Safety Last

Courage, says Thomas Aquinas, is essential to the practice of all the virtues. You may know what the just or the prudent thing to do is, but without courage, you will not do it, or you will do it only when you risk very little, probably because the situation is not critical. Anyone can enter a house that is not on fire. Anyone can tell the truth when he knows that everyone around him will praise him for it. I am not speaking here about people who enjoy telling the truth in awkward situations because they know it will hurt or offend others; that is a perverse sort of courage, and the speaker risks nothing that he values.