Brave men are a city's strongest tower of defence.

-Alcaeus
c.600  BC  Attributed.

Look at the Irish! Theyare the cleverest propagandists extant, and managed to persuade most people that they were a brave, generous, humorous, talented, warm- hearted race, cruelly yoked to a dull mercantile England, when,God knows, they were exactly the opposite.

-Buchan,John, 1st BaronTweedsmuir
  The Three Hostages.

Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle, Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?

-Clough, Arthur Hugh
  Amours de Voyage, canto 5, pt.6.

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest!

-Collins,William
  'How Sleep the Brave' (published1748), no.1.

unless statistics lie he was more brave than me: more blond than you

-cummings, e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings
w,'i sing of Olaf glad and big'.

The difficultest job a man can do, is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, and feel that that's the proper thing for you.

-Davidson,John
  Ballads and Songs,'Thirty Bob a Week', stanza15.

Then trust me, there's nothing like drinking So pleasant this side of the grave; It keeps the unhappy from thinking, And makes e'en the valiant more brave.

-Diaz, Porfirio
'Nothing Like Grog'. First published1803.

To fight aloud, is very brave, But gallanter, I know, Who charge within the bosom The Cavalry of Woe.

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1859  Complete Poems, no.126 (first published1890).

Happy, happy, happy, pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair.

-Dryden,John
  Alexander's Feast, l.4^7.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

-Eisenhower, Dwight D(avid)
  In Time, 6 Oct.

Vixere fortes anteAgamemnona Multi; sed omnes illacrimabiles Urgentur ignotique longa Nocte, carent quia vate sacro. Many brave men lived before Agamemnon's time; but theyare all unmourned and unknown, covered by the long night, because they lack their sacred poet.

-Horace full name  Quintus Horatius Flaccus   65
Odes, bk.4, no.9, l.25^8.

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleamingö Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the clouds of the fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! Keynes And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through thenight that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

-Key, Francis Scott
  'The Star-Spangled Banner', originally published as'The Defence of Fort M'Henry' in the Baltimore Patriot, 20 Sep; it commemorates the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, by the British,13^14 Sep.

The Mountjoy began to move, and soon passed safe through the broken stakes and floating spars.But her brave master was no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck him; and he died by the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which was his birthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by his courage and self-devotion from the most frightful form of destruction.

-1st Baron
  History of England, on the relief of Londonderry, vol.2, ch.12.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

-Millay, Edna St Vincent
  The Buck in the Snow,'Dirge Without Music'.

Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed.

-Mitchell, Margaret
   Ashley Wilkes. Gone  with  the Wind, ch.31.

What can I tell you, son of mine? I could tell you of heartbreak, hatred blind, I could tell of crimes that shame mankind, Of brutal wrong and deeds malign, Of rape and murder, son of mine; But I'll tell instead of brave and fine When lives of black and white entwine, And men in brotherhood combineö This would I tell you, son of mine.

-Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska
  We Are Going,'Son of Mine'.

Thislittlesteamer, likeall herbraveand battered sisters,is immortal. She'll go sailing proudly down the years in the epic of Dunkirk. And our great-great-grand-children, when they learn how we began this war by snatching glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.

-Priestley,J(ohn) B(oynton)
  Radio broadcast, 5 Jun, quoted in The Listener,13 Jun.

To pick out the wildest and most fantastical odd man alive, and to place your kindness there, is an act so brave and daring as will show the greatness of your spirit and distinguish you in love, as you are in all things else, from womankind.

-Rochester,JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of
c.1675  Letter to his mistress, the actress Elizabeth Barry. In The Letters ofJohnWilmot, Earl of Rochester, edited byJeremy Treglown (1980).

Ye say, theyall have passed away, That noble race and brave, That their light canoes have vanished From off the crested wave; That 'mid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter's shout; But their name is on your waters, Ye may not wash it out.

-Sigourney, Lydia Howard ne¤  e Huntley
  Select Poems,'Indian Names'.

   Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
Virginibus Puerisque,'AesTriplex'.