Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Courage & Cowardice
Virtue is the deed of the bravest art which demands the greatest confidence and fearlessness. Only some hardy soul ventures upon it. Virtue is a bravery so hardy that it deals in what it has no experience in.—Journal, 1 January 1842
We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.—WaldenÂ
What we want is not mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts with free men-to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the State, it is cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or bow much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but men.—Journal, 18 June 1854
Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and woe be to the coward.—Journal, 21 March 1853
When I hear music I fear no danger, I am invulnerable, I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.—Journal, 13 January 1857
With many men their fine manners are a lie all over, a skim-coat or finish of falsehood. They are not brave enough to do without this sort of armor, which they wear night and day.—Journal, 29 March 1858
You may find a cape which runs six miles into the sea that has not a man of moral courage upon it.—Journal, 16 November 1858
