The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.

I’m so fearful, that’s not fearless... I act more brave because I know the danger’s really there. If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.

learn to draw quick and shoot straight, — the former being even more important than the latter, — and probably has to take life after life in order to save his own. Some of these men are brave only because of their confidence in their own skill and strength ; once convince them that they are overmatched and they turn into abject cowards. Others have nerves of

The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid.

at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not frightened. After this is kept up long enough it changes from pretense to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it.

A fearful man who knows he is fearful is far more trustable than a fearful man who isn’t aware of his fear.

A brave man is one who admits his fear. Only a fool believes himself invincible.

The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that were stupid and irrational;
But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues,
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.

but no man is so brave that he may not meet such defeats and disasters as to discourage him and dampen his ardor for any cause, no matter how just he deems it.

Man searches for courage in drink, but it is not courage that he finds, it is fear that he loses. A drunken man may step off a cliff. That does not make him brave, just forgetful.

I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

For no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to these changes, both because he cannot deviate from the course to which nature inclines him, and because, having always prospered while adhering to one path, he cannot be persuaded that it would be well for him to forsake it. And so when occasion requires the cautious man to act impetuously, he cannot do so and is undone: whereas had he changed his nature with time and circumstances, his fortune would have been unchanged.

there is no courage in being fearless. Do you not know that? A person who knows fear and yet can still think of others, well, he be a brave man.