Another poet said:
You offer up your very life when the miser withholds it—
for giving one’s life is the utmost limit of generosity. (1)

Yet this rule does not apply across the board to humankind, for they fall into four categories:

• the generous and courageous, who expend both their wealth and their lives;
• the miserly and cowardly;
• the generous yet cowardly, who parts with his wealth but clings to his life; and
• the courageous but miserly, who has been granted the quality of courage but denied the quality of generosity.

Character traits are gifts: Allah bestows whichever of them He wills upon whom He wills, and He molds His creatures according to what He desires of those traits—just as the Prophet ﷺ said to al-Ashajj ʿAbd al-Qays, “You possess two qualities that Allah loves: forbearance and deliberation.” He asked, “Are these two qualities I acquired myself, or was I created with them?” He replied, “Rather, you were created with them.” Whereupon he said, “Praise be to Allah, Who created me with what He loves.” (2)

From this it becomes clear that courage and generosity are not inseparably linked, as some people imagine, even though noble traits generally accompany and support one another—and the same is true of base traits.