Fortune Favors The Brave Quotes

Fortune favors the brave," I told her. It also kills the stupid, but I decided to keep that fact to myself.

Fortune favors the brave." Another moment of silence. And then, Iolanthe found herself shouting at the top of her lungs, her voice nearly drowned by the bellow of all the rebels present, "And the brave make their own fortune!

Fortune favors the brave.

IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT RECEIVES A NEW PROOF THAT FORTUNE FAVORS THE BRAVE

Adventure comes with no guarantees or promises. Risk and reward are conjoined twins—and that’s why my favorite piece of advice needs translation but no disclaimers: Fortes fortuna juvat. ‘Fortune favors the brave,’ the ancient Roman dramatist Terrence declared. In other words, there are many good reasons not to toss your life up in the air and see how it lands. Just don’t let fear be one of them.

fortes fortuna adiuvat," Marcello had said to his men. Fortune favors the brave, the bold.

Fortune favors the brave,” I told her. It also kills the stupid, but I decided to keep that fact to myself.

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

Fortuna favet fortibus (fortune favors the brave) -mentioned in The Black Book of Secrets

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and meaning, "Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well." Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbor remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business. Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

One way to remember who you are,” he said, “is to remember who your heroes are.

There are so many important lessons I’ve learned in my journey to now. Trust your instincts, follow your bliss, make plans, work hard, learn to let things go. Don’t be late. Remember that fortune favors the brave. Live. If you need to run, try and run toward something. Study for tests. Laugh at silly cartoons. Be organized. If you fall seven times, get up eight. Always carry an extra pen. Believe you can do everything. Find your key. And the most valuable lesson I’ve learned will forever live in my heart, right beside my husband. Love the one who proves to you that happily ever after is only the beginning.

The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life,” Joan Didion observed, “is the source from which self-respect springs.

Man is pushed by drives. But he is pulled by values. Viktor Frankl

One man with courage makes a majority.

Courage is honest commitment to noble ideals. The opposite of courage is not, as some argue, being afraid. It’s apathy. It’s disenchantment. It’s despair. It’s throwing up your hands and saying, “What’s the point anyway?

There is nothing worth doing that is not scary. There is no one who has achieved greatness without wrestling with their own doubts, anxieties, limitations, and demons.

For Hercules, the choice was between vice and virtue, the easy way and the hard way, the well-trod path and the road less traveled. We all face this choice.

It has been said that a Stoic is someone who says “Fuck you” to fate. That’s right. They resist. They fight. They will not be made to do the wrong thing. Especially under pressure.

There is no better than adversity,” Malcolm X would say. “Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

To each,” Winston Churchill would say, “there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.

Longfellow wrote: Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

It is almost offensively clichéd now to use the phrase “Freedom isn’t free.” Nonetheless, it is true.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor. Fortune favors the brave. Big risks lead to big rewards.” “Do you want to inform me why you suddenly turned into a talking fortune cookie?

Fortune favors the brave, sir,” said Carrot cheerfully. “Good. Good. Pleased to hear it, captain. What is her position vis à vis heavily armed, well prepared and excessively manned armies?” “Oh, no one’s ever heard of Fortune favoring them, sir.

Start small...on something big.

Courage is risk. It is sacrifice . . . . . . commitment . . . perseverance . . . truth . . . determination.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. William Ernest Henley

Don’t worry about whether things will be hard. Because they will be. Instead, focus on the fact that these things will help you. This is why you needn’t fear them.

Be scared. You can’t help that,” William Faulkner put it. “But don’t be afraid.

History is written with blood, sweat, and tears, and it is etched into eternity by the quiet endurance of courageous people.

You just learn to stop thinking about what they think. You’ll never do original work if you can’t.

If it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be any growth in it.

Sun Tzu would say that it is best to win without fighting—to have maneuvered in such a way that the enemy has lost before it has even begun.

Don’t worry about whether things will be hard. Because they will be.

Fortune...and love favor the brave.

Happy is the man who can make others better,” Seneca writes, “not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts.

