To encounter death, or the danger of death, for the sake of duty--when the choice is there; but duty and death are preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security which shall bring with it self-abasement--that is grand.

When I hear that a man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting, fell," if there have been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool.

If it be that he has chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was Catiline's case, I recognize him as having been endowed with certain physical attributes which are neither glorious nor disgraceful.

That Catiline was constitutionally a brave man no one has denied.

Rush, the murderer, was one of the bravest men of whom I remember to have heard.