Heroes

"Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh — that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage."

"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."

"The hero is the world-man, in whose heart One passion stands for all, the most indulged."

"A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy's shoulders to let him know the world hadn't ended."

"They died to save their country and they only saved the world."

"They were no iron men, but they were heroes. Seamen and clothing workers, clerks and artists, students and fathers of families. The phrase you heard so many times- 'united in a common cause'- it meant everything, and it meant nothing. For you could not hold an abstract idea in your mind at the front. You became aware at moments that the idea had never disappeared; that it was behind everything you did, behind the necessity you felt to do the job and do it well. It was something you did not talk about; it was something you took for granted."

"Though nothing, nothing will keep us together We can beat them, forever and ever Oh, we can be heroes just for one day."

"Andrea: Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero. Galileo: No, Andrea: Unhappy is the land that needs a hero."

"I want a hero: an uncommon want, When every year and month sends forth a new one."

"If everyone's a hero, then the word doesn't mean much anymore. And sooner or later we'll have to give the real heroes (the heroic ones) a new name, to distinguish them from the rest of the pack. Too bad "superheroes" is already taken."

"Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man."

"If Hero mean sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?"

"Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among Mankind."

"Nature seldom makes a hero and Fortune does not always proclaim those that she makes."

"He's of stature somewhat low— Your hero always should be tall, you know."

"What has suddenly happened is that the white race has lost its heroes. Worse, its heroes have been revealed as villains and its greatest heroes as the arch-villains. The new generations of whites, appalled by the sanguine and despicable record carved over the face of the globe by their race in the last five hundred years, are rejecting the panoply of white heroes, whose heroism consisted in erecting the inglorious edifice of colonialism and imperialism; heroes whose careers rested on a system of foreign and domestic exploitation, rooted in the myth of white supremacy and the manifest destiny of the white race."

"If you ask me, the difference between a hero and a coward is that a hero find some damn-fool way to con himself into going ahead instead of doing the sensible thing."

"A hero is an average person who has done something extraordinary."

"[Jews needed] a hero who could protect us against an almost invincible force. So [Siegel and Shuster] created an invincible hero."

"The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails."

"Self-trust is the essence of heroism."

"Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever he says has an enhanced value."

"The heroes, the wise men, like the new moon have their waxing and waning."

"The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful."

"The fundamental principle underlying all justifications of war, from the point of view of human personality, is 'heroism'. War, it is said, offers man the opportunity to awaken the hero who sleeps within him. War breaks the routine of comfortable life; by means of its severe ordeals, it offers a transfiguring knowledge of life, life according to death. The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities."

"The real heroes, and heroines, are those who deal heroically with the everyday cares of life, though God knows they’ve been multiplied enormously. It’s not the guy who kills a dragon once in his lifetime and then retires that’s a hero. It's the guy who kills cockroaches and rats every day, day after day, and doesn't rest on his laurels until he’s an old man, if then."

"Es gibt für den Kammerdiener keinen Helden."

"It hath been an antient custom among them [Hungarians] that none should wear a fether but he who had killed a Turk, to whom onlie yt was lawful to shew the number of his slaine enemys by the number of fethers in his cappe."

"Es gibt keinen Helden für den Kammerdiener; nicht aber weil jener nicht ein Held, sondern weil dieser – der Kammerdiener ist, mit welchem jener nicht als Held, sondern als Essender, Trinkender, sich Kleidender, überhaupt in der Einzelnheit des Bedürfnisses und der Vorstellung zu tun hat. So gibt es für das Beurteilen keine Handlung, in welcher es nicht die Seite der Einzelnheit der Individualität der allgemeinen Seite der Handlung entgegensetzen, und gegen den Handelnden den Kammerdiener der Moralität machen könnte."

"Heroes as great have died, and yet shall fall."

"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Multi: sed omnes illacrimabiles Urgentur, ignotique longa Nocte, carent quia vate sacro."

"The idol of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow."

"Someone can conquer kingdoms and countries without being a hero; someone else can prove himself a hero by controlling his temper. Someone can display courage by doing the out-of-the-ordinary, another by doing the ordinary. The question is always-how does he do it?"

"It could be argued that normal life is after all nothing but a chain of clever compromises. The man who understands how to live well, the Lebenskünstler as the Germans call him, is nothing but a virtuoso in compromises. The hero and the saint, on the other hand, are "clumsy," quixotic, and maladroit. They have nothing of the Lebenskünstler and cannot help inflicting upon themselves wound after wound. The virtuoso of life, no less than the bonvivant, is a thoroughly feminine as well as effeminate product."

"Another definition of a hero is someone who is concerned about other people's well-being, and will go out of his or her way to help them -- even if there is no chance of a reward. That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt, a real superhero."

"Crowds speak in heroes."

"There is never any real danger in allowing a pedestal for a hero. He never has time to sit on it. One sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out from under him, and using it to batter a world with."

"If everyone in your class has heroes and they can relate to them in textbooks and literature, and then you don't see any of your heritage there, you feel less than. And I always wanted to be able to make Latin kids like myself feel more than."

"You see all these white heroes, everybody is white, all the literature classes—your Shakespeare, your poetry — everybody’s white, and you start to feel less than."

"A real hero saves everyone."

"Dost thou know what a hero is? Why, a hero is as much as one should say,—a hero."

"'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father's graves."

"Bob Forestier had pretended for so many years to be a gentleman that in the end, forgetting that it was all a fake, he had found himself driven to act as in that stupid, conventional brain of his he thought a gentleman must act. No longer knowing the difference between sham and real, he had sacrificed his life to a spurious heroism."

