Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Acts of Daring")

Sep. 29—Oct. 5, 2024 | THIS WEEK'S THEME: “Acts of Daring"

Sep 29, 2024

These are the opening words of the third novel to feature the fictional cowboy Hopalong Cassidy. The first two novels in the series were Bar-20 (1906) and The Orphan (1908).

From 1906 to 1941, Mulford wrote a total of 28 books featuring Cassidy, with the early ones portraying him as a rude, crude, tough-talking cowboy whose nickname came from a distinctive “hop” in his step as he walked (from an injury sustained in a gunfight, when he took a bullet to the leg).

In 1935, the first of 66 films featuring Cassidy appeared, all starring the actor William Boyd. In the films—collectively called “Hoppie” films—Cassidy was transformed from the dark character in the novels to a reserved-but-heroic cowboy, dispensing justice, rescuing damsels in distress, and serving as a positive role model for young American boys. For more, go here.

And for nearly 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.

This Week’s Puzzler

This week’s Mystery Man at various stages of his adult life.

On October 2, 1904, this man was born in a small English village about 30 miles northwest of London. Growing up, he was a shy and bookish lad who was bullied so unmercifully by his peers that, in his early teens, he attempted suicide. In 1920, at age 16, he became one of the first adolescents in history to be treated by a new medical procedure called psychoanalysis.

After a difficult adolescence, he attended Balliol College at Oxford, where he became a prolific contributor to the student literary magazine. He ultimately became one of England’s most successful writers, best remembered for such suspense novels as The Confidential Agent (1939), The Third Man (1949), The Quiet American (1955), and Our Man in Havana (1958). Many were adapted into films, with “The Third Man” (1949) often described as one of cinema history’s greatest movies.

He also wrote novels with serious philosophical undertones (he called them “novels” to distinguish them from his lighter fare, which he called “entertainments”). The most famous was The Power and the Glory (1940), which Time magazine hailed as one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.

All of his novels, whether light or heavy, were filled with deep and penetrating observations—as in this passage from The Heart of the Matter (1948):

Who is this person? (Answer below)

What Role Have Acts of Daring Played in Your Life?

The American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) defines daring as: “Willing to take or seek out risks; bold and venturesome.”

In a usage note, the AHD editors wrote that the verb dare is synonymous with defy, brave, challenge, and face, all of which share a central meaning: “To confront boldly and courageously.”

From the outset, let’s remember that we cannot talk about the subject of daring without factoring in such important concepts as fear, danger, and courage. And, bearing this in mind, some of the most important things ever said on the subject of daring don’t even mention the word:

From the beginning of recorded history, acts of daring have served as the engine behind almost all human progress, pushing established boundaries, shattering people’s ideas about what is possible, and, perhaps most important, inspiring future generations to perform similarly.

As soon as I selected this week’s theme, three examples immediately came to mind—all from the 20th century: (1) Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 flight across the Atlantic; (2) the D-Day Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944; and (3) the Apollo 11 Mission in 1969. A brief word about each.

Charles Lindbergh and his plane “The Spirit of St. Louis”

The American aviator Charles Lindbergh was 25 years old when he made his famous 33-hour solo flight from New York to Paris on May 20-21, 1927. Flying over 3,600 miles in The Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh made his historic flight more than twenty years before the word avionics was even coined, and when technology, as we understand the term today, was primitive.

As Lindbergh neared his final destination, he circled the Eiffel Tower before landing at Le Bourget Aerodome, where a crowd of over 100,000 people stormed the field. The reception was only a harbinger of the adulation he would ultimately receive (one biographer wrote that people were “behaving as though Lindbergh had walked on water, not flown over it”). The flight was not only a monumental achievement in aviation history, it established a “Right Stuff” template for later attempts to explore outer space.

Compared to Lindberg’s individual accomplishment, the D-Day invasion of Europe by Allied forces on June 6, 1944 must be regarded as history’s most famous collective act of daring. In a massive military operation—code-named Operation Overlord—over 5,000 ships carrying 156,000 Allied troops crossed the English Channel to storm the Normandy beaches in Nazi-occupied France. At the time, the outcome was far from certain, and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, even prepared a letter in advance accepting full responsibility if the mission failed.

