What Is Bravery Quotes & Sayings

I wish this world had none of it. That we were all bound only by the matter around us and the dreams in our hearts. But it does, and we are all slave to it, unless we give the challenge. What is the point of possessing the power you have if not to use it for the greatest good you hold so dear? And why do you think that goodness exists in doing nothing, rather than trying something you're uncertain of? — Jessica O'Toole

Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life.
No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today.
Don't hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don't sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying- but by all means- face it!
This life makes no room for cowards. — C. JoyBell C.

Never let your fear of the unknown and things being too difficult make your choices for you in life. One of the saddest lessons in life is finding out that your fear made the situation worse than what it was and a braver person stole the dream you gave up on. — Shannon L. Alder

What are the conditions that make for the superiority of an army? Its internal organization, military habits in officers and men, the confidence of each in themselves; that is to say, bravery, patience, and all that is contained in the idea of moral means. — Napoleon Bonaparte

I don't so much mind looking back on having lost the election, or having been denied a role in the play, or having had my novel repeatedly rejected, or having been turned down for a date, or recalling laughter at my expense when I attempted some silly challenge. Those things simply prove that I lived life. What I do mind, however, is looking back on the lost opportunities where imagined concerns kept me from even trying - lose or win. I've learned that there is no regret in a brave attempt, only in cowering to fear. — Richelle E. Goodrich

A lot of pieces I have written have to do with courage. As a result, people think that I am naturally brave. But what people don't know, is that I grew up with phobias and many fears. I was scared of everything. So, I write of courage not because I have not known fear, but I write of courage because I have walked with fear but I have made the choice not to fear it. — C. JoyBell C.

You suggested, Jonas, that perhaps she wasn't brave enough? I don't know about bravery: what it is, what it means. I do know that I sat here numb with horror. Wretched with helplessness. And I listened as Rosemary told them that she would prefer to inject herself. — Lois Lowry

I'm not brave,' Ava replied huskily. 'If you only knew how afraid I really am. Sometimes I think I am afraid of everything.' 'But isn't that what being brave is all about? Being afraid, but doing it anyway? — Kate Forsyth

Sometimes girls, especially those whose tastes aren't routine, don't get a fair break. Too many of us have been bred to timidity. That is why those who escape must run, not stroll, toward what they desire. They mustn't look back. They mustn't question their own instincts. And they mustn't listen to the naysayers. If they can only follow their own true course, well then, they will be as renowned for their bravery as the greatest men are. — Chandra Prasad

We live with the decisions we make, Bill. That's what bravery is. Standing by the consequences of your mistakes. — M.L. Stedman

Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it's actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe. — Christopher Paolini

She leaned forward, her gaze so intense that Helen wanted to look away. "And I love him more for it. Do you hear me? He was a good man when he went away to the Colonies. He came back an extraordinary man. So many think that bravery is a single act of valor in a field of battle - no forethought, no contemplation of the consequences. An act over in a second or a minute or two at most. What my brother has done, is doing now, is to live with his burden for years. He knows that he will spend the rest of his life with it. And he soldiers on." She sat back in her chair, her gaze still locked with Helen's. "That to my mind is what real bravery is."
-Sophia to Helen about Alistair. — Elizabeth Hoyt

It takes a lot of bravery to be authentic and honest and to take that social mask off in order to connect with another human being. So much of what makes us who we are is smoothed away online. And what truly connects us is the wrinkles, not the smoothness. — Taylor Schilling

One thing has always kept me going - and it's not really courage or bravery, unless that's what courage or bravery is made of - is that sense that there are so many ways in which I'm vulnerable and cannot help but be vulnerable, I'm not going to be more vulnerable by putting weapons of silence in my enemies' hands. Being an open lesbian in the Black community is not easy, although being closeted is even harder. — Audre Lorde

I was perfectly calm and perfectly insane, perfectly prepared to accept what the moment had offered. Indifference of that magnitude is rare and because it can be achieved only by someone ready to let go of who he is, it demands respect. It inspires awe in those who gaze upon it. — Paul Auster

Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I'm building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn't have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn't have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn't have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I'm willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy. — Roberto Bolano

