Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series)

by Ryan Holiday

Let us not wait for other people to come to us and call upon us to do great deeds. Let us instead be the first to summon the rest to the path of honor. Show yourself to be the bravest of all the captains, with more of a right to leadership than those who are our leaders at present.

There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed.

“that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?”

And conversely, the opposite is true: as long as there remains one courageous enough, the end is not yet come?

The kind where you put your ass on the line. In some cases literally, perhaps fatally. In other cases it’s figurative, or financial.

But we do this not to understand virtue in the abstract, of course. Each of us faces our own Herculean crossroads.

What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

let us look to the courageous moments and learn from them rather than focus on another’s flaws as a way of excusing our own.