You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.
—Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
The definition of cowardice is “lack of courage to face danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc.”
Ask yourself for one moment what your feelings have been on the eve of some act involving courage, whether it be physical courage, or moral or intellectual . . . what has happened to you? If it has really called forth courage, has it not felt something like this: I cannot do this. This is too much for me. I shall ruin myself if I take this risk. I cannot take the leap, it’s impossible. All of me will be gone if I do this, and I cling to myself.
And then supposing the Spirit has conquered and you have done this impossible thing, do you find afterwards that you possess yourself in a sense that you never had before. That there is more of you? . . . So it is throughout life . . . you know “nothing ventured nothing won” is true in every hour, it is the fibre of every experience that signs itself into the memory.
—John Neville Figgis
The Friendly Editor 