"The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed"
About this Quote
Heroism, Hawthorne suggests, isn`t mainly a contest against danger; it`s a contest against embarrassment. The real threat isn`t the dragon but the private fear that the dragon is imaginary and you`re about to look ridiculous swinging a sword at air. That`s a very Hawthorne move: he drags moral grandeur down into the cramped interior of conscience, where motives curdle, reputations loom, and every noble impulse has a shadow.
The line works because it refuses the comforting myth that courage is pure. Hawthorne doesn`t flatter the would-be hero; he assumes the hero is self-aware enough to anticipate the sneer. In a culture where status and propriety were social oxygen (and in an author obsessed with sin, secrecy, and public judgment), the dread of being a "fool" is not vanity but a social sentence. To act is to risk becoming a spectacle.
Then he sharpens the knife: "truest heroism" is resisting doubt, but "profoundest wisdom" is knowing when to resist and when to obey. That pivot is the subtextual warning. Not all doubt is cowardice; sometimes doubt is moral intelligence, the last defense against performative righteousness, fanaticism, or self-deception dressed up as virtue. Hawthorne is sketching a psychological ethics: bravery without discernment becomes arrogance; caution without courage becomes complicity.
Read in the shadow of his Puritan New England inheritance and his recurring interest in public shame, the quote is less a pep talk than a diagnostic. It names the humiliations that keep people decent - and the humiliations that keep them from being decent when it counts.
The line works because it refuses the comforting myth that courage is pure. Hawthorne doesn`t flatter the would-be hero; he assumes the hero is self-aware enough to anticipate the sneer. In a culture where status and propriety were social oxygen (and in an author obsessed with sin, secrecy, and public judgment), the dread of being a "fool" is not vanity but a social sentence. To act is to risk becoming a spectacle.
Then he sharpens the knife: "truest heroism" is resisting doubt, but "profoundest wisdom" is knowing when to resist and when to obey. That pivot is the subtextual warning. Not all doubt is cowardice; sometimes doubt is moral intelligence, the last defense against performative righteousness, fanaticism, or self-deception dressed up as virtue. Hawthorne is sketching a psychological ethics: bravery without discernment becomes arrogance; caution without courage becomes complicity.
Read in the shadow of his Puritan New England inheritance and his recurring interest in public shame, the quote is less a pep talk than a diagnostic. It names the humiliations that keep people decent - and the humiliations that keep them from being decent when it counts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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