Classics Considered

Today’s TTT is “book quotes that fit a particular theme.”

As it happens, I used to collect quotes about courage, on my old Tumblr blog. Here’s a selection of them…

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

e.e. cummings

Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

The best way out is always through.

Robert Frost

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)

The fear of God is the death of every other fear; like a mighty lion, it chases all other fears before it.

Charles Spurgeon

From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you.

Franz Kafka, The Third Octavo Notebook

Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.

C.S. Lewis

From the start the Traveler had had no doubts about the answer he must give. He had experienced too much in his life to be able to waver here. Basically he was honest and unafraid.

Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony”

Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.

Fyodor Dostoyevksy, The Brothers Karamazov