The Mechanics of Virtue #347: The fundamental choice:

347
(1) The one who fights every battle that presents itself is a great soldier, but he can only go as far as fortune will take him.  He will however always have a great reputation, for good or evil.  (2) Another with excessive ambition must skip lesser battles if he wishes to improve his chances of entering the greater, and so this general might shine like the great soldier in his first battle, which was an indispensable learning experience, but he will probably disappoint his community in the second and perhaps the third – he being then indistinguishable from the coward.  But he has his “reasons” ... his strategy.  He does not gamble on his impulses but resists squandering himself on battles detrimental to his aim.  He selects only those battles which lead him to the highest arena.  What they see as cowardice is a valor which wants to be something more complex than the inability of a toad not to snap at every object that presents itself, food or no.  It requires a supreme ambition to live one’s life at a greater complexity and brilliance than that of a fierce warrior ... or a toad.

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