Coward Quotes & Sayings

Indian believes they ain't but two sins ... bein a coward ... and turnin agin yer own kind. — Forrest Carter

It is bad for the soul to know itself a coward, it is apt to take refuge in mere wordy violence. — Radclyffe Hall

I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
(moby dick chap 26 p112) — Herman Melville

Labour leaders lead us all, though we know they bleed us all. Cheer our new Decline and Fall, Gibbon might have dreamed it all. — Noel Coward

Coward is the most misused word in our society. — Doug Stanhope

All men would be cowards if they only had the courage. — Johnny Depp

And running, Will thought, Boy, it's the same old thing. I talk. Jim runs. I tilt stones, Jim grabs the cold junk under the stones and - lickety-split! I climb hills. Jim yells off church steeples. I got a bank account. Jim's got the hair on his head, the yell in his mouth, the shirt on his back and the tennis shoes on his feet. How come I think he's richer? Because, Will thought, I sit on a rock in the sun and old Jim, he prickles his arm-hairs by moonlight and dances with hoptoads. I tend cows. Jim tames Gila monsters. Fool! I yell at Jim. Coward! he yells back. And here we - go! — Ray Bradbury

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward. — Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

Lack of conditioning will make a coward of us all. — Dominick Cruz

What of it? If you don't make a few enemies every now and then, you're a coward - or worse. Besides, it was worth it to see his reaction. — Christopher Paolini

Everybody has questioned my heart, questioned my training ethics, this and that, but I never did something as cowardly as to take any sports-enhancement drug ... That's one thing no one can ever say about me, you know? That I was a coward and took sports-enhancement drugs, because I was afraid I was going to get my a** kicked in front of millions of people. So anybody out there who said I never had no heart, at least I wasn't a coward. — B.J. Penn

Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you. — Miguel De Cervantes

Peter sighed into the water, and his breath sent a small circle of it into tiny ripples. "It seems cowardly, getting old. Don't you think?"
She rolled onto her side to look at him, pillowing her ear with her right arm, and letting her fingers dangle in the water beyond her head. "How is it cowardly?"
Peter kept his eyes on his reflection. "You just curl up around yourself, and sit by the fire, and try to be comfortable. When you get old, you just get smaller inside, and you try not to pay attention to anything but your blankets and your food and your bed."
"Being comfortable is not a bad thing."
Peter shrugged and turned his head to look at her as if it was a matter of fact. "Of course it is. Old people lock out all the scary, wild things. It's like they don't exist."
She wanted to say that she would have liked for those things not to exist, either, but she held her tongue, because she didn't want to sound like a coward. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

I came to believe it not true that "the
coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man
only one." I think it is the other way around:
It is the brave who die a thousand deaths.
For it is imagination, and not just conscience,
which doth make cowards of us all. Those
who do not know fear are not truly brave.
— Leo Rosten

So whatever is experientially real, accept it. You cannot do anything by denying it. By denying it you create the problem, and the problem becomes more complex. It is simple: you feel you are a coward, so what? So, "I am a coward." Just see the point! If you can accept cowardice you have already become brave. Only a brave person can accept the fact of being a coward; no coward can do that. You are already on the way to transformation. So the first thing is that nothing that is experienced as a fact has to be denied reality. Second, — Osho

Look, fear's not always rational, okay? Anyway, there's a difference between being afraid and being a coward. At least there was one thing I could take comfort in: if you're afraid, you must still be a little bit human. — Danielle Paige

I am a man of peace, God knows how I love peace; but I hope I shall never be such a coward as to mistake oppression for peace. — Lajos Kossuth

A coward worships the limits of impossibilities, obeys the rule of uncertainty, respects the forces of doubt, and magnifies the fear of failure. — Olarewaju Oladipo

It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward. — Dolores Ibarruri

THE FINE LINE BETWEEN FEAR AND COURAGE "I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he's got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel." - CUS D'AMATO, LEGENDARY BOXING TRAINER — Ben Horowitz