The soldiers who stormed the beaches demonstrated unbelievable courage. Many were seasick and weighed down by heavy equipment and water-logged uniforms. Yet, under relentless fire as they disembarked from landing crafts, they pushed forward. Thousands met a painful and bloody death, as we saw so vividly portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.” The Normandy invasion was the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany. By establishing a foothold in Europe, the Allies were able to launch subsequent campaigns to liberate Western Europe. The daring decision to launch the invasion fundamentally altered the conflict, making it a pivotal moment in world history.

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing on July 20, 1969.

The 1969 Apollo 11 mission—the first successful manned moon landing—began eight years earlier, when President John F. Kennedy said in a May 25, 1961 special address to Congress, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” JFK’s speech occurred at the height of “The Cold War,” six weeks after the Soviet Union launched the first human being, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, into space.

Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins aboard. From the beginning, the goal of the mission was to prove that human beings could explore space and return safely. After a 76-hour journey, the lunar module Eagle landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Armstrong’s historic first step onto the surface of the Moon, broadcast to millions worldwide, was accompanied by the iconic—if somewhat garbled—words, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s description of the lunar landscape as a “magnificent desolation” and the return of all three astronauts safely to Earth four days later was a watershed moment in human history, exemplifying how acts of daring can, in the memorable words of this week’s Mystery Man, “alter the whole conception of what is possible.”

So far, we’ve highlighted acts of daring that have become such an integral part of the human experience that they’ve been written about in history books. But grand acts of daring also occur regularly in the lives of everyday human beings—and perhaps with you as well. Sometimes, as with first responders, the heroic acts are observed by others, and even broadcast on the evening news. But the vast majority occur deep within the hearts and souls of individuals, and are never witnessed by another person.

They occur when young men and women, after years of excruciating inner turmoil, summon up the bravery to tell parents they are gay or trans. Or when a wife and mother decides, after years of abuse, to pack up a suitcase, grab the kids, and head for a local women’s shelter. Or when a federal employee decides to file a whistleblower lawsuit. Or when a distraught teenage girl decides to talk to her mom about the inappropriate behavior of another family member. Or, as we’ve seen all-too-often in recent years, when, after years of suffering in silence, women come forward with reports about the sexual predation of rich and powerful—and very sick—men.

Some of the most significant acts of personal daring—including some that have fundamentally changed the world in which we live—wouldn’t have appeared dramatic at all to an onlooker. On the contrary, they would’ve simply looked like a person deep in thought, as Albert Einstein suggested when he wrote in a letter to a friend:

“I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.”

I could go on, but let me simply state my main point: grand acts of daring are at the heart of the human experience, and almost every one of them has changed the world—sometimes for millions of people, and sometimes for a single individual.

Daring To Be Yourself

Let me bring my remarks to a close by mentioning one additional type of daring that is often overlooked in discussions of the subject. Many people never experience it, but those who have almost never forget the moment when they summoned up the courage to finally be themselves instead of a mindless extension of other people. The underlying idea was first explicitly expressed in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1870 book Society and Solitude, when he quoted a Frenchman named Thomas Couture as saying:

“Dare to be yourself.”

The essence of the challenge, to say it in another way, is to be an authentic person—to live in alignment with one’s true self and to bravely and unapologetically present that genuine self—and not a counterfeit self—to the world. The whole matter has been discussed many times over the years, and May Sarton wrote about it eloquently in Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965):

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”

Perhaps the best description of the challenge, though, appeared in a 1955 letter that e. e. cummings wrote to a high school student who asked if he had any advice for young people who wanted to write poetry:

This type of daring has also played a pivotal role in my own personal history. I’ve told the story a number of times over they years, so long-time subscribers are familiar with it. But if you’re relatively new to my efforts—or if you’d like to hear about it one more time—go here.

This week, think about great acts of daring in your life—the ones from other people that have inspired you, or the ones you engaged in yourself. If you also pose the question to a good friend or romantic partner, you might even learn something new about a person you already know quite well. Before you do anything, though, take a few moments to peruse this week's selection of quotations on the topic:

Sadly, most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try. — Mary Kay Ash
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance. — Bruce Barton
I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more, as I grow older. — Catherine Drinker Bowen
When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable. — Leigh Hunt
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. — Robert Kennedy
A man with outward courage dares to die, one with inward courage dares to live. — Lao-tzu
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge. — Henry Miller
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. — Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Providence has hidden a charm in difficult undertakings, which is appreciated only by those who dare to grapple with them. —Anne Sophie Swetchine
All serious daring starts from within. — Eudora Welty