• Author: Crane, Frank (Dr.)
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 12 12 1917
• Tags:
• advice

THE UNCONQUERABLE

The battle is not lost so long as you have a leg to stand on and a gun to fire. Even in destruction and death the real hero rises unconquerable.

Men may take your money from you, deprive you of liberty, lock you in prison, torture you; but they cannot defeat you, even as naked hands cannot smother the high flame. Fate itself, the plotting stars, the plan of destiny, cannot overcome you, if you are of good courage. By and by the universe retires before the soul that will not fear.

Whatever theologies say, there is but one unpardonable sin in nature, it is to be afraid.

Courage is the primal virtue. It was the first flower of mastery to bloom in the human race. It is the universal virtue. There have been savage tribes who have known not so much as a name for some of the moral excellencies of our civilization, there has never existed a tribe who did not revere courage.

There are always reasons for giving up. Arguments for self-pity are thick as blackberries.

The world is crowded with thorns and cruelties, causes for tears. Courage is the divine unreason; against a rock, the waves of disaster beat in vain.

Say to yourself: I am the unconquerable. I shall arrive. In the center of creation sits not an enemy, but my Friend. I shall arrive, what time, what circuit first, I ask not. In some time, His good time, I shall arrive: Let come what will, I shall never say I am beaten. I am not a negligible molecule, a mote in the sunbeam, a worm; I am a man; and so help God, I shall play the man.

—Dr. Frank Crane.