“A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.”

—  Quintus Curtius Rufus

VII, 4, 13.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book VII

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites." by Quintus Curtius Rufus?
Quintus Curtius Rufus photo
Quintus Curtius Rufus21
Roman historian

Related quotes

George Herbert photo

“His bark is worse than his bite.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“One thing I have learnt about Death is that his bark is worse than his bite.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 11
Context: Be at peace, my friend. One thing I have learnt about Death is that his bark is worse than his bite.

Juliet Marillier photo

“More like some small, fierce bird of prey, something with a sharp bite. An owl perhaps, that speaks only when the rest of the world sleeps.
Jenny will do well enough.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Gillian Flynn photo

“There are few phrases that annoy me more than I won't bite. The only line that pisses me off faster is when some drunk, ham-faced dude in a bar sees me trying to get past him and barks: Smile, it can't be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

Isaac Watts photo

“Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For 't is their nature too.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 16: "Against Quarrelling and Fighting".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Life is too short to waste
The critic bite or cynic bark,
Quarrel, or reprimand;
'Twill soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

To J.W. http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/to_jw.htm, st. 4 <br class="br">1840s, Poems (1847)

Samuel Butler photo

“An artist’s touches are sometimes no more articulate than the barking of a dog who would call attention to something without exactly knowing what. This is as it should be, and he is a great artist who can be depended on not to bark at nothing.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Inarticulate Touches
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

“They must not fear, nor regard as sin, or take to heart any evil impulses to sin or to blasphemy, or doubts about the Sacrament, or any other such ugly temptations; for to experience these temptations defiles the soul no more than the bark of a dog or the bite of a flea. They trouble the soul but do not harm it provided a man puts them aside and ignores them. It does no good to struggle against them, or to try and master them by force, for the more a person struggles against them, the more persistent they become.”

Walter Hilton (1340–1396) English Augustinian mystic.

Book I, ch. 38 (p. 43)
The Ladder of Perfection (1494)

Józef Piłsudski photo

“You, the Poles, have a funny nature. When the people going along the road are attacked by a dog with its insistent and noisy barking, you immediately feel like jumping off the vehicle, standing on all fours and starting to bark back at it. We, in the Vilnius region, let the dog bark because that is what its canine nature is like but we do not stop out journey because of its canine barking and without any war against dogs we calmly continue our journey until we reach our destination. It seems that you care more about barking more than the dog does and about winning the war with any lousy puppy than about reaching the destination quickly.”

Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) Polish politician and Prime Minister

Jerzy Robert Nowak, Na przekór skorpionom. Wyznania upartego Polaka, Warszawa 2005, p. 52.
Attributed

Related topics