Creativity is a path for the brave, yes, but it is not a path for the fearless, and it's important to recognize the distinction. Bravery means doing something scary. Fearlessness means not even understanding what the word scary means. If your goal in life is to become fearless, then I believe you're already on the wrong path, because the only truly fearless people I've ever met were straight-up sociopaths and a few exceptionally reckless three-year-olds - and those aren't good role models for anyone. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Do you think bravery means to be without fear? You are greatly mistaken. You are brave not because of your lack of fear, but because you did not let that fear stop you. That is what true bravery is. — Sarah Holman

There can be no bravery without fear. The soul's triumphant fight over what's most feared is the definition of courage. — Patricia A. Knight

You've never even said hi to me," I said.
"I know," he replied, "but today, I'm feeling brave."
My eyebrows came together. "What does bravery have to do with saying Hey to someone?"
That was the moment; the first time his eyes locked on mine in a way that floored me. It left me breathless as it made my heart sputter to a stop.
"When it comes to a girl like you, bravery is always required. — Nicole Williams

What I have always assumed in him to be bravery may be merely an ignorance of consequences. He thinks he is safe, because he is what he says he is. But he's out in the open, and surrounded by strangers. — Margaret Atwood

I like to call a spade a spade in politics and in everything else.
That's why the zionists and the americans ...
The top officials hate Saddam Hussein.
The White House is lying once again. He's a liar.
He's the world's number one liar.
He said there were chemical weapons in Iraq, and that Iraq is connected with terrorism.
Later he declared: 'We didn't find any of this in Iraq.'
What I want to say is that he also declared that what Saddam Hussein says is not true ...
This is defamation of your president of thirty five years. — Saddam Hussein

I think bravery is when you're willing to really put yourself on the line and maybe lose out, financially - and be able to say exactly what motivates you and what inspires you and what you find completely unacceptable in humanity and in culture. — Sandra Bernhard

So this is how my friend died. Because I taught him how to read the gospels. And because he had the bravery to speak out about what they revealed. — Ian Caldwell

So what is it in a human life that creates bravery, kindness, wisdom, and reilience? What if it's pain? What if it's the struggle? — Glennon Doyle Melton

I've learned a lot about love over these last months. And part of what I've learned is that you have to want someone for who they are, not who you want them to be. You have to love a real person, not some dream in your head. — Zoe Marriott

I have a different idea of what bravery is."
"What-complaisance?"
"In a sense. Acceptance, resiliency. How strong must one be to throw a temper tantrum?"
"Is that what you'd call this? You and your people storm our homeland, take us all prisoner and any form of resistance is a temper tantrum in your eyes?"
He pondered this for a moment, his freckled nose crinkling.
"Yes. — Cayla Kluver

It is okay to climb as long as you are not afraid, because being afraid is what made you fall — Susan Hill

The most ridiculous part is, in any other faction it would be brave of us to tell someone what happened. But here ... in Dauntless ... bravery won't do us any good. — Veronica Roth

And yet, what is bravery but the capacity to reject our fears, ignore and supress them, then go on to do whatever it is we are afraid to do. — L. Neil Smith

It is not an act of bravery to try to save your own village. It is an instinct to protect what you possess. Bravery is when you step in to help when you have nothing to lose. — Gail Tsukiyama

Fans, true fans, are hard to find and precious. Just a few can change everything. What they demand, though, is generosity and bravery. — Seth Godin

Yeah. I can see what you bring out in him. You don't know this because you've never experienced it, but Four without you is a much different person. He's ... obsessive, explosive, insecure ... "
"Obsessive?"
"What else do you call someone who repeatedly goes through his own fear landscape?"
"I don't know ... determined." I pause. "Brave."
"Yeah, sure. But also a little bit crazy, right? I mean, most Dauntless would rather leap into the chasm than keep going through their fear landscapes. There's bravery and then there's masochism, and the line got a little hazy with him. — Veronica Roth

There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die - that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough.
We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he too is brave and afraid like the all rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer. — Alistair MacLean

...for most men are unaware that what is in the power of magicians to accomplish, that the heart can also accomplish by dint of love and bravery. — Joseph Bedier

Courage to me is doing something daring, no matter how afraid, insecure, intimidated, alone, unworthy, incapable, ridiculed or whatever other paralyzing emotion you might feel. Courage is taking action ... no matter what. So you're afraid? Be afraid. Be scared silly to the point you're trembling and nauseous, but do it anyway! — Richelle E. Goodrich