Fortune favors the brave and never helps a man who does not help himself.

Today, each of us receives our own call. To service. To take a risk. To challenge the status quo. To run toward while others run away. To rise above our station. To do what people say is impossible.

Every prophet has to come from civilization,” Churchill would explain, “but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society . . . and he must serve periods of isolation and meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.

There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed.

There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed. Leo Tolstoy

People who did what needed to be done. People who said, “If not me, then who?

As Marcus Aurelius writes, “True good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

He said they could choose between two attitudes, one that said, “What is going to happen to me?” And the other that said, “What action am I going to take?

Fortune favors brave women

In the world’s broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Character,” de Gaulle reflected at the end of his life, “is above all the ability to disregard insults or abandonment by one’s own people. One must be willing to lose everything. There is no such thing as half a risk.

The king sleeps still, under a mountain, and around him is assembled his warriors and his herds and his riches. By his right hand is his cup, filled with possibility. On his breast nestles his sword, waiting, too, to wake. Fortunate is the soul who finds the king and is brave enough to call him to wakefulness, for the king will grant him a favor, as wondrous as can be imagined

Courage has clear rewards. One takes a risk because they hope for a payoff—something others are afraid to reach for. But what about sacrificing oneself? Or sacrificing deeply for something? There’s courage and then there is heroism, the highest form of courage. The kind embodied in those who are willing to give, perhaps give everything, for someone else.

That’s what de Gaulle realized about Hitler. That his force was entirely dependent on the “cowardice of others.” No one was willing to call the bully a bully. No one in Germany was willing to see that the emperor had no clothes, and was in fact a raving, murderous lunatic. They definitely weren’t willing to say so. Because no one said anything, no one did anything except tell Hitler what he wanted to hear. And so they all became complicit. Still,

Our duty is to do the right thing—right now.

The virtues are like music. They vibrate at a higher, nobler pitch. Steven Pressfield

It’s worth remembering that most people die in bed. Getting up and getting active is much safer!

there is no progress without risk.

Waste not a second questioning another man’s courage. Put that scrutiny solely on your own.

You can also commit injustice by doing nothing.

What good is wisdom if it doesn’t make us more modest?

Trust your instincts, follow your bliss, make plans, work hard, learn to let things go. Don’t be late. Remember that fortune favors the brave. Live. If you need to run, try and run toward something. Study for tests. Laugh at silly cartoons. Be organized. If you fall seven times, get up eight. Always carry an extra pen. Believe you can do everything. Find your key.

As Pressfield concludes, the opposite of fear—the true virtue contrasted with that vice—was not fearlessness. The opposite of fear is love. Love for one another. Love for ideas. Love for your country. Love for the vulnerable and the weak. Love for the next generation. Love for all.

The Stoics,” Cicero would write, “correctly define courage as the virtue which champions the cause of right . . . No one has attained true glory who has gained a reputation for courage by treachery and cunning.

Apply yourself to thinking through difficulties—hard times can be softened, tight squeezes widened, and heavy loads made lighter for those who can apply the right pressure. It’s a tricky balance, but you got it.

There’s a great expression: Whatever you’re not changing, you’re choosing. Later, you’re going to wish you did something. Whether it’s leaving an abusive relationship or starting a company, don’t fight it—decide it. Now.

To each,” Winston Churchill would say, “there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.” It’s more accurate to say that life has many of these moments, many such taps on the shoulder.

Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill. “We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp,” he writes. “Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.

The pivotal moment for Florence Nightingale was the realization that she was never going to be given what she knew she needed. She discovered, as she wrote in her journal, that she’d need to take it. She had to demand the life she wanted.

Courage, bravery, fortitude, honor, sacrifice . . . Temperance, self-control, moderation, composure, balance . . . Justice, fairness, service, fellowship, goodness, kindness . . . Wisdom, knowledge, education, truth, self-reflection, peace

Virtue” can seem old-fashioned. Yet virtue—arete—translates to something very simple and very timeless: Excellence. Moral. Physical. Mental. In the ancient world, virtue was comprised of four key components. Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom.

