cowardice

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world; war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendour. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure but does not complain, for it is the friction which polishes him. It is the pressure which refines and makes him noble

May coward shame distain his name, The wretch that dares not die!

Valor is of no service, chance rules all, and the bravest often fall by the hands of cowards.

The coward regards himself as cautious, the miser as thrifty.

A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them, since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind and in fleeing them the cowardice of the heart.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing.

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 when you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

When you disarm [the people], you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.