I'm not temperamentally into high comedy. I'm not a Noel Coward kind of girl. — Kelly Reilly

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I think it is worse to be poor in mind than in purse, to be stunted and belittled in soul, made a coward, made a liar, made mean and slavish, accustomed to fawn and prevaricate, and "manage" by base arts a husband or a father,
I think this is worse than to be kicked with hobnailed shoes. — Frances Power Cobbe

Bullies are always to be found where there are cowards. — Mahatma Gandhi

I was exceedingly affected, says he, upon the occasion. But was ashamed to be surprised by her into such a fit of unmanly weakness-so ashamed that I was resolved to subdue it at the instant, and guard against the like for the future. Yet, at that moment, I more than half regretted that I could not permit her to enjoy a triumph which she so well deserved to glory in-her youth, her beauty, her artless innocence, and her manner, equally beyond comparison or description. But her indifference, Belford!-That she could resolve to sacrifice me to the malice of my enemies; and carry on the design in so clandestine a manner-yet love her, as I do, to frenzy!-revere her, as I do, to adoration!-These were the recollections with which I fortified my recreant heart against her-Yet, after all, if she persevere, she must conquer!-Coward, as she has made me, that never was a coward before! — Samuel Richardson

Staying silent is like a slow growing cancer to the soul and a trait of a true coward. There is nothing intelligent about not standing up for yourself. You may not win every battle. However, everyone will at least know what you stood for - YOU. — Shannon L. Alder

Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the government of the day, to do the work of defense for him. A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women. — Mahatma Gandhi

A humble coward is better than a proud warrior. — Matshona Dhliwayo

I don't know what London's coming to - the higher the buildings the lower the morals. — Noel Coward

To Radu, my brother, I do not acknowledge your new title, nor Mehmed's. Tell the lying coward I send no congratulations. He sent none to me when I took my throne in spite of him. You did not choose right. Tell Mehmed Wallachia is mine. With all defiance, Lada Dracul, Prince of Wallachia — Kiersten White

Vain is your boast in that you have scratched the sole of my foot ... A worthless coward can inflict but a light wound. When I wound a man, though I but graze his skin, it is another matter, for my weapon will lay him low. His wife will tear her cheeks out for grief and his children will be fatherless: there he will rot, reddening the earth with his blood, and vultures, not women, will gather round him. — Homer

No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny. — Homer

A lion or a tiger does not need bodyguards; only the weak and the coward need warriors to protect him! A king needs an army and soldiers, because he is weak and powerless. Wherever you see someone protected; there, you will see either the weak or the coward! Strong fist does not require defenders! Shining sword is not in need of protection! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate. — Charles Caleb Colton

Obedience is the greatest refuge of the weak and the coward people! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Me never believe in marriage that muchmarriage is a trap to control me; woman is a coward. Man strong. — Bob Marley

So you are not a coward, after all," he said, and I fancied his tone was faintly pleased. "You would face the devil on his own footing. — Susanna Kearsley

Our own selfishness makes us the most arrant cowards; our own selfishness is the great cause of fear and cowardice. — Swami Vivekananda

Only a coward would marry someone he doesn't love. You know why? Because love is the ultimate vulnerability. It can put you on your knees and destroy parts of you that will never function again when it's gone. A coward couldn't handle that, so they would instead marry someone that could never happen with. — Danielle Monsch

Good heavens, television is something you appear on; you don't watch. — Noel Coward

If you are really one of us, it won't matter to you that you might fail. And if it does, you are a coward. — Veronica Roth

But I found signs of their trespass: a burned patch planted with a fistful of grain, a tree felled or stripped of fruit, a deer strung up in a snare. I never saw a poacher. They were too cunning, and for cause: the foresters would take a man's hands and eyes and leave him to the mercy of the wolves for such an offense. It was bad enough to steal the king's game, but snares were an abomnination. The gods abhor weapons that leave the hand, coward' weapons such as javelins, bows and arrows, slings. No man or beast should die by such means. — Sarah Micklem

