Resignation and courage

Joseph Joubert:

Resignation is a hundred times easier than courage, for it has a motive outside of us and courage does not. If both diminish evils, let us use the one that diminishes it the most. (Outside us, that is to say beyond our will.)

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection , trans. Paul Auster (New York: New York Review Books, 2005).

Also from Joseph Joubert: Thinking and writing.

[It helped to look up motive : “That within the individual, rather than without, which incites him to action; any idea, need, emotion, or organic state that prompts to an action.” But also: “That which moves; a mover; instigator.” And: “A cause.” Definitions from Webster’s Second .]