Those who can truly be accounted brave are those who best know the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then go out, undeterred, to meet what is to come. — Pericles

What the Shoshones valued above all else, and depended on absolutely, was the bravery of their young men. Their childrearing system was designed to produce brave warriors. "They seldom correct their children," Lewis wrote, "particularly the boys who soon became masters of their own acts. They give as a reason that it cows and breaks the Sperit of the boy to whip him, and that he never recovers his independence of mind after he is grown." In — Stephen E. Ambrose

I'm not gay." That wasn't what I meant to say.
"Congratulations. Would you like a medal?" Bunny Slippers asked.
"I already have a medal. For bravery, not for being gay. I think you made me gay."
"I made you gay?" He set down the napkin he was holding. "Is that better or worse than the person who made you stupid? — Dani Alexander

I am an explorer,' she whispered, 'setting courageously off into the wild unknown.' It was not a daydream she'd ever had before, but she felt the familiar comfort of her imagination wrapping around her. She was an archeologist, a scientist, a treasure hunter. She was a master of land and sea. 'My life is an adventure.' she said, growing confident as she opened her eyes again. 'I will not be shackled to this satellite anymore.'
Thorne tilted his head to one side. He waited for three heartbeats before sliding one hand down into hers. 'I have no idea what you're talking about,' he said. 'But we'll go with it. — Marissa Meyer

In the days of the Roman Colosseum, captured soldiers were regularly thrown to the lions. But one soldier earned a reputation for bravery and managed to save his life by a bold act. When a lion sprang toward him with lunch on its mind, the man whispered something in the lion's ear just at the last moment. The lion cowered, turned a sickly green, and then slunk back into its cage. This happened again and again, with even the empire's fiercest lions turning tail once they had heard what the man whispered. The emperor, curious to understand the man's power over these beasts, promised him his life in exchange for the secret of how he caused the lions to leave him alone. "It's simple," the soldier told the emperor. "When a lion is about to attack, I just whisper, 'After you've eaten, they're going to ask you to make a short speech.' Works every time.
— Arthur H. Bell

I stopped remembering the past and started visualising my future, the only thing left I could hold onto was hope; that the courage I have found along the way, is what will see me through. — Nikki Rowe

You will never develop courage if you don't stand in the middle of the battle afraid and pick up the sword anyways, to defend what is right. You might feel like you are outnumbered, but heroes always are. — Shannon L. Alder

The meaning of bravery is more than the act of being strong, it is also about letting go of what you cannot control and trusting the unknown. — Steven Cuoco

Do you know what a foreign accent is? It's a sign of bravery. — Amy Chua

After doing this work or the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations, and communities, I'd say the one thing we have in common is that we're sick of feeling afraid. we want to dare greatly. We're tired of the national conversation centering on "What should we fear" and "Who should we blame?" We all want to be brave. — Brene Brown

What's wrong with leading the way? We've played that role before, after all. We gave the world the secret ballot ... that did so much to raise living standards and improve conditions for workers worldwide. We were a leader in extending to women the right to vote. We were barely a nation when we set the bar for bravery and sacrifice by common soldiers in foreign wars. We grew up out of racism and misogyny and homophobia to become a mostly tolerant, successful multicultural society. We did these great things because we know we are in it together. It is our core value as Australians. — Geraldine Brooks

Dying in one's fourth decade is unusual now, but dying is not. "The thing about lung cancer is that it's not exotic," Paul wrote in an email to his best friend, Robin. "The reader can get into these shoes, walk a bit, and say, 'So that's what it looks like from here. Sooner or later, I'll be back here in my own shoes.' That's what I'm aiming for, I think. Not the sensationalism of dying and not the exhortations to gather rosebuds but: Here's what lies up ahead on the road." Of course, he did more than just describe the terrain. He traversed it bravely. — Paul Kalanithi

True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died."
There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?"
"Annabel did."
"Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world."
There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly.
"A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?"
"Longevity? — Holly Smale

If I am sufficiently brave to extract the cancer of fear, I have effectively gutted my conviction that what stands before me is impossible. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

