Courage is grace under pressure.
Ernest Hemingway The Artist's Reward (The New Yorker) (1929)
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When and why it was written
- When
- 1929, in a letter quoted by Dorothy Parker in The New Yorker.
- Why
- Parker had asked what Hemingway meant by guts, and this was his answer.
What it means
The definition is narrow on purpose. Not the absence of fear, not the willingness to act, but the manner of acting while under load.
It is a stylist's definition of a virtue: what matters is how the thing is carried, which is also the standard Hemingway applied to sentences.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
Read the source
The Artist's Reward (The New Yorker) by Dorothy Parker, 1929
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