Great Throughts Treasury

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of the rest or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance... Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world that yields most painfully to change." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is one essential vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. n." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

"Courage is the human virtue that counts most - courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have, so we must have the courage to go ahead and act on a hunch. It's the best we can do." - Robert Frost

"Courage without conscience is a wild beast." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

"The greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

"It is a blessed thing that in every age someone has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage." -

"Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism." - Rollo May, fully Rollo Reese May

"No matter how idealistic our hopes... we eventually learn that spirituality is not about leaving life's problems behind, but about continually confronting them with honesty and courage. It is about ending our feeling of separation from others by healing our relationships with parents, co-workers, and friends. it is about bringing heightened awareness and compassion to our family life, careers, and community service." - Ronald S. Miller

"Temperance is love surrendering itself wholly to Him who is its object; courage is love bearing all things gladly for the sake of Him who is its object; justice is love serving only Him who is its object, and therefore rightly ruling; prudence is love making wise distinctions between what hinders and what helps itself." -

"Having patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly start remedying them - every day begin the task anew." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them. Everyday begin the task anew." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Be patient with everyone, but above all with thyself. I mean, do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind, it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness off the deep springs of life. Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living." - Samuel Ullman

"Most terrors are but spectral illusions. Only have the courage of the man who could walk up to his spectre seated in the chair before him, and sit down upon it; the horrid thing will not partake the chair with you." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"The first and finest lesson that parents can teach their children is faith and courage." - Smiley Blanton

"And I say let a man be of good cheer about his soul. When the soul has been arrayed in her own proper jewels - temperance and justice, and courage, and nobility and truth - she is ready to go on her journey when the hour comes." - Socrates NULL

"Creating the unity to run an effective business or a family or a marriage requires great personal strength and courage. No amount of technical administrative skill in laboring for the masses can make up for lack of nobility of personal character in developing relationships. It is a t a very essential, one-on-one level, that we live the primary laws of love and life." - Stephen Covey, fully Stephen Richards Covey

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now history has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, guides us by vanities. Think now she gives when our attention is distracted and what she gives, gives with such supple confusions that the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late what’s not believed in, or if still believed, in memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with till the refusal propagates a fear. Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. " - T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot

"There was nothing original in the conception that the world was round; it was held by all educated astronomers of the time. The greatness of Columbus was rather in the courage that he displayed in venturing into the unknown sea to prove the validity of his thesis and his pertinacity in the pursuit of his project." - Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl

"A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can. It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die, and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of the life and the duty of life." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"There can be no substitute for elemental virtues... only by each of us steadfastly keeping in mind that there can be no substitute for the world-old commonplace qualities of truth, justice and courage, thrift, industry, common sense and genuine sympathy with the fellow feelings of others." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage." - Thomas Carlyle

"Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness; he has a life purpose. Labor is life. From the heart of the worker rises the celestial force, breathed into him by Almighty God, awakening him to all nobleness, to all knowledge. Has thou valued patience, courage, openness to light, or readiness to own thy mistakes. In wrestling with the dim, brute powers of Fact, thou wilt continually learn. For every noble work, the possibilities are diffused through immensity - undiscoverable, except to Faith." - Thomas Carlyle

"The Courage we desire and prize is not the Courage to die decently, but to live manfully." - Thomas Carlyle

"We could be cowards, if we had courage enough." - Thomas Fuller

"Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness: ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any." - Thucydides NULL

"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if it were a part of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life. If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double Dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar gold button that has rolled under the cupboard in his bed room. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living 24 crowded hours of the day. If you live only for yourself you are always an immediate danger of being bored to death with the repetition of your own views and interests. No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellowmen. If your ambition has the momentum of an express train at full speed, if you can no longer stop your mad rush for glory, power, or intellectual supremacy, try to divert your energies into socially useful channels before it is too late. For those who seek the larger happiness and greater effectiveness open to human beings there can be but one philosophy of life, a philosophy of constructive altruism. The truly happy man is always a fighting optimist. Optimism includes not only altruism but also social responsibility, social courage and objectivity. The good life demands a working philosophy as an orientating map of conduct. This is the golden way of life. This is the satisfying life. This is the way to be happy though human. " - W. Béran Wolfe

"Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity." - W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone

"All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

"Simplicity deepens life. It magnifies the simple virtues on which man’s survival depends: humility, faith, courage, serenity, honesty, patience, justice, tolerance, thrift. Simplicity is the arrow of the spirit." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man; it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail." - William Faulkner, fully William Cuthbert Faulkner

"To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth." - William Hazlitt

"We are very much what others think of us. The reception of our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts." - William Hazlitt

"We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage too proceed or damps our efforts." - William Hazlitt

"We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed." - William Hazlitt

"Only he can command who has the courage to disobey." - William McDougall

"When one professes [courage] too openly, by words or beating, there is a reason to mistrust it." - William Tecumseh Sherman

"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness. " - Eric Sevareid, fully Arnold Eric Sevareid

"I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice." - César Chávez, fully César Estrada Chávez

"Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of a cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause. " - Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow

"A little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all." - C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family

"When pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all." - C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family

"To him that waits, all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light." - Coventry Patmore, fully Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore

"The great virtue in life is real courage; it helps one to face facts and look beyond them. " - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

"The only rule is, do what you really, impulsively, wish to do. But always act on your own responsibility, sincerely. And have the courage of your own strong emotion. " - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence