Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
-Winston Churchill

The world isn't interested in the storms you encountered, but whether or not you brought in the ship.
-Raul Armesto

Fortune befriends the bold.
-John Dryden

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place it leads.
-Erica Jong

There is in true beauty, as in courage, somewhat which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.
-William Congreve

Every burden is a blessing.
-Robert H. Schuller

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
-Barbara De Angelis

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk -- and to act.
-Maxwell Maltz

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
-William Shakespeare

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me a man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.

George Eliot

For man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abadonment and poverty are battefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.
-Victor Hugo

Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
-James Allen

The battle is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
-Patrick Henry

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.
-John F. Kennedy

Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them, they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.
-Orison Swett Marden

Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. Because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others. -
-Samuel Johnson

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is impossible to win the race unless you venture to run, impossible to win the victory unless you dare to battle.
-Richard DeVos

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.
-Rabindranath Tagore

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Far better is it 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 a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt

“The Greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”

-R. G. Ingersoll

“The journey of a thousand miles must begin
with a single step.”

-Lao Tzu

“Let me be a free man.
Free to travel. Free to stop.
Free to work. Free to choose my own teachers.
Free to follow the religion of my fathers.
Free to think and talk and act for myself.”

-Chief Joseph

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

-Mark Twain

“Come to the edge.”
“We can't. We're afraid.”
“Come to the edge.”
“We can't. We will fall!”
“Come to the edge.”
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.

-Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle.

The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

-Ayn Rand

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

-Anais Nin

When things go wrong as they sometimes will;
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill;
When the funds are low, and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but have to sigh;
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but do not quit.

Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you can never tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-
It's when things go wrong that you must not quit.

-"Don't Quit," Author Unknown

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

-T. S. Eliot

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

-Seneca

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move.

-The Bible

It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man
who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly;
who errs and comes short again and again;
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 timid souls
who know neither victory or defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt

“Pay no attention to what the critics say;
no statue has ever been erected to a critic.”

-Jean Sibelius

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.

-Author Unknown

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.

-Lloyd Jones

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

-Ambrose Redmoon

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

-Dale Carnegie

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves 'who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?'

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; its in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

-Marianne Williamson