Julian Barnes Quotes

It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?

If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination.

"You going back," she said. "You ain't going to run away from this, Grant."

You are a coward when you even seem to have backed down from a thing you openly set out to do

Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart.

It's no fun to be yellow. Maybe I'm not all yellow. I don't know. I think maybe I'm just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn't give much of a damn if they lose their gloves. One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something - it used to drive mother crazy when I was a kid. Some guys spend days looking for something they've lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much. Maybe that's why I'm partly yellow. It's no excuse, though. It really isn't. What you should be is not yellow at all.

I will venture to go... but remember that you must hold the ropes.

Taking a chance and stepping beyond the safety of the world we've always known is the only way to grow.

I'm not writing to make anyone's children feel safe.

Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.

Our safety is not in blindness, but in facing our dangers.

You reach a certain point in your 30s when you say things in a much safer way.

My old man says when it's time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.

Only those who get into scrapes with their eyes open can find the safe way out.

When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.

It's natural to feel fear. All great warriors are afraid. Only the stupid and the delusional are not.

Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action.

You ought not to practice childish ways, since you are no longer that age.

With anything, you have to approach from an educational, mature standpoint.

You gain nothing by becoming cowards.

Strange that cowards cannot see that their greatest safety lies in dauntless courage.

The only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet.