Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves.
When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half of mankind brave and one cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on very well.
Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace.
I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.
Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.
Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.