50 Short Quotes About Courage and Facing Fear

Find words for facing fear, taking the first step, trying again, and holding your ground in these 50 short quotes about courage.

The quotes below come from essays, poems, letters, speeches, and novels. Excerpts are marked, fictional speakers are identified, and a slash (/) marks a poetic line break. Sources and translators appear at the end.

Quotes About Facing Fear

1. “Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.” — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2; Caesar speaking.

2. “My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 31; Elizabeth Bennet speaking.

3. “We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.” — Seneca, Moral Letters, Letter 13.

4. “What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes” — Seneca, Moral Letters, Letter 13 (excerpt).

5. “temper your fear with hope.” — Seneca, Moral Letters, Letter 13 (excerpt).

6. “If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, / But make allowance for their doubting too;” — Rudyard Kipling, “If—” (excerpt).

7. “For if you once gain time and respite, you will more easily command yourself.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion, Section 20.

8. “While I was fearing it, it came, / But came with less of fear,” — Emily Dickinson, “The Inevitable” (excerpt).

9. “Always do what you are afraid to do.” — Advice recalled by Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Heroism”; its original speaker is unnamed.

10. “And yet the menace of the years / Finds and shall find me unafraid.” — William Ernest Henley, “Invictus” (excerpt).

Quotes About Taking the First Step

11. “Do the thing, and you shall have the power” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Compensation” (excerpt).

12. “Self-trust is the essence of heroism.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism.”

13. “All things are ready, if our minds be so.” — William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3; Henry speaking.

14. “Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, / You must travel it for yourself.” — Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Section 46 (excerpt).

15. “Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, / Healthy, free, the world before me,” — Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road” (excerpt).

16. “Come, my friends, / ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”; Ulysses speaking (excerpt).

17. “Act,—act in the living Present!” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life” (excerpt).

18. “We never know how high we are / Till we are called to rise;” — Emily Dickinson, “Aspiration” (excerpt).

19. “In every affair consider what precedes and follows, and then undertake it.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion, Section 29.

20. “I will be myself.” — Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter 24; Jane speaking (excerpt).

Quotes About Trying Despite Failure

21. “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same;” — Rudyard Kipling, “If—” (excerpt).

22. “Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, / And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;” — Rudyard Kipling, “If—” (excerpt).

23. “And lose, and start again at your beginnings / And never breathe a word about your loss;” — Rudyard Kipling, “If—” (excerpt).

24. “one who, as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever.” — Seneca, Moral Letters, Letter 13; describing an experienced boxer (excerpt).

25. “if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly” — Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic” (excerpt).

26. “I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” — Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, Chapter 2.

27. “To recover thy life is in thy power.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6.

28. “Still achieving, still pursuing, / Learn to labor and to wait.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life” (excerpt).

29. “For remember that, if you adhere to the same point, those very persons who at first ridiculed will afterwards admire you.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion, Section 22.

30. “I was tired, I was hungry, I was everything but discouraged.” — Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, Chapter 3; recalling his journey to Hampton.

Quotes About Standing Up for What Is Right

31. “The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.” — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.

32. “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.

33. “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.” — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.

34. “I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.” — Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter 4; “them” refers to women.

35. “I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.” — Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Chapter 10; after resisting Covey.

36. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will” — Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter 23; Jane speaking (excerpt).

37. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance.”

38. “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance.”

39. “If it is not right, do not do it: if it is not true, do not say it.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12.

40. “Greatness once and forever has done with opinion.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism.”

Quotes About Staying Courageous in Hard Times

41. “Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4.

42. “Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.” — Francis Bacon, “Of Adversity.”

43. “The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude” — Francis Bacon, “Of Adversity” (excerpt).

44. “The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism.”

45. “O friend, never strike sail to a fear!” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism.”

46. “And so hold on when there is nothing in you / Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’” — Rudyard Kipling, “If—” (excerpt).

47. “To fight aloud is very brave, / But gallanter, I know, / Who charge within the bosom, / The cavalry of woe.” — Emily Dickinson, “To fight aloud is very brave” (excerpt).

48. “Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”; Ulysses speaking (excerpt).

49. “Even bad fortune is fickle.” — Seneca, Moral Letters, Letter 13.

50. “A man then must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 3.

For words to mark a fresh start, browse our quotes about change and new beginnings. For encouragement through a longer struggle, try these strength and resilience quotes.

To share a favorite quote in another language, you can use OpenL; keep its attribution and check the translation against the original.

Sources

• William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2 — Quote 1; spoken by Caesar, who dismisses warnings before his assassination.
• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice — Quote 2; from Chapter 31, with the original wording “rises with.”
• Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 13 — Quotes 3–5, 24, and 49; translated by Richard M. Gummere.
• Epictetus, Enchiridion — Quotes 7, 19, and 29; the Elizabeth Carter translation as presented by the Internet Classics Archive.
• Emily Dickinson, collected poems — Quotes 8, 18, and 47; wording, punctuation, and titles follow the early printed editions collected here.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays — Quotes 9, 11, 12, 37, 38, 40, 44, and 45; from “Compensation,” “Self-Reliance,” and “Heroism.” Quote 9 is advice Emerson says he heard, rather than a saying he claims to have originated.
• William Ernest Henley, “Invictus” — Quote 10; from the Oxford Book of English Verse.
• William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3 — Quote 13; Henry’s words before the Battle of Agincourt.
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass — Quotes 14 and 15; from “Song of Myself” and “Song of the Open Road.”
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses” — Quotes 16 and 48; spoken by the poem’s dramatic speaker, Ulysses.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, collected poems — Quotes 17 and 28; from “A Psalm of Life.”
• Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre — Quotes 20 and 36; Jane’s dialogue in Chapters 24 and 23, respectively.
• Rudyard Kipling, Rewards and Fairies — Quotes 6, 21–23, and 46; excerpts from “If—.”
• Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic” — Quote 25; from the speech delivered at the Sorbonne on April 23, 1910.
• Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery — Quotes 26 and 30; from Chapters 2 and 3.
• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations — Quotes 27, 39, 41, and 50; translated by George Long.
• Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience — Quotes 31–33; on conscience, law, and action.
• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman — Quote 34; from Chapter 4.
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — Quote 35; from Chapter 10, following his resistance to the overseer Edward Covey.
• Francis Bacon, Essays — Quotes 42 and 43; from “Of Adversity.”