"Courage is sometimes frail as hope is frail: a fragile shoot between two stones that grows brave toward the sun though warmth and brightness fail, striving and faith the only strength it knows"
About this Quote
Courage, here, isn’t the movie-trailer kind: it’s botanical, battered, and almost embarrassingly small. Frances Rodman frames bravery as a “fragile shoot between two stones,” a living thing pushed into existence by pressure. The image does double duty: it romanticizes persistence while refusing to glamorize it. A shoot doesn’t “choose” heroism; it keeps growing because growth is what it does. That’s the subtextual pivot: courage is less a moral badge than a stubborn biological impulse.
Linking courage to hope also tightens the emotional stakes. Hope is often treated as a bright, energizing force; Rodman calls it “frail,” then denies the reader the usual payoff. The shoot grows “toward the sun though warmth and brightness fail.” That quiet inversion matters. It suggests the most honest bravery happens without reinforcement: no cheering crowd, no proof it will work out, not even the comforting sensation that you’re moving toward something good. Direction becomes an act of faith, not a response to reward.
The line “striving and faith the only strength it knows” implies a kind of spiritual minimalism. Strength isn’t external (resources, luck, certainty) but internal motion: striving as muscle memory, faith as the decision to keep pointing upward when the world offers no light. Contextually, the diction feels like early-to-mid 20th-century lyric moralism, the kind that speaks to depression-era scarcity or wartime endurance without naming either. The intent isn’t to inspire with slogans; it’s to dignify the thin, daily courage of people growing anyway.
Linking courage to hope also tightens the emotional stakes. Hope is often treated as a bright, energizing force; Rodman calls it “frail,” then denies the reader the usual payoff. The shoot grows “toward the sun though warmth and brightness fail.” That quiet inversion matters. It suggests the most honest bravery happens without reinforcement: no cheering crowd, no proof it will work out, not even the comforting sensation that you’re moving toward something good. Direction becomes an act of faith, not a response to reward.
The line “striving and faith the only strength it knows” implies a kind of spiritual minimalism. Strength isn’t external (resources, luck, certainty) but internal motion: striving as muscle memory, faith as the decision to keep pointing upward when the world offers no light. Contextually, the diction feels like early-to-mid 20th-century lyric moralism, the kind that speaks to depression-era scarcity or wartime endurance without naming either. The intent isn’t to inspire with slogans; it’s to dignify the thin, daily courage of people growing anyway.
Quote Details
| Topic | Hope |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Frances
Add to List
