“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live
taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same
shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes....
A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine
a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must
not  merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward and will not escape. He
must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape.
He must  seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life
like water, and yet drink death like wine.”
~ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy