Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Valor
But where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live.
Sir Thomas Browne—Religio Medici. Pt. XLIV.
There is always safety in valor.
Emerson—English Traits. The Times.
Valor consists in the power of self-recovery.
Emerson—Essays. Circles.
A valiant man
Ought not to undergo, or tempt a danger,
But worthily, and by selected ways,
He undertakes with reason, not by chance.
His valor is the salt t’ his other virtues,
They’re all unseason’d without it.
Ben Jonson—New Inn. Act IV. Sc. 3.
Stimulos dedit æmula virtus.
He was spurred on by rival valor.
Lucan—Pharsalia. I. 120.
In vain doth valour bleed,
While Avarice and Rapine share the land.
Milton—Sonnet. To the Lord General Fairfax.
When valour preys on reason,
It eats the sword it fights with.
Antony and Cleopatra. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 199.
What valour were it, when a cur doth grin,
For one to thrust his hand between his teeth,
When he might spurn him with his foot, away?
Henry VI. Pt. III. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 56.
You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valor plucks dead lions by the beard.
King John. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 137.
’Tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety.
Macbeth. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 51.
He’s truly valiant that can suffer wisely
The worst that man can breathe and make his wrongs
His outsides, to wear them like his raiment, carelessly;
And ne’er prefer his injuries to his heart.
To bring it into danger.
Timon of Athens. Act III. Sc. 5. L. 31.
My valor is certainly going!—it is sneaking off!—I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands.
Sheridan—The Rivals. Act V. Sc. 3.
Exigui numero, sed bello vivida virtus.
Of small number, but their valour quick for war.
Vergil—Æneid. V. 754.