Echoes

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.

Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.

It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

Audacity succeeds as often as it fails; in life it has an even chance.

Fortune favors the brave.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

It's not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.

It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.

In prosecuting these discoveries, the dangers we are exposed to are obvious, but I rejoice that we are chosen to confront them.

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.

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.

If you're afraid — don't do it. If you're doing it — don't be afraid.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.