That poem you like, how does it end?"
He knows how it ends. He's looked it up by now, that's why he asks.
But I answer him anyway.
"'We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea-girls wreathed
with seaweed red and brown, till human voices wake us, and we drown.'"
Eliot shakes his head. "It does not need the last three words. The last
three words are wrong."
I laugh at his correcting a Nobel prize-winning poet, but I agree. I
know what drowning feels like. It doesn't need water. And human voices,
if they say the right things, can save you.
"Eliot, do you have a pen I can borrow?"
I can feel him smiling in the dark, and we watch the sea caress the
sand.
"That man in the poem, Mr. Prufrock, he was a coward, wasn't he?"
Eliot says.
My answer to his question is the same as his answer to mine. — Ray Cluley

Sometimes it takes bravery in order to be a coward. — Lionel Suggs

A coward: a man or woman who is unsatisfied by his condition and believes he was destined to accept it that way — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving. I am no coward, to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even quail before the awful shadow of the Veil. But hearken, O Death! Is not this my life hard enough, - is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough, - is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter here, - thou, O Death? — W.E.B. Du Bois

People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it. — Noel Coward

Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea? — Noel Coward

Among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all — Tracy Kidder

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily. — Cormac McCarthy

He who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world; — Thomas Hughes

You'll never decide what you want until you've decided who you are. — Noel Coward

