That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
Interpretation
True bravery is not just about outward appearances; it also involves the ability to confront one's fear of being perceived as cowardly.
This quote by Edgar Allan Poe suggests that genuine courage requires a person to acknowledge and confront their own fears, particularly the fear of appearing cowardly. It emphasizes that someone who avoids acknowledging their vulnerabilities or acting in a way that might be considered cowardly, when appropriate, cannot be seen as truly brave, as they are defined by the opinions and perceptions of others, rather than by their own moral fortitude.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming fears.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
It takes no compromise to give people their rights
The IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] has been accused of pushing women to the front. This is not true. Rather, the women have not been kept in back, and so they have naturally moved to the front.
Even when I get on airplanes, very often, as I walk down the aisle, I notice a lot of people staring or whispering. I recognize the fact that yes, to a lot of people, I will always be that 14-year-old girl who was kidnapped and who was held captive.
During the 1942 Quit India Movement, I was a student at Gwalior High School. I was arrested by the British for participating in the movement. My parents then sent me off to my village where, again, I jumped into the movement.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
and even when I was broken the way sometimes one can be broken, and even though I had fallen, I found upon arising that I was stronger than before, that the glories, if I may call them that, which I had loved so much and that had been darkened in my fall, were shinning even brighter and nearly everytime subsequently I have fallen and darkness has come over me, they have obstinately arisen, not as they were, but brighter.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.