But their pale lips did not part to say the words that would have given them security and dishonour

Eugene Volokh has a post up, ‘Let nobody belittle them by pretending they were fearless’. He is citing a passage from Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon about real courage.

And I was reminded — whether rightly or wrongly in this instance, I cannot say — of Rebecca West, writing about the English in 1940 as they anticipated the German attack on England after the fall of France:

Let nobody belittle them by pretending they were fearless. Not being as the ox and the ass, they were horribly afraid. But their pale lips did not part to say the words that would have given them security and dishonour.