. Despair is always destructive. (David S. Muzzey)
• Fear grows out of the things we think; it lives in our minds. Compassion grows out of the things we are, and lives in our hearts. (Garrison, Barbara)
• Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual - and the soul of a people. (Anwar el-Sadat)
• Fear is nothing but the anticipation of pain, be it physical, mental, spiritual or emotional
• Fear is something to be moved through, not something to be turned from. (Peter McWilliams)
• Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined. (Henry David Thoreau.)
• A good way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
• Great love and great achievements involve great risk.
• He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own. (Aesop)
• He who doesn't fear death dies only once. (Giovanni Falcone)
• He who takes a stand is often wrong, but he who fails to take a stand is always wrong.
• I have had dreams, and I have had nightmares.
  I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams. (Jonas Salk)
• I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it. (Alanis Morissette)
• If God wanted us to be brave, why did He give us legs? (Marvin Kitman)
• If you wait, all that happens is that you get older. (Larry McMurty)
• I'm not afraid of the dark...it's the stuff inthe dark that I'm scared of!
• In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer. (Albert Camus)
• It is a blessed thing that in every age someone has had enough individuality and courage to stand by his own convictions. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
• It is a good rule to face difficulties at the time they arise and not allow them to increase unacknowledged. (Edward W. Ziegler)
• It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward. (Dolores Ibarruri)
• It is better to be a coward for one minute than dead the rest of your life.
• It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. (Alfred Adler)
• It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death. (Epictetus)
• It requires more courage to suffer than to die. (Napoleon Bonaparte)
• It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. (E.E. Cummings)
• It's always darkest right before the dawn
• It's easy to be brave from a safe distance.
• It's going to be fun to watch and see how long the meek can keep the earth after they inherit it. (Kin Hubbard)
• Let not the mistakes of yesterday - nor the fears of tomorrow - spoil our today.
• Life expands or contracts in direct proportion to one's courage. (Anais Nin)
• Life is tough, but I'm tougher.
• Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.
• Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here. (Marianne Williamson)
• Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it's dark. (Zen Proverb)
• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. (Henry David Thoreau)
• The meek will inherit the earth...they won't have the nerve to turn it down.
• No one can predict to what heights you can soar. Even you will not know until you spread your wings.
• Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
• Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as real strength. (Ralph W. Sockman)
• One Man with courage is a Majority. (Andrew Jackson)
• The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity. (Robert Anthony)
• Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves. (Walter Andersen)
• Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you. (Mary Tyler Moore)
• The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel change, grow or live... (William Arthur Ward)
• The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.
• A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for. (John A. Shedd)
• Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would not see the beauty of their carvings. (Elizabeth Kubler-Ross)
• Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away. (Thomas Fuller)
• Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. (Henry Van Dyke)
• Some people take great pride in stepping out of their comfort zone. But that isn't something all of us enjoy. There is no need to step out of your comfort zone unless there's somewhere out there you want to be.
• Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face. (Nelson DeMille)
• Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. (Seneca)
• Sometimes holding on makes you stronger; sometimes it's letting go.
• There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them. (Andre Gide)
• There is much in the world to make us afraid. There is much more in our faith to make us unafraid. (Frederick W. Cropp)
• There is the risk you cannot afford to take, and there is the risk you cannot afford not to take. (Peter Drucker)
• Things may be tough now...but you're tougher.
• Those who have loved the stars are never fearful of the night.
• Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. (Sarah Williams)
• To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for not everything can be untied. (Henri Frederic Amiel)
• To him who is in fear everything rustles. (Sophocles)
• Try to believe that if you take the leap you'll be taught how to fly.
• We all have the strength to endure the misfortunes of others. (La Rochefoucauld)
• We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death. (David Sarnoff)
• We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.
• We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over. (Aneurin Bevan)
• What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy. (William Butler Yeats)
• What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
• What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible. (Theodore Roethke)
• When it comes time to die...make sure all you have to do is die.
• When it's dark enough, you can see the stars. (Charles A. Beard)
• When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger. (Mark Rutherford)
• When you are required to exhibit strength, it comes. (Joseph Campbell)
• Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act. (Talmud)
• With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity. (Keshavan Nair)
• Without courage, all other virtues lose their meaning.
• You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith. (Mary Manin Morrissey)
• You can keep going long after you think you can't.
• You can't lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself. (Gene Mauch)
• You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. (Jon Kabat Zinn)
• You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I've lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Quotes about Heroes

• Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid. (Franklin P. Jones)
• A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. (Joseph Campbell)
• Heroes are the people who do what has to be done regardless of the consequences.
• A martyr is a hero that didn't survive.
• This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. (Philip K. Dick)
• To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform. (Theodore H. White)

Quotes about Adventure

• Adventure can be an end in itself. Self-discovery is the secret ingredient that fuels daring. (Grace Lichtenstein)
• An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. (G. K. Chesterton)
• Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die? (Charles Lindbergh Jr.)
• The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those scared and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. (Theodore Roosevelt)
• For the truth is that I already know as much about my fate as I need to know. The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze. (Richard Bode)
• GO FOR IT! Life is not a dress rehearsal.
• I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. (Diane Ackerman)
• I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
• A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything. (Laurence Sterne)
• Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable. (Helen Keller)
• A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short. (Bertrand Russell)
• One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. (Andre Gide)
• Sometimes you just have to take a leap and build your wings on the way down. (Kobi Yamada)

Fear

F alse
E vidence
A ppearing
R eal.

The Cautious Man

from Excavating Your Authentic Self

I wish I'd known from the beginning that I was born a strong woman.
What a difference it would have made!
I wish I'd known that I was born a courageous woman;
I've spent so much of my life cowering...
I wish I'd known that I'd been born to take on the world;
I wouldn't have run from it for so long,
but run to it with open arms.

Strength and Courage

(Copyright David L. Griffith 1998)