Audacity

Audacity is an insolent form of boldness, especially when imprudent or unconventional. It implies a degree of impudence, but also fearlessness and intrepid daring.

Quotes

• The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one is the healthy attitude of human nature.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 50.

• "Oh?" she said. "So you have decided to revise my guest list for me? You have the nerve, the – the –" I saw she needed helping out. "Audacity," I said, throwing her the line. "The audacity to dictate to me who I shall have in my house." It should have been "whom", but I let it go. "You have the –" "Crust." "– the immortal rind," she amended, and I had to admit it was stronger, "to tell me whom" – she got it right that time – "I may entertain at Brinkley Court and who" – wrong again – "I may not."
  • P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing (1960), chapter XVIII.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 46.

• La crainte fit les dieux; l'audace a fait les rois.
  • Fear made the gods; audacity has made kings.
  • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, during the French Revolution.

• Questa lor tracotanza non è nuova.
  • This audacity of theirs is not new.
  • Dante Alighieri, Inferno, VIII. 124.

• De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace.
  • Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.
  • Danton during the French Revolution. (See also Carlyle, The French Revolution, Volume II. 3. 4).

• Audax omnia perpeti
  Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas.
  • The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.
  • Horace, Carmina, I. 3. 25.

• Audendo magnus tegitur timor.
  • By audacity, great fears are concealed.
  • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, IV. 702.

See also

• Candor
• Courage