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The opposite of courage is never fear, but indifference.
The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference.
The opposite of faith is not doubt; again, it is indifference.
The opposite of hope is not despair; it too is indifference.
And ultimately the opposite of life is not death, but our indifference to the world in which we live.

Indifference is the greatest enemy of the human spirit. It stands against life and everything that gives life meaning, emptying both us and the world of courage and truth.

In one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of literature, Dante, through the voice of Virgil in his journey through Hell in the *Divine Comedy*, writes in the rendering given here:

At the entrance to Hell dwell souls who have been overcome by their own pains: people whom Heaven refuses to accept and whom Hell itself is ashamed to receive.
These are those who lived their lives in indifference and are condemned to be forgotten, as though they had never lived upon the earth.

Aydin Areta