To show that a comedian on stage in India talking about sanitation or in South Africa talking about HIV and AIDS awareness, if you follow the joke into their lives, you can see that, like, oh, these things aren't just contrived in joke books. This is real life. I think the best comedians have that bravery and courage to say, Oh, this is what it is. — Hasan Minhaj

No matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on for the next days - we have to salute the courage and bravery of those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote. — Hillary Clinton

Saeed and Nadia knew what the buildup to conflict felt like, and so the feeling that hung over London was not new to them, and they faced it not with bravery, exactly, and not with panic either, not mostly, but instead with a resignation shot through with moments of tension, with tension ebbing and flowing, and when the tension receded there was calm, the calm that is called the calm before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to our mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be. — Mohsin Hamid

Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing. — Emma Donoghue

How do we work with our minds when we meet our match? Rather than indulge or reject our experience, we can somehow let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we're feeling, pierce us to the heart. This is easier said than done, but it's a noble way to live. It's definitely the path of compassion - the path of cultivating human bravery and kindheartedness. — Pema Chodron

To me, bravery is to stand up for what you believe in. — Sophie Turner

In the end, a lack of compatibility is what ruins relationships. You can't force someone to be an eagle when they are a duck. Nobody wants to fly solo. Dreams were meant to be shared together. — Shannon L. Alder

You're not a hero, despite what people say. You don't need to be a hero to save a life. You just need to be alive enough. A person who loves enough will have a reason to save a life. A person who is curious enough will find a way. A person who is brave enough will have things they would die for because they have discovered moments worth dying for long before their bravery was needed. Discover what matters, then be alive enough to fight for it. Be alive enough, and you'll change the world. - Eldridge, The Five Unnecessaries — Laura Campbell

What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior. — Henry David Thoreau

It takes bravery to care for someone - no matter who he is or what made him, whether he is weak or walking or jumping out of windows. The risk involved is enormous. — Deb Olin Unferth

Seeing a patter doesn't mean you know how to put it all together. Take baby steps: don't focus on the folks whose skills are far beyond your own. When you're new to something-or you haven't tried it in a while-it can feel impossibly hard to get it right. Every misstep feels like a reason to quit. You envy everyone else who seems to know what they're doing. What keeps you going? The belief that one day you'll also be like that: Elegant. Capable. Confident. Experienced. And you can be. All you need now is enthusiasm. A little bravery. And-always-a sense of humor. — Kate Jacobs

I cannot have a man who is afraid of everything, I don't have the time to soothe insecurities and fears, I cannot have a man who is standing on a stone by a creek, watching for the fish to swim by and every time he sees a fish he says "Oh look, this fish scares me, I wonder what this fish means, this fish might mean- this, or this fish might mean- that" for God's sake, they are just fish, and they don't mean anything! Such a sad thing, so many fine, strong men standing on top of little stones, pointing at fish all the time! Such a waste! Such a waste of time! I can only have a man who will leap into the water, not minding the damn fish and whatever other little things that scare him. I need to have someone who is braver than me; if I am a pirate, he has to be the pirate Captain, if I am a pirate Captain he has to be the flying dragon. — C. JoyBell C.

What is wrong with you?' I shake my head. 'Pull it together.'
And that's what it feels like: pulling the different parts of me up and in like a shoelace. I feel suffocated, but at least I feel strong. — Veronica Roth

Growing up seems easier for men, maybe because their rites of passage are clearer. They perform acts of bravery on the battlefield or show they're men through physical labor or by making money. For women, it's more confusing. We have no rites of passage. Do we become women when a man first makes love to us? If so, why do we refer to it as a loss of virginity? Doesn't the word 'loss' imply that we are better off before? I abhor the idea that we become women only through the physical act of a man. No, I think we become women when we learn what is important in our lives, when we learn to give and to take with a loving heart. — Suzanne Elizabeth Phillips

War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims. "What is good?" ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: "To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't for a moment think I am any braver or better than anybody else. This is how I attempt to explain what gives me the strength to do what I do; when that thunderbolt of an idea first hit me and inspired me to row across oceans, it filled me with a sense of purpose so strong that it overcame my fears. Even when boredom, frustration, fatigue or despair threatened to overwhelm me, it was that powerful sense of purpose that kept me going. — Roz Savage

