But only a brief moment is granted to the brave one breath or two, whose wage is the long nights of the grave.
Interpretation
The courageous face challenges, but their time is fleeting and often leads to sacrifice.
Muhammad Iqbal suggests that those who display bravery are only given a short time to act, symbolized by just 'a breath or two'. This fleeting moment reflects the high cost of courage, leading to the inevitable conclusion that bravery often comes with significant sacrifice, including the ultimate price of life itself, represented by 'the long nights of the grave'.
In practice
During a motivational speech about facing fears, this quote can inspire individuals to take risks.
The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion. There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional.
I have seen the movement of the sinews of the sky, And the blood coursing in the veins of the moon.
let this be our beautiful departure from stagnation; let our minds come alive; enter another dimension; go beyond the stars eagerly struggling to find that... which our naked eyes did not know existed; rise like a falcon born to soar and not be alone but be present amongst others.
The soul is neither inside nor outside the body; neither proximate to nor separate from it.
The wing of the Falcon brings to the king, the wing if the crow brings him to the cemetery.
The truth is that the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the most real.
Nothing makes a man more aware of his capabilities and of his limitations than those moments when he must push aside all the familiar defenses of ego and vanity, and accept reality by staring, with the fear that is normal to a man in combat, into the face of Death.
A young man should ask himself not if it is his duty to go to the heathen, but if he may dare stay at home. The command is so plain: βGo.β
It is one thing to open job opportunities. It is another to train people to fill them, or to persuade American enterprise to seek Negro as well as white applicants.
It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
I never set out to convert anyone in the Klan. I just set out to get an answer to my question: 'How can you hate me when you don't even know me.'
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