C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Bravery
God helps the brave.
Fortune favors the brave.
A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.
None but the brave deserves the fair.
A brave man may fall but cannot yield.
True bravery is quiet, undemonstrative.
The brave man may yield to a braver man.
The brave find a home in every land.
Brave men are brave from the very first.
The brave are parsimonious of threats.
’Tis late before the brave despair.
Bravery is often too sharp a spur.
Brave deeds are most estimable when hidden.
General Taylor never surrenders.
The bravest men are subject most to chance.
That’s a valiant flea that dares eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.
A brave man is clear in his discourse, and keeps close to truth.
A true knight is fuller of gay bravery in the midst than in the beginning of danger.
We come to know best what men are, in their worse jeopardies.
Brave men do not boast nor bluster. Deeds, not words, speak for such.
Women commiserate the brave, and men the beautiful.
Who bravely dares must sometimes risk a fall.
He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer the worst that man can breathe.
The best hearts, Trim, are ever the bravest, replied my uncle Toby.
What will not woman, gentle woman, dare when strong affection stirs her spirit up?
The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes, and feel for what their duty bids them do.
It is besides necessary that whoever is brave should be a man of great soul.
In adversity it is easy to despise life; he is truly brave who can endure a wretched life.
Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms—oftenest, God bless her!—in female breasts.
True Bravery is shown by performing, without witnesses, what one might be capable of doing before all the world.
Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field.
Dare to do something worthy of transportation and a prison, if you mean to be anybody.
The brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair through fear alone.
Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage.
No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good.
Bravery is a cheap and vulgar quality, of which the brightest instances are frequently found in the lowest savage.
Fight valiantly to-day; and yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it, for thou art framed of the firm truth of valor.
People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.
There is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man’s commendation with woman than report of valor.
The brave man, indeed, calls himself lord of the land, through his iron, through his blood.
What valor were it, when a cur doth grin, for one to thrust his hand between his teeth, when he might spurn him with his foot away?
I know not how, but martial men are given to love. I think it is but as they are given to wine; for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures.
That courage which arises from the sense of our duty, and from the fear of offending Him that made us, acts always in a uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right reason.
At the bottom of a good deal of the bravery that appears in the world there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they cannot face public opinion.
The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul its fear subdues, and bravely dares the danger which it shrinks from.
The heroic example of other days is in great part the source of the courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onward by the shades of the brave that were.
The bravery founded upon the hope of recompense, upon the fear of punishment, upon the experience of success, upon rage, upon ignorance of dangers, is common bravery, and does not merit the name. True bravery proposes a just end, measures the dangers, and, if it is necessary, the affront, with coldness.
Cato the elder, when somebody was praising a man for his foolhardy bravery, said “that there was an essential difference between a really brave man and one who had merely a contempt for life.”
Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul, which raises it above the troubles, disorders and emotions which the sight of great perils can arouse in it; by this strength heroes maintain a calm aspect and preserve their reason and liberty in the most surprising and terrible accidents.
Courage is incompatible with the fear of death; but every villain fears death; therefore, no villain can be brave. He may, indeed, possess the courage of the rat, and fight with desperation when driven into a corner,*****yet the glare of a courage thus elicited by danger, where fear conquers fear, is not to be compared to that calm sunshine which constantly cheers and illuminates the breast of him, who builds his confidence on virtuous principles.