"Like Hercules he found himself placed, not between vice and virtue, but between the mediocrity consequent on assured well-being and all the heroic dreams of his youth. So I lack true resolution, he said to himself. This was the suspicion which gave him most pain. I'm not the wood out of which great men are fashioned, since I'm afraid that eight years spent earning my bread will rob me of the sublime energy required to do extraordinary things."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)