Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
Cowardice ... is a timorous dejection of soul, creating imaginary dangers. When such a faint-hearted wretch as this is at sea, he fancies all the promontories are so many hulks of ships wreck'd on the coast. The least agitation of the waters puts him in a panic fear, and makes him enquire whether all that are aboard ar initiated.
WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine
The coward fears the prick of Fate, not he who dares all, becoming himself the dreaded one.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT, "Arizona"
Complete courage and absolute cowardice are extremes that very few men fall into. The vast middle space contains all the intermediate kinds and degrees of courage; and these differ as much from one another as men's faces or their humors do.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Moral Maxims and Reflections
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.
GEORGE ELIOT, Janet's Repentance
Patience is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Richard II
I believe there is no other difference between those who are called courageous and those who are branded craven than that the second are fearful before the danger and the first after it. No one can be much frightened, certainly, during a period of great and immanent peril -- the mind is too much concentrated on the thing itself, and on the actions necessary to meet or avoid it. The coward is a coward, then, because he has brought his fear with him; persons we think cowardly will sometimes amaze us by their bravery, if they have had no forewarning of their danger.
GENE WOLFE, The Claw of the Conciliator
