quotations about heroes
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.
GEORGE S. PATTON
speech to the Third Army, June 5, 1944
Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, -- they were souls that stood alone,
While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Present Crisis
Every age has its heroes.
G. W. CURTIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Our heroes are the men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do.
MARK TWAIN
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, different religion, and greater intellectual activity, would have modified or even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero, that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the unschooled man, that he finds a quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Heroism", Essays
Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission. When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition. It will always mean leaving something behind.... The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain.
DAVID RICHO
How to Be an Adult
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.
BONNIE TYLER
"Holding Out for a Hero"
Times of heroism are generally times of terror.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Heroism", Essays
We all recall the cruel stepmother in fairy tales. That archetype is often a necessary element in a fairy tale so that the heroine/hero can become a person of character and power. Stories of heroes and heroines often begin with a wound or loss or injustice and end with heroic acts of restoration.
DAVID RICHO
The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know
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.
GERALD STANLEY LEE
Crowds
Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
Elements of the heroic exist in almost every individual: it is only the felicitous development of them all in one that is rare.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists