Meaning of “Few places in this world are more dangerous…”

The Mountains of California, immediately after Muir’s comparison of mountain hazards with the risks of home.

Henry IV, Part 1, Act V Scene 4; reviewed against the 1917 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Samuel B. Hemingway, printed page 110 / scan leaf 124. Falstaff says 'The better part of valour is discretion' after counterfeiting death during the battle and immediately boasts that this discretion saved his life. It remains comic fictional self-justification rather than a universal rule for courage or risk.

Fruit-Gathering, poem LXXIX; Project Gutenberg #6522. This excerpt completes a prayer against anxious craving to be saved and retains that spiritual context.

Opening of The American Crisis No. I; Paine addresses perseverance during a difficult stage of the American Revolution.

Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Chapter XXIII, ‘Various Events from the Same Counsel,’ Charles Cotton translation edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877); Project Gutenberg Volume 04 #3584 / Complete Essays #3600. Montaigne argues that excessive security-minded distrust can destroy the courage required for noble action; the reviewed direct evidence is the matching Wikisource chapter transcription.

The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James is contrasting the risk of being mistaken with the cost of refusing every uncertain intellectual venture.