Not Brave Enough Quotes

I am in awe of Sam's decision to abandon capitals and punctuation but am not brave enough to do the same. I like to imagine the day he, as the Americans say, made the change he wished to see in the world. I like to think it came to him suddenly. Perhaps he was swimming - no, too active - or napping indoors on a hot day - no, too bourgeois - probably he was in Scotland during the midge season and he left the desk lamp on and the window open when he went out for a meaningful walk. It was dark and the midges were drawn to the lamplight and - thinking it was the moon - fried themselves against the bulb, falling in their tens and tens, cooked on the pages of Sam's poems. So when he returned some time later, with bites on his neck, he found his poems loaded with punctuation, asterisks, grammar lying dead on his manuscript and his instant reaction was disgust, a feeling that then infected his whole aesthetic. ~ Joe Dunthorne

When you make a mistake with metal, you can melt things down and start afresh. It is irritating, and it costs in time and soot and sweat, but it can be done. There is a comfort in iron, knowing that a fresh start is always possible.

But a city is not a sword. It is a living thing, and living things defy simple fixing. Roots cannot be reforged. They scar, and broken branches must be cut and sealed with tar, and this makes me angry, as it always has, and my anger has no place to go.

It was easier when I was young. I could use my anger like a hammer against the world. I was so sure of myself and my friends and my rightness. I would hammer at the world, and breaking felt like making to me, and I was good at it. And while I was not wrong, neither was I entirely right.

Nothing is simple. I do not work in wood. I am not brave enough for that. There is a comfort in iron, a promise of safety, a second chance if mistakes are made. But a city is more a forest than a sword. No, it needs more tending than that. Perhaps a city is like a garden, then.

So these days, it seems I have become a gardener. I dig foundations in the earth. I sow rows of houses. I plan and plant. I watch the skies for rain and ruin. I cannot help but think that you would be better at this, but circumstance has put both of us in our own odd place. You are forced to be a hammer in the world, and my ungentle hands are learning how to tend a plot of land.

We must d ~ Patrick Rothfuss

She is staring into hell and I'm not brave enough to join her. ~ Daniel H. Wilson

It doesn't take a literary detective, scanning the passage above, to notice that he is partly saying of Orwell what Orwell actually says about Gissing. This half-buried resentment can be further noticed when Williams turns to paradox. I have already insisted that Orwell contains opposites and even contradictions, but where is the paradox in a 'humane man who communicated an extreme of inhuman terror'? Where is the paradox in 'a man committed to decency who actualized a distinctive squalor'? The choice of verbs is downright odd, if not a little shady. 'Communicated'? 'Actualised'? Assuming that Williams means to refer to Nineteen Eighty-Four in the first case, which he certainly does, would it not be more precise to say that Orwell 'evoked' or even 'prefigured' or perhaps simply 'described' an extreme of inhuman terror? Yet that choice of verb, because more accurate, would be less 'paradoxical.' Because what Williams means to imply, but is not brave enough to say, is that Orwell 'invented' the picture of totalitarian collectivism.

As for 'actualising' a distinctive squalor, the author of that useful book Keywords has here chosen a deliberately inexact term. He may mean Nineteen Eighty-Four again - he is obsessed with the 'gritty dust' that infests Orwell's opening passage - or he may mean the depictions of the mean and cramped (and malodorous) existence imposed on the denizens of Wigan Pier. But to 'actualise' such squalor is either to make it real - no contradictio ~ Christopher Hitchens

A true artist, in my mind, is willing to fail sometimes, because if you're not brave enough to say yes and follow your gut, it's never going to be good. ~ Alexander Skarsgard

It is truly excellent to have someone believe in you and your ability to write. But I think it is just as helpful to have people who don't believe in you, people who mock you, people who doubt you, people who enrage you. Fortunately, there is never a shortage of this type of person in the world ... write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all those people who are not brave enough to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves. Let them motivate you. ~ Kate DiCamillo

I was smart enough to know it was wrong, but not brave enough to stop them. ~ Sylvain Neuvel

If your not brave enough to talk to a stranger how do you think they will become anything more then a stranger. ~ Eden Griffith

I struggle to watch myself in any scene, to be honest. What's done is done. I wish I was able to watch myself, as it would really help me develop as an actor. But I'm not brave enough. It's a difficult thing to do - looking at yourself as this utterly different person on a screen. ~ Eva Green

You can return blow for blow if you are not brave enough to follow the path of nonviolence. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There was this constant urge in me to tear my insides apart,
I didn't know why. By the time I made my mind that it was impossible for me
to do, there alighted the fear, haunting me with the words that rang
constantly in my head, "You're not brave enough".
I didn't feel devastated, I felt the urge to be devastated. ~ Sanhita Baruah

