Echoes

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.

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.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.

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.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

What dost thou fear? Strike, man, strike!

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

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;The valiant never taste of death but once.

We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright.

For if he who resolveth bravely oftentimes falleth short, how shall it be with him who resolveth rarely or feebly?

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.

We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.

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

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.

If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Things are not so painful and difficult of themselves, but our weakness or cowardice makes them so.

You may never know what results come of your actions. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.