Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.
Josef PieperRead
If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good -- which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward -- this man, and he alone, is truly brave.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True bravery is facing one's fears without succumbing to ambition or cowardice.
This quote emphasizes that true courage is not merely about heroic acts or bravado; it is about the willingness to confront one’s fears head-on, especially when it involves doing what is morally right. A person who approaches their fears with integrity, motivated by goodness rather than ambition or the fear of being seen as cowardly, exemplifies genuine bravery.
Themes
CourageFearBraveryIntegrityMorality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech about overcoming fear.
More from Josef Pieper
All quotes →Being precedes Truth, and ... Truth precedes the Good.
Josef PieperRead
Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.
Josef PieperRead
The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Christian are not yet opened.
Josef PieperRead
The common element in all the special forms of contemplation is the loving, yearning, affirming bent toward that happiness which is the same as God Himself, and which is the aim and purpose of all that happens in the world.
Josef PieperRead
The happy man needs nothing and no one. Not that he holds himself aloof, for indeed he is in harmony with everything and everyone; everything is "in him"; nothing can happen to him. The same may also be said for the contemplative person; he needs himself alone; he lacks nothing.
Josef PieperRead
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