Hero Quotes - Page 15

• Whoe'er excels in what we prize, appears a hero in our eyes.

  William Shenstone

  Eye, Prize

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• Troops of heroes undistinguished die.

  Joseph Addison

  Battle, Troops, Dies

  Joseph Addison (1854). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.50

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• Heroes are a mischievous race.

  Jeremy Collier

  Race, Mischievous

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• We agreed that great men and women should be forced to live as long as possible. The reverence they enjoyed was a life sentence, which they could neither revoke nor modify.

  Maya Angelou

  Men, Long, Should

  Maya Angelou (1987). “All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes”, Vintage

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• The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.

  Victor Hugo

  Country, Fighting, Men

  Victor Hugo, Frank Lee Benedict (1874). “Ninety-three”, p.54, Dawson Bros.

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• It is a law of nature that fainthearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countries, for we never find that the same soil produces delicacies and heroes.

  Herodotus

  Country, Men, Law

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• The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.

  Samuel Johnson

  Remarkable, Has Beens

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• Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nineteenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. Indeed, one portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Successful, Reign, Empires

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• Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.

  Clarence Darrow

  My Hero

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “The Story of My Life”, p.73, Lulu.com

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• Often I have found that the one thing that can save is the thing which appears most to threaten ... one has to go down into what one most fears and in that process ... comes a saving flicker of light and energy that, even if it does not produce the courage of a hero, at any rate enables a trembling mortal to take one step further.

  Laurens van der Post

  Light, Steps, Energy

  Laurens Van Der Post (1994). “Feather Fall: An Anthology”, Hodder & Stoughton

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• There are persons of that general philanthropy and easy tempers, which the world in contempt generally calls good-natured, who seem to be sent into the world with the same design with which men put little fish into a pike pond, in order only to be devoured by that voracious water-hero.

  Henry Fielding

  Men, Order, Water

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• Hero worship has died with heroes, and if someone bows down today, it is to pick up something.

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Today, Bows, Worship

  Natalie Clifford Barney (1992). “Adventures of the Mind: The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.126, NYU Press

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• Seeming devotion does but gild a knave,
  That's neither faithful, honest, just, nor brave;
  But where religion does with virtue join,
  It makes a hero like an angel shine.

  Edmund Waller

  Angel, Shining, Brave

  Edmund Waller, Elijah Fenton (1796). “The Poetical Works of Edmund Waller. From Mr. Fenton's Quarto Edition, 1729. With the Life of the Author ... Embellished with Superb Engravings [including a Portrait.]”

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• It is not so much in buying pictures as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image, but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Children, School

  John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1867). “Precious Thoughts: Moral and Religious. Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A. M.”, p.77

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• ...the act of eating,which hath by several wise men been considered as extremely mean and derogatory from the philosophic dignity, must be in some measure performed by the greatest prince, hero, or philosopher upon earth; nay, sometimes Nature hath been so frolicsome as to exact of these dignified characters a much more exorbitant share of this office than she hath obliged those of the lowest orders to perform.

  Henry Fielding

  Wise, Food, Character

  Henry Fielding (1844). “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling: With the Life of the Author : in Two Volumes”, p.443

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• I'm proud to be Archie's son. Being a quarterback, I had my mentor and hero living in the same house.

  Peyton Manning

  Son, Nfl, House

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• Heroes in history seem to us poetic because they are there. But if we should tell the simple truth of some of our neighbors, it would sound like poetry.

  George William Curtis

  Simple, Sound, Poetic

  Theodore Winthrop, George William Curtis (1861). “Cecil Dreeme”, p.12

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• The rich plankton of pop heroes and pop villains on which we Americans are accustomed to feed, the daily media soup of sports figures, ax murderers, politicians, and rock singers, the ever-running river of celebs, heavies, and oddballs that we use to spice up our own relatively humdrum lives has of late become a very watery gruel. Where have all the good guys and bad guys gone? Why does everyone out there look so gray?

  Shana Alexander

  Sports, Running, Rocks

  Shana Alexander (1976). “Talking woman”

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• Even in a hero's heart
  Discretion is the better part.

  Charles Churchill

  Heart, Discretion

  Charles Churchill (1855). “The poetical works of Charles Churcill: With memoir, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes”, p.219

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• It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.

  Mary McCarthy

  Spiritual, Religious, Belief

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• The lessons of the past suggest that racism and resentment against people of color will continue to flourish in America as long as the history that is taught transposes the heroes and the villains. That is the unspoken truth at the heart of the nation's racial divide.

  Susan L. Taylor

  Heart, Past, Color

  Susan L. Taylor (2010). “Lessons in Living”, p.159, Anchor

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• I have another name for what they're terming whistleblowers, and that's righteous heroes. From Bradley Manning to Snowden. They're people of conscience who are unwilling to turn a blind eye to the crimes of our government. And thank goodness for them.

  Tom Morello

  Eye, Government, Names

  Interview with Robin Grearson, logger.believermag.com. August 27, 2013.

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• My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.

  Paul Klee

  Uncles, Eye, Aunt

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.177, Univ of California Press

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• Protagonists are always loners, almost by definition.

  Pauline Kael

  Loner, Definitions, Protagonists

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• So die as though your funeral
  Ushered you through the doors that led
  Into a stately banquet hall
  Where heroes banqueted.

  Alan Seeger

  Death, Doors, Funeral

  Alan Seeger (2001). “Poems”

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