Hero Quotes - Page 10

• Faith is loyalty to some inspired teacher, some spiritual hero.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Loyalty, Spiritual, Teacher

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, p.11

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• It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Sweet, Heart, Son

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.139, Lulu.com

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• Heroes, it would seem, exist always and a certain worship of them.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Worship, Certain, Seems

  Thomas Carlyle (1840). “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, p.216

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

  William Shenstone

  Eye, Prize

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• One murder makes a villain, millions often a hero.

  Bill Vaughan

  Murder, Villain, Millions

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• Worship your heroes from afar; contact withers them.

  Bill Vaughan

  Advice, Afar, Worship

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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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• Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Greatness, Men, Order

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Julian Hawthorne (2015). “Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of “The Scarlet Letter”, “The House of Seven Gables” and “Twice-Told Tales””, p.404, e-artnow

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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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• Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Ambition, Pestilence, Admiration

  Walter Savage Landor (2016). “Delphi Collected Poetical Works of Walter Savage Landor (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• We continually want to unmask our heroes as if there were more to be learned from their nakedness than from their choice of clothing.

  Ellen Goodman

  Choices, Want, Clothings

  Ellen Goodman (1983). “At Large”, Fawcett Books

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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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• When religion doth with virtue join, it makes a hero like an angel shine.

  Edmund Waller

  Angel, Shining, Religion

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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 heroes of obtrusiveness, people with whom no soldier would lie down in the trenches, though he has to submit to being interviewed by them, break into recently abandoned royal castles so that they can report, "We got there first!" It would be far less shameful to be paid for committing atrocities than for fabricating them.

  Karl Kraus

  Lying, People, Soldier

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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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• Heroes are a mischievous race.

  Jeremy Collier

  Race, Mischievous

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• It were well if there were fewer heroes; for I scarcely ever heard of any, excepting Hercules, but did more mischief than good. These overgrown mortals commonly use their will with their right hand; and their reason with their left.

  Jeremy Collier

  Hands, Use, Reason

  Jeremy Collier (1722). “Essays Upon Several Moral Subjects: In Two Parts. ...”

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• History is made by masses of people. One man, or ten men, don't start the earthquakes and don't stop them either. Only hero worshipers and ignorant historians think they do.

  Lillian Hellman

  Men, Thinking, Earthquakes

  Lillian Hellman (1944). “The Searching Wind: A Play in Two Acts”, New York : The Viking Press

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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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• 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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• 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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