We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
The ordinary man is as courageous and invulnerable as a hero when he does not recognize any danger, when he has no eyes to see it.Conversely, the hero's only vulnerable spot is on his back, and so exactly where he has no eyes.
There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past.
If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence.
The man who is just and resolute will not be moved from his settled purpose, either by the misdirected rage of his fellow citizens, or by the threats of an imperious tryant.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
What is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made? A renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good? Imitating that great Nature which embossoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, with every breath a new life?