Quotes about courage

One of the ironies of courage, and the reason why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone.

But she had no memory of how to be brave. Here, it seemed, she had no memories at all. Nothing triggered them. And once in a while, when shegave voice to the fleeting edge of one, it seemed like something she was making up.

I have tried to explain to her that the concept of bravery is entirely spurious. We are what we are, we do what we do.

“He said you were very dangerous.”

“No more dangerous than anyone else who dares to speak the truth.”

It wasn’t going to be hard—it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I’d done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to.

The courage to stand alone as if others didn't exist and think only of what you're doing. Not to get scared if people ignore you. You have to wait for years, have to die. Then after you're dead, if you're lucky, you become somebody.

‘Yakov Ivanovitch,’ Zina said, pouring herself another glassful of wine which she at once drank down, ‘do you believe in romantic love? I ask because I think you guard yourself against it.’

‘Whether I do or don’t it doesn’t come easily to me.’

‘I heartily agree that it oughtn’t to come too easily,’ Zina said, ‘but it seems to me that those who are serious about life – perhaps too serious – are slow to respond to certain changes in the climate of feeling. What I mean to say, Yakov Ivanovitch, is that it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is untitled to good fortune.’

Serenity is the first thing people with addiction issues are instructed to request: God, grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.

One should never regret one’s excesses, only one’s failures of nerve.

You can have the courage to climb the mountain, swim the lakes, go on a raft to the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific. That any fool can do, but the courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet, is something which cannot be given by somebody. You cannot free yourself of that burden by trying to develop that courage. If you are freed from the entire burden of the entire past of mankind, then what is left there is the courage.

In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot enter the twenty-first century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation--and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p 109)

The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.