"People would be amazed at the behind-the-scenes activity in hero-making; quarrels over which cases are most deserving; seeing that all ranks and units are properly represented; dressing up weak cases to make them appear stronger; last minute switches from one class of decoration to another. … The number of decorations is determined, not by the number of deserving cases, but by the number and types of medals the admiral totes along."

"Tel a esté miraculeux au monde, auquel sa femme et son valet n'ont rien veu seulement de remarquable; peu d'hommes ont esté admirez par leur domestiques."

"Even as a kid, it wasn’t to big stories of heroism that I listened but to the everyday people on my block more than anything else. Since I thought of my father and mother as somewhat heroic in their early years, what interested me tremendously was how this whole other world of people living every day, how they lived their lives. I think most people are heroic to a degree, they’re heroic in caring for the lives of the people around them and not dumping each other or dumping on each other."

"The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base."

"My personal attendant does not think so much of these things as I do."

"There are heroes in evil as well as in good."

"Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is."

"We all can't be heroes, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."

"Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you."

"She was a hero, but, like many heroes, she was not, to a newer generation, entirely real."

"Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields, See how these names are fêted in the waving grass And by the streamers of the white cloud And whispers of the wind in the listening sky. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre. Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honour."

"Never run against a war hero."

"He who dreamed of democracy, far back in a world of absolutism, was indeed heroic, and we of today awaken to the wonder of his dream."

"Don’t just meet your heroes. Beat your heroes."

"[T]he epic poet did not judge heroes by the result... their fate depended on totally external forces... Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost."

"Could it be … that the hero is one who is willing to set out, take the first step, shoulder something? Perhaps the hero is one who puts his foot upon a path not knowing what he may expect from life but in some way feeling in his bones that life expects something of him."

"I need a hero, I'm holding out for at hero 'till the end of the night He's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast And he's gotta be fresh from the fight I need a hero, I'm holding out for a hero 'till the morning light He's gotta be sure and it's gotta be soon And he's gotta be larger than life, larger than life"

"You can define heroism any way you want to, but that’s it for me. It’s sticking in there no matter what. Whether it’s a pilot fighting his plane down through that last mile, or switchboard operators and doctors and nurses staying at their posts while the bombs blitz London, or even the dance band on the Titanic playing while the ship goes down… It’s fulfilling your responsibilities."

"My valet-de-chambre sings me no such song."

"Tel maître, tel valet."

"Ferryman ho! In the night so black Hark to the clank of iron; 'Tis heroes of the Yser, 'Tis sweethearts of glory. 'Tis lads who are unafraid! Ferryman, ho!"

"Il faut être bien héros pour l'être aux yeux de son valet-de-chambre."

"Il n'y a pas de grand homme pour son valet-de-chambre."

"But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word, And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be."

"The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck, Shone round him o'er the dead. * * * * * The flames roll'd on—he would not go Without his Father's word; That Father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard."

"Hail, Columbia! happy land! Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band! Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause."

"Still the race of hero spirits pass the lamp from hand to hand."

"Rarement ils sont grands vis-à-vis de leur valets-de-chambre."

"See the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!"

"Do we weep for the heroes who died for us, Who living were true and tried for us, And dying sleep side by side for us; The martyr band That hallowed our land With the blood they shed in a tide for us?"

"The last flash … and the hideous attack Dies like a wisp of storm—discouraged flame; And soon these battered heroes will come back, The same but yet not the same."

"True heroism is alike positive and progressive. It sees in right the duty which should dominate, and in truth the principle which should prevail. And hence it never falters in the faith that always and everywhere sin must be repressed, and righteousness exalted."

"Never was there a time, in the history of the world, when moral heroes were more needed. The world waits for such, the providence of God has commanded science to labor and prepare the way for such. For them she is laying her iron tracks, and stretching her wires, and bridging the oceans. But where are they? Who shall breathe into our civil and political relations the breath of a higher life? Who shall touch the eyes of a paganized science, and of a pantheistic philosophy, that they may see God? Who shall consecrate to the glory of God, the triumphs of science? Who shall bear the life-boat to the stranded and perishing nations?"

"The courage of Daniel is true heroism. It is not physical daring, such as beneath some proud impulse will rush upon an enemy's steel; it is not reckless valor, sporting with a life which ill-fortune has blighted or which despair has made intolerable; it is not the passiveness of the stoic, through whose indifferent heart no tides of feeling flow; it is the calm courage which reflects upon its alternatives, and deliberately chooses to do right; it is the determination of Christian principle, whose foot resteth on the rock, and whose eye pierceth into heaven."

"With quaint manners and quaint names these men had the hero's heart and the confessor's faith. Their faith was, indeed, their strength. Strong in the supremacy of conscience, in that real earnestness which springs from conviction, and which prompts to enterprise; far-sighted in political sagacity, because seeing Him that is invisible; shrewd enough to know that the truest policy for the life that now is, is a reverent recognition of the life that is to come, they were brave in endurance and patient under trial; and never losing sight of the principle for which they struggled, and of the purpose of their voyage afar, they " won the wilderness for God.""

"Don't aim at any impossible heroisms. Strive rather to be quiet in your own sphere. Don't live in the cloudland of some transcendental heaven; do your best to bring the glory of a real heaven down, and ray it out upon your fellows in this work-day world. Seek to make trade bright with a spotless integrity, and business lustrous with the beauty of holiness."

"The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy."

"The calm, tranquil energy of the Redeemer's soul; the deep strength of principle which nothing could shake; the serene courage which looked down upon menaces, clamor, contumely, sacrifice, death, — this is the temper which pours contempt upon the intrepidity of heroes, but which the Holy Spirit infuses into the humble Christian."

"These are the silent, unreported heroes, not mentioned even in the Congress Minutes."