A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Interpretation
Courage often comes from past experiences and achievements.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights that true courage is not only about facing new challenges but also about relying on the strength and confidence gained from previous experiences. When we have successfully confronted difficulties in the past, it empowers us to approach new situations with a greater sense of bravery.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming obstacles, one might use this quote to inspire the audience.
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.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
If you haven't found something worth dying for, you're not fit to live.
When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him, by force.
One arm might handicap me a little in competition, but I just work with what changes I know I have to make, and I'm pretty used to it now. It mainly depends on the wave conditions... I only get half the waves everyone else rides, so mine have to be good!
I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me.
The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things -- praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts -- not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.
Three words remain that can yet stir the blood of man: the word 'rebellion'; the word 'revolt'; the word 'revolution'.
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