Meaning of “Have courage, or cunning, when you deal with…”

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, saying 206, D. Lyman Jr. translation (1856).

Citizenship in a Republic, commonly called the Man in the Arena speech; Roosevelt contrasts action with spectatorship.

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.

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.

Citizenship in a Republic; this short clause comes from the “man in the arena” passage.