Heroism Quotes - Page 12

• There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Morning, Winter, Nerves

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.164, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live.

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Courage, Hero

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• ... In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the "banality of heroism," which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Powerful, Hero, People

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• [Man] ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspiration, Science, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.46, Booklassic

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• Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?

  Kathe Kollwitz

  War, Remembrance, Faces

  Käthe Kollwitz, Hans Kollwitz (1988). “The Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz”, p.62, Northwestern University Press

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• Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man.

  Ayn Rand

  Hero, Men, Reverence

  The Fountainhead pt. 4, ch. 14 (1943)

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• Our national fondness for celebrating the physical heroism of soldiers - the apparent readiness with which they sacrifice their lives to larger causes - eclipses the far less romantic displays of moral and intellectual fortitude that also distinguish so many of them. In turning them all into heroes, we have lost a sense of the individuality they also fight to preserve.

  Elizabeth Samet

  War, Hero, Fighting

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• The basis of your religion is injustice. The Son of God the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the guilty. This proves his heroism, but no more does away with man's sin than a school boy's volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate a dunce from negligence.

  Lord Byron

  School, Son, Boys

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• All peace-loving women shut up when they sense they have stepped onto Guy Turf. Guy Turf is a murky realm of ego and pride and chivalry and testosterone and heroism.

  Jeanne Marie Laskas

  Pride, Guy, Ego

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• From an over-arching point-of-view, in war there is heroism on both sides. Obviously, the victor gets the spoils, the victor gets to write history, but there's heroism and compassion on both sides, and to me that's very important.

  Russell Crowe

  War, Writing, Compassion

  "The Water Diviner - Russell Crowe interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Every trait of beauty may be traced to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, and heroism.

  Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

  Beauty, Generosity, May

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• I think ultimately the film 'Room' is a kind of hymn to motherhood and to the everyday heroism of parents who find their smiles in terrible times.

  Emma Donoghue

  Motherhood, Thinking, Hymns

  "‘Room’ Author/Screenwriter Emma Donoghue on Her “Deeply Feminist” Film and Industry Sexism". Interview with Laura Berger, blogs.indiewire.com. October 16, 2015.

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• The very dogs that sullenly bay the moon from farm-yards in these nights excite more heroism in our breasts than all the civil exhortations or war sermons of the age.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, War, Moon

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.29, Xist Publishing

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• An act of heroism, of extraordinary courage, the grandeur of it, won't easily inspire us to act in imitation, but it can inspire us to emulate its author. For that, we should learn what we can of the whole experience of the subject, the hero's life, as it was before and after, and believe that trying to emulate the character it reveals is one tried way to prepare for the tests that might await us and gain hope that our courage will not be wanting in the moment.

  John McCain

  Inspirational, Believe, Hero

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• Have it compose a poem -- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!

  Stanislaw Lem

  Faces, Six, Noble

  STANISLAW LEM (1974). “THE CYBERIAD”

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• We are the planet, fully as much as water, earth, fire and air are the planet, and if the planet survives, it will only be through heroism. Not occasional heroism, a remarkable instance of it here and there, but constant heroism, systematic heroism, heroism as governing principle.

  Russell Banks

  Fire, Air, Water

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• What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.

  William James

  Life, Death, Light

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.153, Harvard University Press

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• The toughness I was learning was not a martyred doggedness, a dumb heroism, but the art of accommodation. I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Art, Dumb, Tough

  Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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• Feminist art... will take the great human themes – love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself – and render them fully human.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Art, Feminist, Suffering

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• If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

  Thomas Nagel

  Inspirational, Life, Believe

  "Mortal questions". Book by Thomas Nagel, 1979.

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• I think empathy is a guy who punches you in the face at a bus station, and you're somehow able to look at that him and know enough about what situation he was in to know that he had to do that and not to hit back. That's empathy, and nothing ever happens in writing that has that kind of moral heroism about it.

  John Jeremiah Sullivan

  Writing, Thinking, Empathy

  Interview with Allie Tollaksen, ndsmcobserver.com. January 22, 2014.

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• 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

  Men, Thinking, Position

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1957). “Hadrian's Memoirs”

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• The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden…Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.

  Octave Mirbeau

  Lying, Flower, Passion

  Octave Mirbeau (2016). “Torture Garden”, p.149, Library of Alexandria

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• On a normal day, we value heroism because it is uncommon. On Sept. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere.

  Nancy Gibbs

  Normal, Sept 11, Uncommon

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• Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so .

  George Eliot

  Children, Believe, Hero

  George Eliot (2016). “Daniel Deronda”, p.199, George Eliot

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