Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.

Amelia Earhart (1897 - 1937), Courage, 1927

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Anais Nin (1903 - 1977), The Diary of Anais Nin, volume 3, 1939-1944

Courage is not simply one of the virtues¹ , but the form of every virtue² at the testing point.

C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse³, front its blows with brave hearts.

Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.

Clare Booth Luce (1903 - 1987), in Reader's Digest, 1979

The bravest thing you can do when you are not brave is to profess⁴ courage and act accordingly.

Corra Harris

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

Dorothy Bernard

I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.

E. M. Forster (1879 - 1970), as a small child

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.

Eddie Rickenbacker (1890 - 1973)

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval⁵ of their fellows, the censure⁶ of their colleagues, the wrath⁷ of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961), A Farewell to Arms, 1929

A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger.

Euripides (484 BC - 406 BC), Iphigenia in Tauris, circa 412 B.C.

Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what he would be capable of with the world looking on.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death.

Harold Wilson (1916 - 1995)

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.

Harper Lee (1926 - ), To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous⁸ person afterward⁹.

Jean Paul Richter (1763 - 1825)

The stories of past courage can define that ingredient-they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.

John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Courage and perseverance¹⁰ have a magical talisman¹¹, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.

John Quincy Adams (1767 - 1848)

Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway.

John Wayne (1907 - 1979)

The worst thing of all is standing¹² by when folks are doing something wrong.

Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky, 2006

If courage wasn't a standard result of aging, it meant that the young could somehow acquire it as well.

Lawana Blackwell, The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter, 1998

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

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Let bravery be thy choice, but not bravado¹³.

Menander (342 BC - 292 BC)

The strongest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592)

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.

Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

When you meet your antagonist¹⁴, do everything in a mild and agreeable manner. Let your courage be as keen, but at the same time as polished, as your sword.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 - 1816)

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)

Fortune helps the brave.

Terence (185 BC - 159 BC), Phormio