Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values.

It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings." (p. 16-17)

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.