People love super heroes. It's true we're impressed by their bravery and fortitude, their supernatural gifts and physical brawn. But the fact is, villains possess these same qualities. So why our admiration for the hero and not the nemesis? Because of virtue. A super hero gives everything to defend what's good and right without seeking praise or reward. Think about it. All the great heroes give without taking, help without grumbling, sacrifice without asking recompense. A super hero's real strength, what we absolutely fall in love with, is his finer virtue. — Richelle E. Goodrich

We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today? — Henry David Thoreau

Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favor and esteem for his valor, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: "Yourself, sir," replied the other, "by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of my life. — Michel De Montaigne

What is genius or courage without a heart? — Oliver Goldsmith

Peasants are a rude lot, and hard: life has hardened their hearts, but they are thick and awkward only in appearance; you have to know them. No one is more sensitive to what gives man the right to call himself a man: good-heartedness, bravery and virile brotherhood. — Jacques Roumain

Two lives met across death and centuries. To ask what it meant is meaningless. There is no destiny. But sometimes there is bravery — Poul Anderson

Her's what I tell myself now. That it's vital to learn how to make the best of things. That there is no tenderness without bravery. That if things hadn't been so bad they could never have gotten so good. And that it's always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted. Except for this: Every now and then, when you are impossibly lucky you rise above yourself-and get both. — Katherine Center

Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado? Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price. — Marie Colvin

My father always seems to think greatness and money are the same thing, but you know what I think greatness is?"

"What?" I ask.

"Being brave, like Miss Korzynski. Doing something that no one else has dared to do before you. Finding something that terrifies you and then doing it anyway. — Jillian Cantor

Bravery is what you can do in the face of things that hurt and scare you, but you do it anyway. — Adam Duritz

"What does it mean if i'm afraid? Does it mean something bad is going to happen?" "No, it doesn't mean something bad is going to happen. It just means that you have the chance to be brave. — C. JoyBell C.

Life is a temporary condition, Henry. And it's uncertain. That's why you have to seize chances when you find them. Pursue what you want. Take risks. Live, love...all of it. Every last one of us is going to die, but if we don't live as we truly want, if we're not with the one we want to be with, we're dead already. — Martha Brockenbrough

What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter. — Henry David Thoreau

Fear is not evil, it tells you what your weakness is." - Gildarts in Fairy Tail — Bravery

The fact is, when people choose to be brave instead of smart, their courage is generally so threatening to those who are smart rather than brave that they end up being maligned, not congratulated. This is what the Bible says we can expect. — Gary Haugen

What drives him is the thirst for glory; the public good, as he understands it, is a means to that end. So when a great statesman accomplishes a laudable goal by sagacity and bravery, we're right to give him the praise he craves. But when we're surprised and disgusted because the man we lauded has humiliated himself and disgraced his office, we haven't just misjudged a man - we've misjudged the nature of modern politics. — Barton Swaim

To strategize a rescue mission irrefutably capable of saving every human being is leagues beyond our ability to comprehend, and enormous beyond any resource we possess to execute. And to embark upon just such a mission fully knowing that without our death the mission will fall to failure is bravery of the greatest sort imaginable. Yet, that is exactly what Christmas is. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Home isn't just a house or a city or a place; home is what happens when you're brave enough to love people. — Natalie Lloyd

None of us can truly know what we mean to other people, and none of us can know what our future self will experience. History and philosophy ask us to remember these mysteries, to look around at friends, family, humanity, at the surprises life brings - the endless possibilities that living offers - and to persevere. There is love and insight to live for, bright moments to cherish, and even the possibility of happiness, and the chance of helping someone else through his or her own troubles. Know that people, through history and today, understand how much courage it takes to stay. Bear witness to the night side of being human and the bravery it entails, and wait for the sun. If we meditate on the record of human wisdom we may find there reason enough to persist and find our way back to happiness. The first step is to consider the arguments and evidence and choose to stay. After that, anything may happen. First, choose to stay. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

I often say of my background: "That and a Metrocard will get me downtown." Honestly, I think the upshot of my training in acting and writing is that I've been trained to be adventurous. There are so many moments in conservatory where I was encouraged to push the envelope and color outside the lines. I think that sense of bravery flavors what I do. It allows me to take chances that I might not otherwise take. — Steven C. Harper

