Quote by Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, P

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who didn't know what fear was, we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.

Summary

This quote by Mark Twain emphasizes that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the ability to face and overcome it. Twain argues that true bravery lies in mastering fear rather than being oblivious to it. He uses the example of a flea to illustrate this point, asserting that if fearlessness was simply ignorance of fear, then the flea would be the bravest creature. The flea fearlessly attacks, disregarding the immense size and strength of its host, and living constantly endangered without exhibiting any fear. The quote challenges the view that bravery is attributed solely to those who are unaware of fear, suggesting that it requires resilience and mastery instead.