This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Self-control and understanding, righteousness and courage, there is nothing in life more profitable than these." - Apocrypha NULL
"To succeed, one must possess an effective combination of ability, ambition, courage, drive, hard work, integrity and loyalty." - Harry F. Banks, real name possibly Harry Band
"Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice." - Léon Blum, fully André Léon Blum
"Courage is a quality so necessay for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice." - James Boswell
"Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave. For cowards the road of desertion should be left open. They will carry over to the enemy nothing but their fears. The poltroon, like the scabbard, is an encumbrance when once the sword is drawn." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admirable when it sparkles in the setting of a modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"Wounds and hardships provoke our courage, and when our fortunes are at the lowest, our wits and minds are commonly at best." - Pierre Charron
"What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience, to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?" - Jeremy Collier
"Courage takes many forms. there is physical courage, there is moral courage. Then there is a still higher type of courage - the courage to brave pain, to live with it, to never let others know of it and to still find joy in life; to wake up in the morning with an enthusiasm for the day ahead." - Howard Cosell, fully Howard William Cosell, born Howard William Cohen
"Limit to strength? There is no limit to strength. Limit to courage? There is no limit to courage. Limit to suffering? There is no limit to suffering." - Gabriele D'Annunzio
"Our moral strength is in ourselves, in our patience, in our courage, in our decision and in our resolution." - William J. Donovan, fully William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan
"The Indians were religious from the first moments of life. From the moment of the mother’s recognition that she had conceived to the end of the child’s second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother’s spiritual influence was supremely important. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the Great Mystery and a sense of connectedness with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother... Silence, love, reverence - this is the trinity of first lessons, and to these she later adds generosity, courage and chastity." - Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa
"Inside the souls of wealthy men bleak famine lives while minds of stature struggle trapped in starving bodies. How then can man distinguish man, what test can he use? The test of wealth? That measure means poverty of mind; of poverty? The pauper owns one thing, the sickness of his condition, a compelling teacher of evil; by nerve in war? Yet who, when a spear is cast across his face, will stand to witness his companion’s courage? We can only toss our judgments random on the wind." - Euripedes NULL
"There is a heroic innocence, as well as a heroic courage." - Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond
"Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love. When Christ said that man does not live by bread alone, he spoke of a hunger. This hunger was no the hunger of the body. It was not the hunger for bread. He spoke of a hunger that begins deep down in the very depths of our being. He spoke of a need as vital as breath. He spoke of our hunger for love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. We turn inward and begin to feed upon our own personalities, and little by little we destroy ourselves. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others." - Chief Dan George
"Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate; they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Moral courage is a virtue of higher cast and nobler origin than physical. It springs from a consciousness of virtue and renders a man, in the pursuit or defense of right, superior to the fear of reproach, opposition in contempt." - Samuel Griswold Goodrich, better known by pseudonymn Peter Parley
"Patience, the blending of moral courage with physical timidity." - Thomas Hardy
"The conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character." - Thomas Hughes
"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." - Victor Hugo
"So far as man stands for anything, and is productive or originative at all, his entire vital function may be said to have to deal with maybes. Not a victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except upon a maybe; not a service, not a sally of generosity, not a scientific exploration or experiment or textbook, that may not be a mistake. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true." - William James
"It is not poverty so much as pretence that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting." - Anna Jameson
"Have the courage to act instead of react." - Earlene Larson Jenks
"Courage, contrary to popular belief, is not the absence of fear. Courage is the wisdom to act in spite of fear." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL
"Fear is the energy to do our best in a new situation. Guilt is the energy for personal change. Unworthiness keeps us on track. Hurt feelings remind us how much we care. Anger is the energy for change. Discouragement reveals our courage." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL
"Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory; as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others those attempts which he neglects himself." -
"Personality is the supreme realization of the innate individuality of a particular living being. Personality is an act of the greatest courage in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of personal decision." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"Great crises produce great men and great deeds of courage." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"When at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment of each one of us - recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state - our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions - were we truly men of courage... were we truly men of judgment... were we truly men of integrity... were we truly men of dedication?" - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"It requires moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
"Happy the heart to whom God has given enough strength and courage to suffer for Him, to find happiness in simplicity and the happiness of others." - Johann Kaspar Lavater
"He alone is a man who can resist the genius of the age, the tone of fashion, with vigorous simplicity and modest courage." - Johann Kaspar Lavater
"Freedom rests, and always will, on individual responsibility, individual integrity, individual effort, individual courage, and individual religious faith. It does not rest in Washington. It rests with you and me." - Ed Lipscomb
"Man is loved mainly because of two virtue: courage first, loyalty second." - Gaius Lucilius
"A coward flees backward, away from new things. A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things." - Jacques Maritain
"Fear is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. Men's actions depend a great deal upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them. This sort of fear has not relation to physical or moral courage. It is inspired by the knowledge that we are not adequately prepared to face the future and the events it may bring - poverty perhaps, or injury, or death." - John F. Milburn
"Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Valor is stability, not of arms and of legs, but of courage and the soul." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty; but an advantage in judgment we yield to none." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Courage is knowledge of what ought to be endured." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"Each of the four main virtues - wisdom, courage, temperance, justice - is a sovereign wielding authority." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"Who train themselves in wisdom cultivate true courage." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL