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Who really said it

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance

Written by Aesop fl. c. 620–564 BC · semi-legendary Greek fabulist
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It is the closing line of Aesop’s fable “The Wolf and the Kid” (Perry Index 98), an ancient tale. This exact English wording is confirmed as the ending of the fable in Joseph Jacobs’s 1894 translation; other translators render the wolf’s reply quite differently.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“It is easy to be brave from a safe distance” Aesop, "The Wolf and the Kid," trans. Joseph Jacobs (1894)

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Provenance

The fable behind the line

Fable
“The Wolf and the Kid”
Collection
The Fables of Æsop (Perry Index 98)
Translation
Joseph Jacobs, London: Macmillan, 1894 (pp. 40–41)
Attribution
Aesop — traditional; ancient Greek fable tradition

A KID was perched up on the top of a house, and looking down saw a Wolf passing under him. Immediately he began to revile and attack his enemy. “Murderer and thief,” he cried, “what do you here near honest folks’ houses? How dare you make an appearance where your vile deeds are known?” “Curse away, my young friend,” said the Wolf. “It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.”

The famous one-liner is the wolf’s closing retort, functioning as the fable’s moral. In the ancient Greek tradition the same point is made more tersely — the Babrius version has the wolf answer, in effect, that it is the kid’s place, not the kid, doing the talking.

The Fables of Æsop (Jacobs, 1894) — “The Wolf and the Kid”

How we traced it

Public domain

The ancient fable is public domain, and the exact English wording shown is from Joseph Jacobs’s 1894 translation — first published well before 1931, so that translation is in the public domain in the United States.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

Right author, one specific translator’s words

The line is authentically Aesopic — but the memorable English phrasing belongs to one 1894 translator, and quote sites usually present it as a free-floating aphorism with no fable attached.

Joseph Jacobs (1894 translation) Translator’s phrasing

The crisp modern one-liner is Jacobs’s rendering of the wolf’s reply in his 1894 edition. Other translators word the same moment very differently — and the ancient Babrius version has the wolf say only that the kid’s place, not the kid, is doing the talking.

“It is easy to be brave at a safe distance” Misquote

A widely circulated variant swaps ‘from’ for ‘at,’ as seen on Goodreads; that exact wording is not the one in Jacobs’s text.

The thought is genuinely Aesop’s — the moral of “The Wolf and the Kid” (Perry 98) — and this precise English sentence is Joseph Jacobs’s 1894 rendering.

Context

Why the line lands

The fable is tiny: a kid (young goat) stands safely on a rooftop and hurls insults at a wolf below. The wolf, unable to reach him, simply notes that the bravado costs the kid nothing — it is the height of the roof, not the courage of the goat, doing the shouting.

“Curse away, my young friend.”

The ancient version’s point

In the surviving Greek tradition (the Babrius version), the wolf’s reply lands on location rather than distance: it is not the kid who mocks him, but the kid’s place. Jacobs’s 1894 “It is easy to be brave from a safe distance” is a free, aphoristic modernization of that same idea — which is why it reads so much more like a stand-alone maxim than the older, more literal renderings.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Courage

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Wolf and the Kid (Jacobs, 1894)en.wikisource.org

The full public-domain source text of the fable ending in this exact line.
Aesop — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line among Aesop’s sourced quotes, attributed to “The Wolf and the Kid.”
The Kid and the Wolf (Perry 98)fablesofaesop.com

Multiple translations plus the Perry Index number and the ancient Babrius version for comparison.
Aesop quote pagebrainyquote.com

Typical popular presentation of the line stripped of its fable context.
The “at a safe distance” variantgoodreads.com

Shows the common misquote that swaps ‘from’ for ‘at’.

The fabulist

About Aesop

Aesop

fl. c. 620–564 BC · semi-legendary Greek fabulist

Aesop is the name traditionally attached to a large body of ancient Greek fables — short animal tales, each pointing to a moral. Whether a single historical Aesop authored them is doubtful; the stories circulated orally and were gathered and reshaped over centuries by later hands such as Babrius and Phaedrus. “The Wolf and the Kid” is one of these traditional fables, and its punchline about false courage has entered English chiefly through Victorian translators.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Aesop. “The Wolf and the Kid.” In The Fables of Æsop, edited and translated by Joseph Jacobs, 40–41. London: Macmillan, 1894.

MLA (9th ed.)

Aesop. “The Wolf and the Kid.” The Fables of Æsop, translated by Joseph Jacobs, Macmillan, 1894, pp. 40–41.

APA (7th ed.)

Aesop. (1894). The wolf and the kid. In J. Jacobs (Trans.), The fables of Æsop (pp. 40–41). Macmillan.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It is easy to be brave from a safe distance’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-easy-to-be-brave-from-a-safe-distance

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