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/ 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 misapplication of the |
| word. Consider the flea!--incomparably |
| the bravest of all the creatures of |
| God, if ignorance of fear were courage. |
| Whether you are asleep or awake he will |
| attack you, caring nothing for the fact |
| that in bulk and strength you are to |
| him as are the massed armies of the |
| earth to a sucking child; he lives both |
| day and night and all days and nights |
| in the very lap of peril and the |
| immediate presence of death, and yet is |
| no more afraid than is the man who |
| walks the streets of a city that was |
| threatened by an earthquake ten |
| centuries before. When we speak of |
| Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who |
| "didn't know what fear was," we ought |
| always to add the flea--and put him at |
| the head of the procession. |
| |
| -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's |
\ Calendar" /
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