Don’t let your reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you,” Marcus Aurelius said. “Don’t fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it’s so unbearable and can’t be survived.

Always do what you are afraid to do,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said. Or as William James wrote, we want to “make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.” When we make things automatic, then there is less for us to think about—less room for us to do the wrong thing. There

Rarer than a rare gem, courage is something we must hold up to inspect from many angles. By looking at its many parts and cuts, its perfections and its flaws, we can come away with an understanding of the value of the whole. Each of these perspectives gives us a little more insight.

That’s the question the world is asking sometimes. It knows we’re brave, so it wants to know: Death or kintsugi? Will you find a way to become stronger at the broken places? Or will you so cling to your old ways that you will be shattered? A hero gets back up. They heal. They grow. For themselves and others.

Be not afraid of greatness,” Shakespeare said. Let it enter your blood and spirit. Fight for it.

You have to believe you can make a difference. You have to try to make one.

Not halfheartedly either. But with all the earnestness and commitment that we’ve got. With the belief that we can make a difference. That we must.

Foresee the worst to perform the best.

it was preferable to stand tall in a mud puddle than lick boots in the parlor.

Lord Byron said: ’Tis the Cause makes all, Degrades or hallows courage in its fall.

Hope is the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson said. It perches on our soul. It guides us through the storm. It keeps us warm. She also says it doesn’t ask anything of us.

Never yet,” Theodore Roosevelt reminds us, “was worthy adventure worthily carried through by the man who put his personal safety first.

We must, as Shakespeare said, “meet the time as it seeks us.” Our destiny is here. Let’s seize it.

As Epictetus says, the goal when we experience adversity is to be able to say, “This is what I’ve trained for, for this is my discipline.

There is that clichéd bit of advice: Do one thing each day that scares you.

Any dangerous spot is tenable if brave men will make it so,” John F. Kennedy

Soldiers and comrades in this adventure,” he said. “I hope that none of you in our present strait will think to show his wit by exactly calculating all the perils that encompass us, but that you will rather hasten to close with the enemy, without staying to count the odds, seeing in this your best chance of safety. In emergencies like ours calculation is out of place; the sooner the danger is faced the better.

If we only did what we were sure of, if we only proceeded when things were favorable, then history would never be made. The averages have been against everything that ever happened—that’s why we call it the mean.

Somewhere inside, we hear a voice . . . ,” Pat Tillman would say as he considered leaving professional football to join the Army Rangers. “Our voice leads us in the direction of the person we wish to become, but it is up to us whether or not to follow. More times than not we are pointed in a predictable, straightforward, and seemingly positive direction. However, occasionally we are directed down a different path entirely.

Remember: One drop starts the overflow. One play starts the comeback. One person saying one word can stop a retreat . . . or start one . . . can calm a mob or unleash one. Anyone can be that person. You can give that work, make that play, be that drop.

Longfellow talked about leaving footprints in the sands of time. But what’s the point? The point is the trail this leaves. Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.

Remember: Leaders are dealers in hope. Nobody wants to live in a world without a tomorrow, without a reason to continue, without some dot on the horizon they’re aiming at. And if we want that, we’re going to have to make it. For them and for ourselves, heroically.

We should cherish the body with the greatest care,” Seneca said. Same goes for our profession, our standing, the life we have built for ourselves. “We should also be prepared, when reason, self-respect, and duty demand the sacrifice, to deliver it even to the flames.

Stoics belittle physical harm, but this is not braggadocio,” James Stockdale wrote. “They are speaking of it in comparison to the devastating agony of shame they fancied good men generating when they knew in their hearts that they had failed to do their duty vis-à-vis their fellow men or God.

In one of Hemingway’s most beautiful passages, he writes: If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.

