Home > Work > Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave
81 " Remember: Leaders are dealers in hope. Nobody wants to live in a world without a tomorrow, without a reason to continue, without some dot on the horizon they’re aiming at. And if we want that, we’re going to have to make it. For them and for ourselves, heroically. "
― Ryan Holiday , Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave
82 " it was preferable to stand tall in a mud puddle than lick boots in the parlor. "
83 " Stoics belittle physical harm, but this is not braggadocio,” James Stockdale wrote. “They are speaking of it in comparison to the devastating agony of shame they fancied good men generating when they knew in their hearts that they had failed to do their duty vis-à-vis their fellow men or God. "
84 " In one of Hemingway’s most beautiful passages, he writes: If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. "
85 " You can’t let this period make you bitter. You have to make sure it makes you better. "
86 " The virtues are like music. They vibrate at a higher, nobler pitch. Steven Pressfield "
87 " Florence Nightingale saying, recorded on a wax tablet at the end of her life, “I hope that my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. "
88 " Fear, before you’re actually in the battle, is a normal emotional reaction. It’s the last step of preparation, the not-knowing . . . This is where you’ll prove you’re a good soldier. That first fight—that fight with yourself—will have gone. Then you will be ready to fight the enemy. Army Life (handbook), 1944 "
89 " O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face! To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God! Walt Whitman "
90 " We must, as Shakespeare said, “meet the time as it seeks us.” Our destiny is here. Let’s seize it. "
91 " And though we'd like to think that planning and resources - or righteousness and worthiness - determines who wins and who loses, they don't. So often these things come down to a simple factor: Who wants it more? "
92 " Seneca would say that he actually pitied people who have never experienced misfortune. “You have passed through life without an opponent,” he said. “No one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you. "
93 " The night is dark and full of terrors. We face many enemies in life. But you have to understand: They are not nearly as formidable as your mind makes you think. "
94 " As Epictetus says, the goal when we experience adversity is to be able to say, “This is what I’ve trained for, for this is my discipline. "
95 " Don’t worry about whether things will be hard. Because they will be.Instead, focus on the fact that these things will help you. This is why you needn’t fear them "
96 " Never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small,” Florence Nightingale said, “for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself. "
97 " No rule is perfect, but this one works: Our fears point us, like a self-indicting arrow, in the direction of the right thing to do. "
98 " Your headlights illuminate just a few feet of the dark road in front of you, and yet that is enough for you to move forward and make continual progress. "
99 " Courage is defined in the moment. In less that a moment. When we decide to step out or step up. To leap or to step back.A person isn’t brave, generally. We are brave, specifically.For a few seconds. For a few seconds of embarrassing bravery we can be great.And that is enough. "
100 " He who does something at the head of one regiment,” Abraham Lincoln reminds us, “will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.” Better to win a small battle than continually to defer for some larger, perfect battle in the future. "