Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Winston Churchill, from here

 

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.

Mark Twain, from here

 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain, from here

 

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all–in which case, you fail by default.

J. K. Rowling, from here and here

 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Teddy Roosevelt, from here

 

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

John Augustus Shedd, from here

 

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Vincent van Gogh, from here

 

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

Anais Nin, from here

 

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Mary Schmich, from here (often misattributed to Eleanor Roosevelt). Paraphrased in this site’s tagline.