Hero Quotes - Page 14

• Every country that aspires to become a nation needs its heroes, its eminent civic and moral leaders, and if it doesn't have them, it's our duty to invent them.

  Rosario Ferre

  Country, Leader, Needs

  Rosario Ferré (1996). “Sweet Diamond Dust: And Other Stories”, Plume Books

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• Is society debasing the idea of heroism by using it to describe anyone who makes people feel good about themselves?

  Lena Williams

  Ideas, People, Feel Good

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• The cold hand of history, which is for ever robbing us of some of our oldest and best cherished stories, points rigidly to the fact that no such person as King Arthur ever presided over a Round Table. Be this as it may, romance still hugs her heroes to her heart as possessions to be not willingly let die.

  H. A. Guerber

  Kings, Heart, Hands

  H. A. Guerber (1909). “Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages”, p.285, Courier Corporation

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• Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be.

  Joseph Campbell

  Focus, Monsters, May

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.156, Anchor

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• Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not the villains of our own stories. In fact, it is quite the contrary: we play, and only play, the hero, and in the swirl of other people's stories, insofar as these stories concern us at all, we are never less than heroic.

  Teju Cole

  Mean, Self, Play

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• I feel like an old lady; my hero is Miss Marple.

  Helen Oyeyemi

  Missing, Old Lady, Feels

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• Superstars strive for approbation; heroes walk alone. Superstars crave consensus; heroes define themselves by the judgment of a future they see it as their task to bring about. Superstars seek success in a technique for eliciting support; heroes pursue success as the outgrowth of inner values.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Support, Technique, Tasks

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• That is why your sacrifice was all the more difficult. You chose to be a hero not through enchantment but through your own manhood.

  Lloyd Alexander

  Sacrifice, Enchantment, Difficult

  Lloyd Alexander (2015). “The Black Cauldron 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.173, Macmillan

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• You say to yourself: 'What could people, in all these countries, find in my books?' and yet I think we're all the same, anywhere. Everybody is a hero or a dramatic person in their own story if you just know where to look.

  Maeve Binchy

  Country, Book, Thinking

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• It is our duty to keep the memory of our heroes green. Yet they belong to the whole country; they belong to America.

  Jefferson Davis

  Country, Memories, America

  Jefferson Davis (1923). “Jefferson Davis, constitutionalist: his letters, papers, and speeches”

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• My heroes were always soccer players.

  Ronaldinho

  Soccer, Player, Soccer Player

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• I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut.

  Louis Sachar

  School, My Favorite, Salinger

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• Disease is surely one of the ways in which we are tried by life and offered the chance to be heroic. Though few of us will win Olympic gold medals or slay dragons, disease can be the spark or gift that allows many of us to live out our personal myths and become heroes.

  Bernie Siegel

  Winning, Dragons, Gold

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• I am no longer a divine biped. I am no longer the freest German after Goethe, as Ruge named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. 1 enjoyed the title of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man.

  Heinrich Heine

  Men, Laughing, Unhappy

  Heinrich Heine (2016). “Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine”, p.12, The Floating Press

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• Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something.

  David Bowie

  Stupid, Believe, Enough

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• The final cover for Heroes Are My Weakness feels exactly right. It reflects the cold, wintry setting of an isolated island off the coast of Maine and the feisty spirit of a heroine who refuses to give up, even when the odds are stacked against her.

  Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Giving Up, Islands, Odds

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• The sinister nature of the American soil is apparent in places like Gettysburg. Fertilize it with the blood of heros, and it brings forth a frozen-custard stand.

  Russell Baker

  Peace, War, Blood

  Russell Baker (1992). “Poor Russell's almanac”

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• Rarely do they appear great before their valets.
  [Fr., Rarement ils sont grands vis-a-vis de leur valets-de-chambre.]

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Valet

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• To a valet no man is a hero.
  [Ger., Es gibt fur den Kammerdiener keiner Helden.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Fur, Dens

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• Nature I believe in. True art aims to, represent men and women, not as my little self would have them, but as they appear. My heroes and heroines I want not extreme types, all good or all bad; but human, mortal--partly good, partly bad. Realism I need. Pure mental abstractions have no significance for me.

  Ouida

  Art, Believe, Men

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• He who, with strong passions, remains chaste--he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can yet restrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, spiritual heroes.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Spiritual, Strong, Passion

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• Nature, they say, doth dote,
  And cannot make a man
  Save on some worn-out plan
  Repeating us by rote:
  For him her Old World moulds aside she threw
  And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
  Of the unexhausted West,
  With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.

  James Russell Lowell

  Sweet, Men, West

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.431

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• I don't believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.

  Tennessee Williams

  Taken, Believe, Choices

  Tennessee Williams, John S. Bak (2009). “New Selected Essays: Where I Live”, p.85, New Directions Publishing

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• A thousand glorious actions that might claim
  Triumphant laurels, and immortal fame,
  Confus'd in crowds of glorious actions lie,
  And troops of heroes undistinguished die.

  Joseph Addison

  Lying, War, Troops

  Joseph Addison (1856). “The works of Joseph Addison: including the whole contents of B. Hurd's edition, with letters and other pieces not found in any previous collection, and Macaulay's essay on his life and works”, p.189

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• There is a hate layer of opinion and emotion in America. There will be other McCarthys to come who will be hailed as its heroes.

  Max Lerner

  Hate, America, Layers

  Max Lerner (1959). “The Unfinished Country”

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