There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among respectable folk. Only brigands are convinced-of what? That they must succeed. And so they do succeed.
Bullies are always to be found where there are cowards.
Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. . . I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor.
Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is perhaps cowardice.
Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.
Classic is our daring, classic our cowardice. Classic is our cruelty, classic our charity.
Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
So where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.
To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).
Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death?
Who, with tame cowardice familiar grown, would hear my thoughts, but fear to speak their own.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.
Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it.
If commissars in Soviet Russia agreed to subordinate themselves to state power, they could at least plead fear in extenuation. Their counterparts in more free and open societies can plead only cowardice.
Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.
Your devotion is nothing more than cowardice. You would not be here if you had anywhere else to go.
Knowing what's correct and not doing it, it's the worst cowardice.
When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.