“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”
“That is the only time a man can be brave.”
* * *
“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”
* * *
“Sometimes I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending is how you get brave, I don’t know.”
– George R.R. Martin
I have noted a similar dynamic with truthfulness; that even a liar can speak the truth when it is easy to do so.
It’s when telling the truth is a difficult thing that the truthfulness of a man is tested.