The Case of Courage
No quality has ever so much addled the brains
and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages.
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.
It means a strong desire to live taking the form of
a readiness to die.
‘He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,’
is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes.
It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers.
It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book.
This paradox is the whole principle of courage;
even of quite earthly or brutal courage.
A man cut off by the sea may save his life
if he will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by
continually stepping within an inch of it.
A soldier surrounded by enemies,
if he is to cut his way out, needs to
combine a strong desire for living with a
strange carelessness about dying.
He must not merely cling to life, for then
he will be a coward, and will not escape.
He must not merely wait for death, for then
he will be a suicide, and will not escape.
He must seek his life in a spirit of furious
indifference to it; he must desire life
like water and yet drink death like wine.
by G.K. Chesterson
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