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

(Alternate version.) A brave man will kill you with a sword, a coward with a kiss.

It takes a different kind of courage to be a coward.

In the beginning there is not much difference between the coward and the courageous person. The only difference is, the coward listens to his fears and follows them, and the courageous person puts them aside and goes ahead. The courageous person goes into the unknown in spite of all the fears.

You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others.

Honor in safety, survival under threat. Better a living coward than a dead hero.

The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country, than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger.

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.

The man who shuns and fears everything and stands up to nothing becomes a coward; the man who is afraid of nothing at all, but marches up to every danger becomes foolhardy. Similarly the man who indulges in pleasure and refrains from none becomes licentious (akolastos); but if a man behaves like a boor (agroikos) and turns his back on every pleasure, he is a case of insensibility. Thus temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency and preserved by the mean.

an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

...do not courageous men endure death because they are afraid of yet greater evils? ...Then all but philosophers are courageous only from fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

It takes a strong man to turn back from a bad choice.

What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?