There's no need to tell me I'm not brave enough to be in Gryffindor, Malfoy's already done that," Neville choked out. ~ J.K. Rowling

They were not brave enough to accept her as she came.
She made her own path where she found herself,
she followed it to her own people. ~ Tina J. Richardson

And some, like me, sit down and write because we're not brave enough to live or die. ~ V.J. Campilan

There is a long break.
I have learned Americans love to say you know and then
stop
talking.
They force you to fill in the hard parts,
the things they are not brave enough to say. ~ Jasmine Warga

To be a soldier one needs that special gene, that extra something, that enables a person to jump into one on one combat, something, after all, that is unimaginable to most of us, as we are simply not brave enough. ~ Rupert Everett

I'm now in my mid-thirties, so I look in the mirror and my face is changing, and I have a different relationship all of a sudden with myself. Your face changes, things change - that's just kind of what happens. It's hard, though, in this industry, because I think so much importance is put on how you look, and I'm not brave enough to be like, "You know what? I'm just going to let it happen. Whatever. I'm so cool with every line on my face." ~ Kristen Stewart

the path your life is stuck on and be free

It's a dark whisper calling to me.

But I'm not brave enough to listen. I'm old enough to know I don't have any special talents. So no matter how depressing... I have to suck it up... And live the life I have. ~ Inio Asano

Ah, the relationships we get into just to get out of the ones we are not brave enough to say are over. ~ Julia Phillips

Find what you love. Some people call their calling their passion, but I've always thought that's a strange word to use. Because passion burns bright, but it burns out – it has not love's endurance, nor it's grace. It is love that will pick you up when you have fallen; love that will nourish your spirit; and love that will outlast everything else. Beware of pride, and of fear, and of attaching value to the superficial splendors of this world. These things will betray you, but love will not.

Find what you love. You will know it because it scares you, just a little; it is always frightening to give of your whole heart, but to do any less is to live a small life. You know it because it loves you in return, which means it will never take from you without giving back ten thousandfold. Once you have found it, you must defend it against those who would diminish it, and you. Honour your own feelings, be true to your own heart, and never, ever let others define who you are, or who you should be.

I found what I loved, when I was young. Except I was not brave enough to hold onto it, and I abandoned my love for lesser things. Love kept faith when I did not; it was waiting when I returned. But don't make my mistake. Find what you love.

And never let it go. ~ Ambelin Kwaymullina

Because I'm not brave enough to change with everyone watching me. I want to do it alone. I want it to be real. ~ Tarryn Fisher

She was resilient
A brave soldier when life tested her
It didn't matter that she did strange things
like stand tall under the rain
letting the drops kiss her skin
thinking the storm was romantic
It was hard to quiet her
not that you would want to
when she spoke, it was captivating
Her heart was like a candle
warm and delicate
just what you needed during darkness
Sometimes, she'd go off and explore the world
test her limits
laugh too much
cry when humans were cruel
It wasn't hard to see why people envied her
You'd come to realize she was a lion
and she could not be tamed. ~ M.J. Abraham

But as someone famous (it was either Winston Churchill or Rocky Balboa) once said, 'Being brave ain't about not being punched, it's about being punched but continuing to come back to get punched over and over again'. ~ Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter

To the Hesitating Purchaser:
If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold
And all the old romance, retold,
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of to-day:
-So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave,
Where these and their creations lie! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

We can always be sure of one thing - that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments. ~ Christopher Hitchens

…and the mousesized mousecolored spinster trembling and aghast at her own temerity, staring across it at the childless bachelor in whom ended that long line of men who had had something in them of decency and pride even after they had begun to fail at the integrity and the pride had become mostly vanity and selfpity: from the expatriate who had to flee his native land with little else except his life yet who still refused to accept defeat, through the man who gambled his life and his good name twice and lost twice and declined to accept that either, and the one who with only a clever small quarterhorse for tool avenged his dispossessed father and grandfather and gained a principality, and the brilliant and gallant governor and the general who though he failed at leading in battle brave and gallant men at least risked his own life too in the failing, to the cultured dipsomaniac who sold the last of his patrimony not to buy drink but to give one of his descendants at least the best chance in life he could think of. ~ William Faulkner

I, an old man, have written this fire report. Among other things, it was important to me, as an exercise for old age, to enlarge my knowledge and spirit so I could accompany young men whose lives I might have lived on their way to death. I have climbed where they climbed, and in my time I have fought fire and inquired into its nature. In addition, I have lived to get a better understanding of myself and those close to me, many of them now dead. Perhaps it is not odd, at the end of this tragedy, where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky, but courage struggling for oxygen, that I have often found myself thinking of my wife on her brave and lonely way to death. ~ Norman Maclean

