 
|
A hero is a man who is afraid to run away.
-English Proverb
|
|
|
|
The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.
-Felix Adler
|
|
|
|
You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes, they waste their deaths on us.
-C. D. Andrews
|
|
|
|
Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy --common clay, if you like --eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others --the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.
-Jean Anouilh
|
|
|
|
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others, at whatever cost.
-Arthur Ashe
|
|
|
|
They wouldn't be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn't be heroes if they weren't miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again.
-Lester Bangs
|
|
|
|
Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
-John Barth
|
|
|
|
What is a society without a heroic dimension?
-Jean Baudrillard
|
|
|
|
The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.
-Henry Ward Beecher
|
|
|
|
True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
|
|
|
|
Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.
-Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image, ch. 2, From Hero to Celebrity: The Human Pseudo-event, 1961
|
|
|
|
In our world of big names, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knowness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.
-Daniel J. Boorstin
|
|
|
|
Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.
-Bertolt Brecht
|
|
|
|
Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.
-Thomas Carlyle
|
|
|
|
Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown . . . Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of men.
-Thomas Carlyle
|
|
|
|
All sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero, -- the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in.
-Thomas Carlyle
|
|
|
|
The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
|
|
|
|
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid... He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.
-Raymond Chandler
|
|
|
|
I am convinced that a light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and rainy morning, would have proved a coward.
-Lord Chesterfield
|
|
|
|
The paper tiger hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.
-Eldridge Cleaver
|
|
|
|
To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.
-Charles Horton Cooley
|
|
|
|
Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.
-Calvin Coolidge
|
|
|
|
The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.
-Benjamin Disraeli
|
|
|
|
Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air nelson stylites in Trafalgar square reminds the British what once they were.
-Lawrence Durrell
|
|
|
|
A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is sensitive; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture -- in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.
-Andrea Dworkin
|
|
|
|
All the heroes, the fire fighters and police men are dying. Don't forget them, many are still alive.
-James Dye
|
|
|
|
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.
-Bob Dylan
|
|
|
|
Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.
-George Eliot
|
|
|
|
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
|
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
|
Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
|
Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual
http://www.bartleby.com/5/107.html
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and English Traits Heroism, 1841
|
|
|
|
Bardot, Byron, Hitler, Hemingway, Monroe, Sade: we do not require our heroes to be subtle, just to be big. Then we can depend on someone to make them subtle.
-D. J. Enright
|
|
|
|
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, Notebook E, 1945
|
|
|
|
A hero is someone right who doesn't change.
-George Foreman
|
|
|
|
I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely with his lips, follow me.
-Giuseppe Garibaldi
|
|
|
|
The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.
-Jean Genet
|
|
|
|
What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.
-David Lloyd George
|
|
|
|
It is said, that no one is a hero to their butler. The reason is, that it requires a hero to recognize a hero. The butler, however, will probably know well how to estimate his equals.
-Johann von Goethe
|
|
|
|
The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.
-Johann von Goethe
|
|
|
|
Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.
-Baltasar Gracian
|
|
|
|
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
|
|
|
|
We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.
-Helen Hayes
|
|
|
|
No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet.
-G. W. F. Hegel
|
|
|
|
Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.
-G. W. F. Hegel
|
|
|
|
You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things -- to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.
-Edmund Hillary
|
|
|
|
Be your own hero, it's cheaper than a movie ticket.
-Doug Horton
|
|
|
|
A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.
-Edward W. Howe
|
|
|
|
Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.
-Victor Hugo, Les Mis, 1862
|
|
|
|
What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes --ah, they have all the necessary leisure.
-Aldous Huxley
|
|
|
|
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty - they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Place of Rest. Earth may run red with other wars - they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead.
-Robert G. Ingersoll
|
|
|
|
The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
-Washington Irving
|
|
|
|
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.
-William James
|
|
|
|
Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials.
-Gerald W. Johnson
|
|
|
|
Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
-Samuel Johnson
|
|
|
|
My heroes are and were my parents. I can't see having anyone else as my heroes.
-Michael Jordan
|
|
|
|
A hero is someone we can admire without apology.
-Kitty Kelley
|
|
|
|
Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.
-Alphonse De Lamartine
|
|
|
|
The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers.
-Johann Kaspar Lavater
|
|
|
|
All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all. I am just like everybody else.
-Lenin (Vladimir Ulyanov)
|
|
|
|
What is a hero without love for mankind.
-Doris Lessing
|
|
|
|
And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
|
|
|
|
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.
-Norman Mailer
|
|
|
|
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
-H. L. Mencken
|
|
|
|
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
-Henry Miller
|
|
|
|
Most people aren't appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn't take the drug money, or the daughter who held her tongue again and again. All this anonymous heroism.
-Peggy Noonan
|
|
|
|
The high sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
-George Orwell, The Art of Donald McGill
|
|
|
|
No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she can give birth to one.
-Jean Paul
|
|
|
|
One murder makes a villain, millions often a hero.
-Bishop Beilby Porteus
|
|
|
|
As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.
-Ernest Renan
|
|
|
|
There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
-Fran
|
|
|
|
The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.
-Will Rogers
|
|
|
|
Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.
-Will Rogers
|
|
|
|
We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
-Will Rogers
|
|
|
|
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau
|
|
|
|
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
-Jean Jacques Rousseau
|
|
|
|
Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names. And, years later tell how they stood for hours in the cold rain just to catch a glimpse of the one who taught them to hold on a second longer. I believe there's a hero in all of us who keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.
-Alvin Sargent, Spider-Man 2
|
|
|
|
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
-May Sarton
|
|
|
|
To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The surrender of decision, the unquestioning submission to leadership, the prostration of the average man before the Great Man -- these are the diseases of heroism, and they are fatal to human dignity. History amply shows that it is possible to have heroes without turning them into gods. And history shows, too, that when a society, in flight from hero worship, decides to do without great men at all, it gets into troubles of its own.
-Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
|
|
|
|
It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.
-Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf
|
|
|
|
Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.
-Robert Falcon Scott
|
|
|
|
If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.
-William Shakespeare
|
|
|
|
You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
-George Bernard Shaw
|
|
|
|
More than any time in recent history, America's destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedom and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people's strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arive...The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars...
-Aaron Sorkin, West Wing (20 Hours in America: I & II; aired September 25, 2002)
|
|
|
|
The more characteristic American hero in the earlier day, and the more beloved type at all times, was not the hustler but the whittler.
-Mark Sullivan
|
|
|
|
What makes a hero truly great is that they never despair.
-Roy Thompson
|
|
|
|
The great destroyers of nations and men are comfort, plenty and security. A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared, but still goes on.
-Source Unknown
|
|
|
|
A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.
-Source Unknown
|
|
|
|
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
-Source Unknown
|
|
|
|
One brave deed makes no hero.
-John Greenleaf Whittier
|
|
|
|
The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they've been at other times.
-Angus Wilson
|
|
|
|
It's true that heroes are inspiring, but mustn't they also do some rescuing if they are to be worthy of their name? Would Wonder Woman matter if she only sent commiserating telegrams to the distressed?
-Jeanette Winterson
|
|
|
|
I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.
-Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian, novel
|
|
Books about Heroes/Heroism
