Most men wait to move until victory is guaranteed.

All men die; few men ever really live.

Despite what many modern educators would say, this is not a psychological disturbance brought on by violent television or chemical imbalance. Aggression is part of the masculine design; we are hardwired for it.

As Robert Bly laments in Iron John, "Some women want a passive man if they want a man at all; the church wants a tamed man—they are called priests; the university wants a domesticated man—they are called tenure-track people; the corporation wants a . . . sanitized, hairless, shallow man.

Life needs a man to be fierce—and fiercely devoted. The wounds he will take throughout his life will cause him to lose heart if all he has been trained to be is soft.

if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.

This is the time for a young man to stop saying, "Why is life so hard?" He takes the hardness as the call to fight, to rise up, take it on.

The warrior learns to master the art of holding fast to dreams while accepting the rigors of becoming the kind of man who can be entrusted with those dreams;

A Secret of the warrior-heart of Jesus. Second, a warrior is cunning. He knows when to fight and when to run; he can sense a trap and never charges blindly ahead;

The spirit of our day is a soft acceptance of everything—except deep conviction in anything.

There is a life you can love, but it takes courage, perseverance, and a little cunning to get there. It takes a warrior.

And so the great battle begins in earnest: the battle for your heart, the battle to find a life worth living, the battle not to lose heart as you find a life worth living.