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ramblin_rosieEl Rushbo is quoting GKC on courage from Orthodoxy!
EDIT #1: Okay, if you missed it, there are stations that are on tape delay, so you'll want to catch the segment at the bottom of the hour (:33 - :45) to hear what he has to say. If you can't, I'm sure the transcript and/or the audio will be available on his site tonight. If you want to read the quote before then, though, here it is:
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.
--G. K. Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity," Orthodoxy (1908)
Hoorah!
Happy Veterans' Day, and a belated Happy Birthday to the USMC!
EDIT #2: Rush's comments are here.
EDIT #1: Okay, if you missed it, there are stations that are on tape delay, so you'll want to catch the segment at the bottom of the hour (:33 - :45) to hear what he has to say. If you can't, I'm sure the transcript and/or the audio will be available on his site tonight. If you want to read the quote before then, though, here it is:
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.
--G. K. Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity," Orthodoxy (1908)
Hoorah!
Happy Veterans' Day, and a belated Happy Birthday to the USMC!
EDIT #2: Rush's comments are here.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 06:44 pm (UTC)Thanks for posting the actual quote.
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 06:46 pm (UTC)You're welcome. And I'll post a link to Rush's comments when his site is updated.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 10:47 pm (UTC)