In Nvengaria we would not dream of doing this. We do not punish a woman for what a man has done, and if he dishonors her and she shoots him, it is regarded as justifiable and she is praised for her bravery. — Jennifer Ashley

Courage, real bravery, is being afraid and doing what you need to do anyway. — Jack Campbell

What makes the bravery of the men and women of the FBI so special is that they know exactly what they're in for. They spend weeks and weeks in an academy learning just how hard and dangerous this work is. Then they raise their right hands and take an oath and do that work anyway. — James Comey

The irony is, though your parents always deplored his absence of Protestant industry, those two have more in common with Kevin than anyone I know. If they don't know what life is for, what to do with it, Kevin doesn't, either; interestingly, both your parents and your firstborn abhor leisure time. Your son always attacked this antipathy head-on, which involves a certain bravery if you think about it; he was never one to deceive himself that, by merely filling it, he was putting his time to productive use. Oh, no
you'll remember he would sit by the hour stewing and glowering and doing nothing but reviling every second of every minute of his Saturday afternoon. — Lionel Shriver

In every life there is a moment. A crisis. One that says: what I believe is wrong. It happens to everyone, the only difference is how that knowledge changes them. In most cases, it is simply a case of burying that knowledge and pretending it isn't there. That is how humans grow old. That is ultimately what creases their faces and curves their backs and shrinks their mouths and ambitions. The weight of that denial. The stress of it. This is not unique to humans. The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change. — Matt Haig

Young men, you who have any piety at all, what sort is it? Is it a hot-house plant, which must be framed and glassed, lest March, that bold young fellow, should shake the life out.of it in his rough play among the flowers? or is it a hardy shrub, which rejoices when the wild winds course along the heather or howl above the crest of Lebanon ' We need, believe me, the bravery of godliness to bear true witness for our Master now. — William Morley Punshon

But I've come to the point where I'm not sure anymore just what God counts as radical. And I suspect that for me, getting up and doing the dishes when I'm short on sleep and patience is far more costly and necessitates more of a revolution in my heart than some of the more outwardly risky ways I've lived in the past. And so this is what I need now: the courage to face an ordinary day - an afternoon with a colicky baby where I'm probably going to snap at my two-year old and get annoyed with my noisy neighbor - without despair, the bravery it takes to believe that a small life is still a meaningful life, and the grace to know that even when I've done nothing that is powerful or bold or even interesting that the Lord notices me and is fond of me and that that is enough. — Michael S. Horton

What qualities are there for which a man gets so speedy a return of applause, as those of bodily superiority, activity, and valour? Time out of mind strength and courage have been the theme of bards and romances; and from the story of Troy down to to-day, poetry has always chosen a soldier for a hero. I wonder is it because men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and place military valour so far beyond every other quality for reward and worship? — William Makepeace Thackeray

Not enough youths fighting windmills. And the old are fearful, jaded or dead. Do not ask me what to do. I am just as cowardly as you. And do not tell me it is enough to speak the truth; that it is bravery enough. Every mountain leveled to the ground, every forest burned, every man, woman, and child who lost their shanties to arsonist fires were defended to the heavens - with words. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe. — Mary Shelley

My whole life I wanted to be normal. Everybody knows there's no such thing as normal. There is no black-and-white definition of normal. Normal is subjective. There's only messy, inconsistant, silly, hopeful version of how we feel most at home in our own lives. But when I think about what I have, what I strived to reach my whole life, it's not the biggest or best or easiest or prettiest or most anything. It's not the Manor or the laundry closet. Not the multi-million dollar inheritance or the poorhouse. It's not superstardom or unemployment. It's family and love and safety. It's bravery and hope. It's work and laughter and imperfection. It's my normal. — Tori Spelling

Have you considered that maybe this is the birth of a new world, that what happens next is a golden opportunity to change the nature of man in a fundamental way?"
"Those are brave words, Tiresias."
"New parents can't afford to be anything but brave, Eddie. — Joe McKinney

The truth is that you are afraid.'
'Afraid? I do not know all the words in the Parisian jargon, and I know not what you mean. — Alexandre Dumas