Audacity

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.

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.

Quotes