I am a Roman,' he said to the king; 'my name is Gaius Mucius. I came here to kill you - my enemy. I have as much courage to die as to kill. It is our Roman way to do and to suffer bravely. Nor am I alone in my resolve against your life; behind me is a long line of men eager for the same honor. Brace yourself, if you will, for the struggle - a struggle for your life from hour to hour, with an armed enemy always at your door. That is the war we declare against you: you need fear no action in the battlefield, army against army; it will be fought against you alone, by one of us at a time.' Porsena in rage and alarm ordered the prisoner to be burnt alive unless he at once divulged the plot thus obscurely hinted at, whereupon Mucius, crying: 'See how cheap men hold their bodies when they care only for honor!' thrust his right hand into the fire which had been kindled for a sacrifice, and let it burn there as if he were unconscious of the pain. Porsena was so astonished by the young man's almost superhuman endurance that he leapt to his feet and ordered his guards to drag him from the altar. 'Go free,' he said; 'you have dared to be a worse enemy to yourself than to me. I should bless your courage, if it lay with my country to dispose of it. But, as that cannot be, I, as an honorable enemy, grant you pardon, life, and liberty.' 'Since you respect courage,' Mucius replied, as if he were thanking him for his generosity, 'I will tell you in gratitude what you could not force from me by threats. There are three hundred of us in Rome, all young like myself, and all of noble blood, who have sworn an attempt upon your life in this fashion. It was I who drew the first lot; the rest will follow, each in his turn and time, until fortune favor us and we have got you.' The release of Mucius (who was afterwards known as Scaevola, or the Left-Handed Man, from the loss of his right hand) was quickly followed by the arrival in Rome of envoys from Porsena. The first attempt upon his life, foiled only by a lucky mistake, and the prospect of having to face the same thing again from every one of the remaining conspirators, had so shaken the king that he was coming forward with proposals for peace.

Do you know what happens when we avoid the hard things? When we tell ourselves it doesn’t matter? When someone fails to do their job in the moment, or kicks a tough decision upstairs or down the road? It forces someone else to do it later, at even greater cost. The history of appeasement and procrastination show us: The bill comes due eventually, with interest attached.

Seneca’s advice: We don’t need to buck the crowd on every single little thing. We don’t need to be different for the sake of being different—petulant rebellion can be its own kind of defense mechanism. But if we do, on the outside, look the same as everyone else, we better make damn sure that on the inside everything is different. That we are truly who we want to be, how we know deep down it feels right to be.

In the fable “The Golden Key,” the Old Man of the Earth shows a young boy the reality of the world, that there is no progress without risk. Moving an enormous stone from the floor of the cave, he shows the boy a hole that seems to go on forever. “That is the way,” he says. “But there are no stairs,” the boy replies. “You must throw yourself in,” he’s told. “There is no other way.” It’s scary, but there’s no way around it.

No rule is perfect, but this one works: Our fears point us, like a self-indicting arrow, in the direction of the right thing to do. One part of us knows what we ought to do, but the other part reminds us of the inevitable consequences. Fear alerts us to danger, but also to opportunity. If it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be any growth in it. That tinge of self-preservation is the pinging of the metal detector going off. We may have found something. Will we ignore it? Or will we dig?

You have to realize that you are not average. You never have been. You are one of one. You have always had what it took to defy the odds. If you don’t believe that, might you be reminded that your very existence is perhaps the least likely thing to ever happen? The odds of you being born, some scientists have estimated, are in the realm of one in four hundred trillion—but in truth this understates it. Consider everything that had to happen for your parents to meet, for you to survive, for you to find yourself here at this moment, thinking about what you may embark on. You are more than a miracle, you are a miracle on the spectrum of unlikely miracles. Yet here you are.

Remember: Between mountains lies the valley. You may have tumbled down from your former heights. You may have been thrown down. Or simply lost your way. But now you find yourself here. It is a low point. So? A long desert. A desolate valley. Either way, you’ll need to cross it. You’ll need patience and endurance and most of all love. You can’t let this period make you bitter. You have to make sure it makes you better. Because people are counting on you. Don’t give up hope. Don’t give up on them. They know not what they do. You, on the other hand, do know. This desert, this wilderness was given to you to cross. It’s part of your journey. To struggle makes the destination glorious. And heroic.