Why?" I shrieked, hitting him again and again, and again, the sound of the blows thudding against his chest. "Why, why why!".
Because I was afraid!" He got hold of my wrists and threw me backward so I fell across the bed. He stood over me, fists clenched, breathing hard.
I am a coward, damn you! I couldna tell ye, for fear ye would leave
me, and unmanly thing that I am, I thought I couldna bear that!"
~~~~~~~~~
You should have told me!"
And if I had?, You'd have turned on your heel and gone without a word. And having seen ye again--I tell ye, I would ha' done far worse than lie to keep you!"
Voyager — Diana Gabaldon

The hero and the coward both feel exactly the same fear, only the hero confronts his fear and converts it into fire. — Cus D'Amato

There were times when I consider simply taking the dagger and sinking it into his heart, I had ample opportunity after all, but I was still young and tough my hatred consumed me, I still lusted for life. I was a coward, a prisoner whose captivity was made worse by the knowledge of the vastness of his prison. Despair began to rot my heart. I fell to indulgence again, seeking escape in wine and drugs and flesh, an indulgence that would have seem me dead before long, had not the foreigners arrived. — Anthony Ryan

When the facts of history are written Haile Selassie of Abyssinia will go down as a great coward who ran away from his country to save his skin and left the millions of his countrymen to
struggle through a terrible war that he brought upon them because of his political ignorance and his racial disloyalty. — Marcus Garvey

What about me? I love you so much. And I tried to make you go away. I killed you and it didn't help. And I hate it! I hate that it's so hard and that you can hurt me so much. I know everything that you did, because you did it to me. Oh, God! I wish that I wished you dead. I don't. I can't. Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together. But if you're too much of a coward for that, then burn. If I can't convince you that you belong in this world, then I don't know what can. But do not expect me to watch. And don't expect me to mourn for you, because ... — Joss Whedon

A coward cries during a storm;
a man of faith sings through it. — Matshona Dhliwayo

My body has certainly wandered a good deal, but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough. — Noel Coward

We all admire the courageous person and quite often consider the individual who lacks courage, a coward. However, that is not how Earl Nightingale saw it. He said the opposite of courage was not cowardness, it was conformity. The next time you are encouraged to fall into line, to be a sport and everything in you says no - be courageous and go your own way. There is no compensation in conformity. — Bob Proctor

Stop saying that. If you are weak, then what am I? I can't hold onto anything, because I don't even see myself. This is the punishment for evading everything. Afraid to be rejected. A coward who is overly sensitive to the sorrounding reactions. I don't even notice if no one points it out. "You must be very sad". Compared to anyone, compared to anything else, I don't understand myself the most. — Jun Mochizuki

Let's drink to the spirit of gallantry and courage that made a strange Heaven out of unbelievable Hell, and let's drink to the hope that one day this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and greatness and peace again. — Noel Coward

STREETER: Let's just not argue. You can call me stupid, all right. I can call you a coward, all right. It's just I believe one thing, you believe something else. I think the world's got an outside chance, you believe it hasn't. That's all. — Robert Ardrey

Let us be quite clear that the ideal is a paradox. Most of us, having grown up among the ruins of the chivalrous tradition, were taught in our youth that a bully is always a coward. Our first week at school refuted this lie, along with its corollary that a truly brave man is always gentle. It is a pernicious lie because it misses the real novelty and originality of the medieval demand upon human nature. Worse still, it represents as a natural fact something which is really a human ideal, nowhere fully attained, and nowhere attained at all without arduous discipline. It is refuted by history and Experience. Homer's Achilles knows nothing of the demand that the brave should also be the modest and the merciful. He kills men as they cry for quarter or takes them prisoner to kill them at leisure. — C.S. Lewis

I think,' Olympia said slowly, 'that I know you quite well.' She looked down at the deck and added in a carefully mild voice, 'You can be a scoundrel; I know that. You stole from me and betrayed me and lied to me. You have no morals and no ideals; you think of yourself first and you're a coward sometimes on that account.' She hesitated, chewing her lip. 'What people call a coward, anyway. I don't know what cowardice is anymore. I don't know what heroism is.' She looked up. 'But I know one thing, and I learned it from you. I know what courage means. It means to pick up and go on, no matter what. It means having a heart of iron, like they say. You have that. — Laura Kinsale

Pick a side or create new one !
Otherwise be a coward or traitor. — Toba Beta

You told me I shouldn't fall in love with you. Remember?" "Yeah, that's because I'm insanely stubborn. I've always thought I was so damn brave. I mean I put myself on the line every single day on the job." He laughed, and it was not in amusement. "But not my heart. Never my heart. And that doesn't make me brave at all. It makes me a coward. — Jill Shalvis

A wicked Hero will turn his back to an innocent coward. — Benjamin Franklin

They say you never know who's the real hero and who's the real coward until you're looking death in the face. I've always been afraid of plenty of things, but fear isn't what makes you a coward. It's how depraved your heart becomes when fear gets pumped through it. — Neal Shusterman

But I am scared. Everybody's scared."
