Sermon quotes on courage
Gary Amirault
Silence is evil’s closest ally.
Susan B. Anthony
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
Augustine of Hippo
God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies grey and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to Your honour and glory.
Works and Biography
Augustine of Hippo
Hope has two beautiful daughters Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.
Works and Biography
Thomas Aquinas
The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them.
Hosea Ballou
Honest and courageous people have very little to say about either their courage or their honesty.
Matt Chandler
I’m convinced that if we have a God-sized, God-given courage, then we will be freed up to be the people of God, living out the mission of God, marked by the joy of God.
Matt Chandler
The church before Christendom was made up of individuals who had a courage that could not be quenched by the fires nor torn apart by the lions. It was made up of ordinary people who together unleashed an unstoppable multiplication of churches through the known world.
G.K. Chesterton
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.
G.K. Chesterton
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
Mary Daly
Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.
Peter Drucker
Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
Francois Fenelon
Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence.
French Revolutionary
There go my people. I must find out where they’re going, so I can lead them.
Thomas Fuller
Despair gives courage to a coward.
John Kenneth Galbraith
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time.
A.A. Hodge
It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.
Victor Hugo
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
Jack Hyles
Do not ask for fears to be removed; ask for courage equal to the fears.
Andrew Jackson
One man with courage makes a majority.
Helen Keller
There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.
Martin Luther King Jr.
We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
C.S. Lewis
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
John Neal
A certain amount of opposition is great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with the wind.
Nancy Ortberg
Courage is putting one foot in front of the other when all you can see is a faint outline of the future.
William Shakespeare
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
Charles Stanley
When God speaks, oftentimes His voice will call for an act of courage on our part.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Everyday courage has few witnesses. But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name.
Herbert Bayard Swope
I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is -try to please everybody.
Mark Twain
It is curious—curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
Mark Twain
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Ernest Hemingway
Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
Thomas Aquinas
The virtue of courage is about the fear of dangers of death.
Harper Lee
“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
Heinz Kohut
Almost all heroic individuals face grave crises while they are still on the road to reaching the ultimate decision that they will remain faithful to their selves, whatever the cost.
Salman Akhtar
The English word “courage” is derived from the French coeur, which literally means “heart.” And since “heart” has traditionally (and metaphorically) been regarded as the seat of emotion, spirit, and strength of character, the implication of such etymology is clear: courage involves the capacity to bear difficulties without wincing, to dare and be innovative, and to do what is needed regardless of its frightening consequences.
C.S. Lewis
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. . . . A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.
Lyle E. Schaller
The final thing leaders will need is courage … the willingness to tell the truth, to say what is not politely or politically acceptable. … The most common expression of the courage to tell the truth is to say, ‘It ain’t workin’.’”
“Schaller: Courageous Leaders Can Say It Ain’t Workin’,” Penn-Jersey Baptist, February 2006.
Maya Angelou
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst)
“So you failed. All right you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I care about that? I do understand. You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you’re still smiling.’”
Elizabethtown
Mary Anne Radmacher
Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
Fighting Forward: Your Nitty-Gritty Guide to Beating the Lies That Hold You Back, Zondervan, 2021.
Hannah Brencher
When you start showing up, you learn that some of the most beautiful things only happened because you found the courage to exit your own head and just do the next necessary thing.
Fighting Forward: Your Nitty-Gritty Guide to Beating the Lies That Hold You Back, Zondervan, 2021.
Jonathan Sacks
It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope.
St. John Chrysostom
The disciples are tossed on the waves again. They are in a storm, fully as bad as the previous one. Gently and by degrees he excites and urges the disciples on toward greater responsiveness, even to the point of bearing all things nobly. Whereas in the previous storm they had him with them in the ship, now they were alone by themselves…Now he is leading them into a greater degree of challenge…This was all for their training, that they might not look for some easy hope of preservation from any earthly source…He cast them directly into a situation in which they would have a greater longing for him and a continual remembrance of him.
The Gospel of Matthew Homily 50.1, from The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
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