Do not look upon this world with fear and loathing. Bravely face whatever the gods offer. ~ Morihei Ueshiba

I've never thought of myself as being particularly brave - I used to be frightened of the dark when I was small. And I'm not very good with dead rats and things like that. But I face what has to be faced and I hope as best as I'm able. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Take care of him, her father had charged her. She had thought - until he wakes. But she began to see what her father had trusted to her, and how very much Sasha needed someone he could trust-
Someone as brave as her father, someone not afraid of him - no matter what. ~ C.J. Cherryh

One of the things you need to understand is that I'm not a brave person.
I don't put up with being messed around, and I don't suffer fools gladly.
The short version of that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can produce
character references. But that's something else. I'm not brave. ~ Robin McKinley

November came roaring in with gusty winds and more wet weather. Mandy's depression would not go away. Her garden seemed sad, too. It was virtually empty now, and the few brave flowers that remained there were flattened by rain, their yellows stalks sprawling in all directions. Most of the trees were bare, and the woods had a wet carpet of leaves. ~ Julie Andrews Edwards

NO DIVINE BOVINE ! The clumsy creature currently inhabiting the White House is a distinctly dangerous animal. Part boneheaded raging bully, part dastardly coward showing signs of advanced stage mad cow disease. Neither of good pedigree nor useful breeding stock, there is essentially very little of substance between the T (bone) and the RUMP, except of course for an abundance of methane and bullshit. It's high time brave matadors for you to enter the bullring, with nimble step and fleet of foot. Take good aim and bring down this marauding beast once and for all. Slay public enemy number one and we will salute you forever. A louder cheer you will not hear from Madrid to Mexico City, from Beijing to Brussels, from London to Lahore, from Toronto to Tehran and ten thousand cities in between. ~ Alex Morritt

Being brave is not the absence of fear, but having courage greater than it to dare! ~ Manuela George-Izunwa

My commitment falters. "It comes out. Twenty-one washes." That's not what I intended to say. The plan was to put my hand on my hip and say, "It's my hair. I can do what I want with it." That's what brave, angsty teenagers say after they do something rebellious. But I'm pretty sure those teenagers didn't ever have to answer to someone like my mother. I'm also sure I'm neither brave nor angsty. ~ Kasie West

Marry me, Lou," Nietzsche bent down on one knee, his knees creaked. He peered over top of his glasses with a gaze of pitiful defeat. He had met his match with Lou. She was brilliant, shrewd, and brave. Taking risks that other women dare not.

"Get up, Friedrich," she responded, "You know that I won't marry you or anyone else. ~ Dylan Callens

She lifted her chin, trying to be brave, fearing he'd still not want her. All she could do was focus on the middle of his chest. He wore another novelty shirt that had "Now they see the sky and they remember what they are. ~ Melissa Blue

Being brave is being scared and worried and still doing it [what you do]. Because if you're just a wacko, a mashugana, a crazy guy, then you're not brave, your nuts! ~ Mel Brooks

Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don't think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin. ~ Elizabeth Wein

I'm scared, Lane." I let him pull me to his chest and closed my eyes as his arms wrapped around me.

"We'll be ok."

"This isn't one of those Zombie movies. We're not going to find some weird person with a key to the end of this epidemic. If anything, we're probably bunched in with those that are the first to die."

"No way." He pressed his lips to my forehead. "Look. We have the guy who has a girlfriend and a kid, the single handsome guy, when the others get here we'll have the jokers, the one that panics, and the girl who goes off and get herself killed." He frowned. "Only we'll make sure Lizzy doesn't go off on her own." He nodded, satisfied with his analogy. "We have all the key elements of the main cast of characters."

"And what about us? You left us out."
"Well, obviously, I'm the mature and brave one that will keep everyone from panicking." He grinned. "And you'll be the one that ends up rocking in a corner after you lose your mind. ~ Meaka Kyel

FLY A HELICOPTER? SURE, WHY NOT. Leo had done plenty of crazier things that week. The sun was going down as they flew north over the Richmond Bridge, and Leo couldn't believe the day had gone so quickly. Once again, nothing like ADHD and a good fight to the death to make time fly. Piloting the chopper, he went back and forth between confidence and panic. If he didn't think about it, he found himself automatically flipping the right switches, checking the altimeter, easing back on the stick, and flying straight. If he allowed himself to consider what he was doing, he started freaking out. He imagined his Aunt Rosa yelling at him in Spanish, telling him he was a delinquent lunatic who was going to crash and burn. Part of him suspected she was right. "Going okay?" Piper asked from the copilot's seat. She sounded more nervous than he was, so Leo put on a brave face. ~ Rick Riordan

