Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! - incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Courage involves facing and mastering our fears, rather than being free from them.
Mark Twain emphasizes that true courage is not the lack of fear, but the ability to confront and manage it. He argues that even the bravest creatures possess some level of fear, and therefore, to be called brave implies a recognition of overcoming that fear, rather than simply being unaware of it. Twain uses the example of a flea to illustrate that if bravery were defined by the absence of fear, then even the smallest and most fearful creatures could claim bravery.
Themes
CourageFearBraveryMasteryOvercoming
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
More from Mark Twain
All quotes →The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
Mark TwainRead
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
Mark TwainRead
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark TwainRead
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
Mark TwainRead
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Mark TwainRead
Similar quotes
When I started boxing, people laughed at me and said, 'What can women do in boxing?' I took it as a challenge. If men can do it, why can't women? And I became a world champion before my marriage.
Mary KomRead
My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I'm luckier than other mortals, and they sure don't come from visualizing victory. They're the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it. Like most astronauts, I'm pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I've thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That's the power of negative thinking.
Chris HadfieldRead
There's a storm inside of us. I've heard many team guys speak of this. A burning. A river. A drive.
Marcus LuttrellRead
Maybe there is something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters.
John GreenRead
I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.
Audrey HepburnRead
I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger.
Harriet TubmanRead