I suspect it was...the old ...

I suspect it was...the old story of the implacable necessity of a man having honour within his own natural spirit. A man cannot live and temper his mettle without such honour. There is deep in him a sense of the heroic quest; and our modern way of life, with its emphasis on security, its distrust of the unknown and its elevation of abstract collective values has repressed the heroic impulse to a degree that may produce the most dangerous consequences.
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 Laurens van der Post

Quotes from the same author

The spirit of man is nomad, his blood bedouin, and love is the aboriginal tracker on the faded desert spoor of his lost self; and so I came to live my life not by conscious plan or prearranged design but as someone following the flight of a bird.
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 Laurens van der Post
Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril.
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 Laurens van der Post
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
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 Laurens van der Post
Often I have found that the one thing that can save is the thing which appears most to threaten ... one has to go down into what one most fears and in that process ... comes a saving flicker of light and energy that, even if it does not produce the courage of a hero, at any rate enables a trembling mortal to take one step further.
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 Laurens van der Post