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal. ~ Charles Dickens

Not everyone can be rich,' Peter went on. 'Not everyone can be strong or clever. Not everyone can be beautiful. But we can ALL be brave! If we tell ourselves we can do it; if we say to our hearts, 'don't jump about'; if we carry ourselves like heroes ... we can all be brave! We can all look Danger in the face and be glad to meet it, and draw our swords and say, 'Have at you, Danger! You don't scare me!' Courage is just there for the taking; you don't need money to buy it. You don't need to go to school to learn it! Courage is the thing, isn't it? Don't you think so, people? Aren't I right? Courage is the thing! All goes if courage goes! ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

There are many fishes in the sea and then there are a few beautiful swishy mermaids. Me?! No, I'm not the fish not even the mermaid, I don't belong to the sea.
I am the Ocean! At a horizon far far away I'm a whirlpool of a storm rising and chasing, twirling and dancing to my own tunes and at another all calm serene still and silent, I am the ocean! limitless boundless infinite and as beautiful as I may seem from the outside, I have life within! ~ Himanjali Singh

To die in order to avoid the pains of poverty, love, or anything that is disagreeable, is not the part of a brave man, but of a coward. ~ Aristotle.

I like Texas and Texans. In Texas, everything is bigger. When Texans win, they win big. And when they lose, it's spectacular.
If you really want to learn the attitude of how to handle risk, losing and failure, go to San Antonio and visit the Alamo. The Alamo is a great story of brave people who chose to fight, knowing there was no hope of success against overwhelming odds. They chose to die instead of surrendering. It's an inspiring story worthy of study; nonetheless, it's still a tragic military defeat. They got their butts kicked. A failure if you will. They lost. So how do Texans handle failure? They still shout, "Remember the Alamo!"
That's why I like Texans so much. They took a great failure and turned it into a tourist destination that makes them millions.
Texans don't bury their failures. They get inspired by them. They take their failures and turn them into rallying cries. Failure inspires Texans to become winners. But that formula is not just the formula for Texans. It is formula for all winners. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

It's not brave if your not scared. ~ Don Roos

At the thought of being eaten by rats, Despereaux forgot about being brave. He forgot about not being a disappointment. He felt himself heading into another faint. But his mother, who had an excellent sense of dramatic timing, beat him to it; she executed a beautiful, flawless swoon, landing right at Despereaux's feet. ~ Kate DiCamillo

But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be brave and do not pray for the hard thing to go away, but pray for a bravery that's bigger than the hard thing. ~ Ann Voskamp

There's not too many things I'm afraid of, but I'm not too brave when it comes to sitting in a chair getting my teeth drilled. ~ David Zayas

Apparently the book says that at certain times in your life everything goes wrong and you don't know which way to turn and it is as if everywhere around you stainless steel doors are clamping shut like in Star Trek. What you have to do is be a heroine and stay brave, without sinking into drink or self-pity and everything will be OK. And that all the Greek myths and many successful movies are all about human beings facing difficult trials and not being wimps but holding hard and thus coming out on top. The ~ Helen Fielding

Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is noninterference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile to the industrious, brave and persevering. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All the absurd little meetings, decisions, inner skirmishes that go to make up our days. It all adds up to very little, and yet it all adds up to very much. Our days are full of nonsense, and yet not, because it is precisely into the nonsense of our days that God speaks to us words of great significance - not words that are written in the stars but words that are written into the raw stuff and nonsense of our days, which are not nonsense just because God speaks into the midst of them. And the words that he says, to each of us differently, are "Be brave…be merciful…feed my lambs…press on toward the goal. ~ Frederick Buechner

Legends were not only for the desperate. Legends were for the brave. (Soren) ~ Kathryn Lasky

Master, I'm afraid. I am, truly. This place scares me. At home, I know who I am, what to do. I'm the Warden's daughter, I know where I stand. But this is a dangerous place, full of pitfalls. All my life, I've known it was waiting for me, but now I'm not sure I can face it. They'll want to absorb me, make me one of them, and I won't change. I won't! I want to stay me."
Jared sighed and she saw his dark gaze was fixed on the veiled window.
"Claudia, you're the bravest person I know. And no one will change you. You will rule here, though it won't be easy ... ~ Catherine Fisher

Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank You for this place in which we dwell, for the love accorded us this day, for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare us to our friends, soften us to our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors; if it may not, give us strength to endure that which is to come that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another. We beseech of you this help and mercy for Christ's sake. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson