A coward never forgives. [ Sterne ]

Despair gives courage to a coward. [ Proverb ]

The virtue of a coward is suspicion. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

To wish for death is a coward's part. [ Ovid ]

The coward never on himself relies,
But to an equal for assistance flies. [ Crabbe ]

The coward wretch whose hand and heart
Can bear to torture aught below.
Is ever first to quail and start
From slightest pain or equal foe. [ Eliza Cook ]

A coward's fear can make a coward valiant. [ Proverb ]

You can never speech courage into a coward. [ Proverb ]

A coward is the kindest animal;
'Tis the most forgiving creature in a fight. [ Dryden ]

When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on. [ Dr. Sewell ]

A coward; a most devout coward; religious in it. [ William Shakespeare ]

One destined period men in common have,
The great, the base, the coward, and the brave.
All food alike for worms, companions in the grave. [ Lansdowne ]

A valiant man's look is more than a coward's sword. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Necessity and opportunity may make a coward valiant. [ Proverb ]

My sole resources in the path I trod,
Were these - my bark - my sword - my love — my God.
The last I left in youth - He leaves me now -
And man but works His will to lay me low.
I have no thought to mock His throne with prayer,
Wrung from the coward crouching of despair;
It is enough - I breathe - and I can bear. [ Byron ]

Put a coward to his mettle and he'll fight the devil. [ Proverb ]

Necessity makes the weak strong and the coward vaJiant. [ J. Ray ]

A liar is a bravo towards God and a coward towards men. [ Proverb ]

Instinct is a great matter; I was a coward on instinct. [ William Shakespeare ]

God is the brave man's hope and not the coward's excuse. [ Plutarch ]

Fortune dreads the brave, and is only terrible to the coward. [ Seneca ]

A brave man is sometimes a desperado: a bully is always a coward. [ Haliburton ]

Cowards have done good and kind actions, but a coward never pardoned. [ Schiller ]

How many coward passions hide themselves under the mask of puritanism! [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

But look for ruin when a coward wins; For fear and cruelty are ever twins. [ Aleyn ]

Fear is my vassal, when I frown he flies; A hundred times in life a coward dies. [ Marston ]

It is vain for the coward to fly; death follows close behind; it is by defying it that the brave escape. [ Voltaire ]

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards. [ Richter ]

It is the coward who fawns upon those above him. It is the coward that is insolent whenever he dares be so. [ Junius ]

The man that lays his hand on woman, Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch Whom 'twere gross flattery to name a coward. [ Tobin ]

I am a man of peace. God knows how I love peace; but I hope I shall never be such a coward as to mistake oppression for peace. [ Kossuth ]

To be afraid is the miserable condition of a coward. To do wrong, or omit to do right from fear, is to superadd delinquency to cowardice. [ David Dudley Field ]

He who fears to venture as far as his heart urges and his reason permits, is a coward; he who ventures further than he intended to go, is a slave. [ Heine ]

It is only the coward who reproaches as a dishonor the love a woman has cherished for him, since she can not retaliate by making a dishonor of his love for her. [ Mme. de Lambert ]

If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man, I guess I'm a coward. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

If cowardice were not so completely a coward as to be unable to look steadily upon the effects of courage, he would find that there is no refuge so sure as dauntless valor. [ Jane Porter ]

Pain and love are the portion of the man who does not like a coward shirk the world's destiny; if he plucks the arrow from his breast, he becomes as one dead for the world and God. [ N. Lenau ]

Thou tell'st me there is murder in my eye: 'tis pretty, sure, and very probable that eyes - that are the frailest and softest things, who shut their coward gates on atomies - should be called tyrants, butchers, murderers! [ William Shakespeare ]

To die, and thus avoid poverty or love, or anything painful, is not the part of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is cowardice to avoid trouble, and the suicide does not undergo death because it is honorable, but in order to avoid evil. [ Aristotle ]

Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit: but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures. [ Thucydides ]

Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression. [ J. Beaumont ]

Under the influence of music we are all deluded in some way; we imagine that the performers must dwell in the regions to which they lift their hearers; we are reluctant to admit that a man may blow the most soul-animating strains from his trumpet and yet be a coward; or melt an audience to tears with his violin, and yet be a heartless profligate. [ H. W. Hillard ]

We readily excuse paralytics from labor; and shall we be angry with a hypochondriac for not being cheerful in company? Must we stigmatize such an unfortunate person as peevish, positive, and unfit for society? His disorder may no more suffer him to be merry, than the gout will suffer another to dance. The advising a melancholic to be cheerful is like bidding a coward to be courageous, or a dwarf be taller. [ Wollaston ]

The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth. [ Willmott ]