Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.
Interpretation
Real courage involves being true to oneself rather than simply facing external challenges.
This quote by Cormac McCarthy articulates the profound notion that true courage is rooted in self-constancy and integrity. The quote suggests that a cowardice that begins with a betrayal of oneself paves the way for further betrayals in life, emphasizing the importance of staying true to one's own values and beliefs as the foundation of authentic bravery.
In practice
This quote can be used during a motivational speech about overcoming personal fears.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say "common struggle" because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.
I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.
Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster.
To be the equal of one's opponent-this is the first condition of an honourable duel.
I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more, is none
I think our existence in professional sports is almost a protest in and of itself in sometimes the very sexist society that we live in. For us, it's just kind of right in line with what we always do.
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