It is better to be bold than too circumspect, because fortune is of a sex which likes not a tardy wooer and repulses all who are not ardent. ~Machiavelli


Put a grain of boldness into everything you do. ~Baltasar Gracian


But the fruit that can fall without shaking
Indeed is too mellow for me.
~Mary Wortley Montagu, The Answer


Venus favors the bold. ~Ovid


I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated


Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution. ~Francis Bacon


Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Freedom lies in being bold. ~Robert Frost


Moderation is a fatal thing; nothing succeeds like excess. ~Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, 1894


Boldness is a mask for fear, however great. ~John Dryden


The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly. ~Theodore Roosevelt


He who finds Fortune on his side should go briskly ahead, for she is wont to favor the bold. ~Baltasar Gracian


He was a bold man that first eat an oyster. ~Jonathan Swift