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What does “there are times that try …” mean?
“There are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that now stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflic, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearneww only that gives everything its value Heavan knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celetial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.” (Paine, The American Crisis, Number 1)
Thomas Paine wrote this as a pamphleteer for the American Revolution. This quoted material was meant to rouse and sustain the revolutionary fervor of Americans at war with the British Empire. Specifically, he noted the difficulty of fighting for freedom from the “tyranny” of British imperial rule, and he used the metaphors of “summer” and “sunshine” to suggest times of relative ease and thus, to rebuff those who would only serve the revolutionary cause when it was convenient. He then extended the metaphor to imply the hard time of winter and that lesser patriots would “shrink” in the cold. Hence, the pamphlet was first read to the Continental Army on December 23, 1776, when the full force of winter had begun. Paine also used this summer / winter dichotomy to demonize the British Empire as hell on earth, and thus, to suggest that those “summer soldiers” who only fought Britain in times of comfort came too close to the empire’s tyrannous hell-fires. In Paine’s estimation, only those who were willing to endure the hardship of winter and warfare were worthy of the freedom to be won. Thence, the rest of the quote turns on the idea that freedom is a “celestial” (i.e., heavenly) prize to be cherished precisely because it has to be earned through conflict.