On Three Virtues, that is to say, on Courage, Humanity, and Repentance (1-5)

for some persons, being elated by boldness when they have bodily strength to assist them, array themselves in the ranks of war, in complete armour, and slay innumerable hosts of the enemy to a man, gaining by their exploits the unseemly but fine sounding name of preeminent valour, being accounted by the multitude which judges of such matters exceedingly glorious in their victory, though in fact they have been savage and brutal both in nature and practise, having thirsted for human blood.

But then as some men who, always remaining in their own houses, while their bodies have been worn away either by long sickness or by painful old age, still being healthy and vigorous [*]

These men, then, are they who practise real courage, being studiers and practisers of wisdom; but those other men have only what does not deserve to be so called though it assumes the name, as they live in that incurable disease, ignorance, which one may very fitly and properly call audacity, just as people say that in coins base metal often bears the same impression as the real stamp and money.

Moreover, there is also no small number of other things in human life which are confessed to be very difficult to endure, such as poverty, and want of reputation, and mutilation, and various kinds of diseases, by which weak spirited men are broken down, not being able to raise themselves at all through their want of courage; but those men who are full of high thoughts and noble spirits, rise up to struggle against these things, and contend against them with fortitude and exceeding vigour, ridiculing and greatly despising their threats and attacks against their poverty; arraying wealth, not that wealth which is blind, but that which sees acutely, whose images and treasures the soul is naturally proud to treasure up;