"The scariest moment is always just before you start."

Stephen King

From long familiarity, we know what honor is. It is what enables the
individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It
is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to
resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side
street.

-- Mark Helprin

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength
from distress, and grow brave by reflection."

-- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

"Fear is the opportunity for courage, not proof of cowardice."

-- John McCain

"I run great risk of failing. It may be that I shall encounter ruin
where I look for reputation and a career of honor. The chances are
perhaps more in favour of ruin than of success. But, whatever may be
the chances, I shall go on as long as any means of carrying on the
fight are at my disposal."

-- Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) English Novelist

"Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes."

-- Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

"When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder."

-- W.J. Slim

"The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials."

-- Chinese proverb

"Every man has an obscure respect for courage in others, especially if it is moral courage, the rarest and most difficult sort of bravery...It makes the very brute understand that this man is more than a man."

-- Passage from Life of Christ

"The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."

-- Charles Du Bos

"Don’t be cool.Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort."

~ from Bruce Mau Design's "Incomplete Manifesto"