"You know what I mean, like scared scared. Like coward scared, like if you never went to begin with. But with everything you've done nobody's going to doubt you." Then she made a somewhat frantic speech about a website she found that listed how certain people had avoided Vietnam. Cheney, Four education deferments, then a hardship 3-A. Limbaugh,4-F thanks to a cyst on his ass. Pat Buchanan, 4-F. Newt Gingrich, grad school deferment. Karl Rove, did not serve. Bill O'Reilly, did not serve. John Ashcroft, did not serve. Bush, AWOL from the Air National Guard, with a check mark in the "do not volunteer" box as to service overseas.
"You see where I'm going with this?'
"Well, yeah."
"I'm just saying, those people want a war so bad, they can fight it themselves. Billy Lynn's done his part. — Ben Fountain

Humans are cowards in the face of happiness. It takes courage to hold on to happiness. — Novala Takemoto

To take a gloomy view of life is not part of my philosophy; to laugh at the idiocies of my fellow creatures is. However, at this particular moment I cannot find so much to laugh at as I would like. — Noel Coward

We are for ever trying to make our weakness look like strength, our sentiment like love, our cowardice like courage, and so on. — Swami Vivekananda

I am inclined to believe that one who is a coward will be born after death as an insect or a worm, that there is no salvation for a coward even after millions of years of penance. — Swami Vivekananda

I've stabbed a man to death. Had sex with a stranger on camera. My soul was stained black with so many crimes, but I couldn't bear to watch him die. Maybe that made me a coward, worse than Vinny. He had been sadistic. I had been selfish. — Lana Sky

Ford was humming something. it was just one note repeated at intervals. He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. if anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Noel Coward song called "Mad About the Boy" over and over again. it would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons that he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the "About the Boy" bit. he was annoyed that nobody asked. — Douglas Adams

How can such a coward teach someone to be brave? — Samantha Young

What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. — Thucydides

It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died. — Roberto Bolano

God will not make himself manifest to cowards — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Riches make cowards of us ... — Margaret Ayer Barnes

A coward never forgives. — Laurence Sterne

I spend my life imagining you, it is not time to be a coward. — Gustavo Cerati

Criticism and Bolshevism have one thing in common. They both seek to pull down that which they could never build. — Noel Coward

Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure. — Rabindranath Tagore

Look here,' she began, 'you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward's way of shifting responsibility on to some one else. — Winifred Holtby

I was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I'll be no longer guilty of this sin; this sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh, - — William Shakespeare

It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half of mankind brave and one cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on very well. — Samuel Johnson

It's time to take a deep breath and sink into the love and goodness that scares the ever-living hell out of me. I have to make my life count for something, or I'll be treading through this pain like a coward until I drop. — Steph Campbell

Because when you are ready to fight at every moment, you are a coward. Fight is a cover up. You want to prove you're a brave man. The very wanting, the desire to prove, means that you are not. A man who is really wise will never in anyway be searching for opportunities to prove that he is wise. A fool is always in in search to prove he is wise. — Osho

Entering an white tie and tails party wearing an ordinary suit, he announced,Please, I don't want anyone to apologize for over dressing. — Noel Coward

And I recognized then the process by which I had always attempted difficult things. I had simply not allowed myself to think of the consequences, but had closed my eyes, jumped in, and before I knew where I was, it was impossible to renege. I was basically a dreadful coward, I knew that about myself. The only way I could overcome this was to trick myself with that other self, who lived in dream and fantasy and who was annoyingly lackadaisical and unpractical. All passion, no sense, no order, no instinct for self-preservation. That's what I had done, and now that cowardly self had discovered an unburnt bridge by which to return to the past. As Renata Adler writes in Speedboat: I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort. — Robyn Davidson

It's no good pacing up and down. It won't make the plane arrive any faster. Just sit down and accept that we're delayed. You're just making a fool of yourself. — Noel Coward

You're not a loser, Tweet. You're a coward, because you just threw away the chance to be with someone who wanted to spend the rest of his life loving you. — Alison G. Bailey

If I was a braver man, I'd leave things the way they are, but I can't. You asked me why I'm a coward because I refuse to be without you. I cannot fathom any kind of a happy existence if you're not in it. — Colleen Houck

He squinted at her. He recalled the tears in her eyes that had not fallen into her teacup. No, it wasn't a revelation. Not even to him. Yet, this was the same woman who had stolen a camel right out from under the Anti-Zionist army's nose. She'd taken his hand, thrown herself down a sand dune on a dare, and then beaten him back up it. She'd glared at him and refused to part from his side. A coward?
"Never," he said again. — V.S. Carnes

I must confess that I've never trusted the Web. I've always seen it as a coward's tool. Where does it live? How do you hold it personally responsible? Can you put a distributed network of fiber-optic cable "on notice"? And is it male or female? In other words, can I challenge it to a fight? — Stephen Colbert

I am not a saint or a cripple, I am not a wound; now I will see whether I am a coward. — Margaret Atwood

To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defence. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect. — Thucydides