#coward

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner. ↗

— Mark Twain

#banner #carrying #cowards #human #human race

How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present ↗

— Robert Walser

#class-warfare #courage #cowardice #inequality #money

Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#fear #love #life

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity. ↗

— Rollo May

#courage #cowardice #opposite #our #society

I am actually a terrible coward. Fear is a constant fact of my life. ↗

— Trevor McDonald

#am #constant #coward #fact #fear

Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed. ↗

— Margaret Mitchell

#battlefield #be brave #brave #champagne #cowards

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward. ↗

— Jean Paul

#courageous #coward #danger #during #frightened

Courage and conviction are powerful weapons against an enemy who depends only on fists or guns. Animals know when you are afraid; a coward knows when you are not. ↗

— David Seabury

#against #conviction #courage #coward #depends

But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#harry-dresden #inaction #life #molly-carpenter #life

There is, after all, no moral difference between the bigot and the tolerator. They are from case to case positive or negative. One man is bigoted because he was given the sword of truth, another because he is angered in thoughtlessness; then, one man is tolerant because he was given the flag of peace, another because he is cowardly and wishes to hide all guilt. ↗

— Criss Jami

#bigotry #cowardice #differentiation #flag #guilt