A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.

Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) German writer, art historian, philosopher, littérateur [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter; pseud. Jean Paul]

(Attributed)
    (Source)

Quoted in Edward Parsons Day, Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, "Danger" (1884), without citation.