Hero Quotes - Page 9

• It is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble your foe.

  Anne Bronte

  Arms, Foe

  Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte (2014). “The Complete Novels Of The Bronte Sisters: Seven-Book Bundle”, p.273, Harper Collins

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We seem so frightened today of being alone that we never let it happen. Even if family, friends, and movies should fail, there is still the radio or televsion to fill up the void... We can do our housework with soap-opera heroes at our side... Now instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space with continuous music, chatter, and companionship to which we do not even listen. It is simply there to fill the vacuum. When the noise stops there is no inner music to take its place. We must re-learn to be alone.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Dream, Being Alone, Space

  17 Copy quote

• I'm a hero wid coward's legs, I'm a hero from the waist up.

  Spike Milligan

  Coward, Legs, Cowardice

  Robert Graves, Spike Milligan, Pauline Scudamore (1991). “Dear Robert, Dear Spike: the Graves-Milligan correspondence”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Girl, Opposites, Numbers

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The four Georges. The English humorists. Roundabout papers”, p.158

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Ignorance, Long, People

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1849). “History of the Girondists: Or, Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution. From Unpublished Sources”, p.455

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tragedy warms the soul, elevates the heart, can and ought to create heroes. In this sense, perhaps, France owes a part of her great actions to Corneille.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Heart, Soul, Tragedy

  4 Copy quote

• Nobody, they say, is a hero to his valet. Of course; for a man must be a hero to understand a hero. The valet, I dare say, has great respect for some person of his own stamp.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Stamps, Dare

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1853). “Goethe's Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art”, p.114

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Fur, Dens

  4 Copy quote

• Whoe'er excels in what we prize,
  Appears a hero in our eyes;
  Each girl, when pleased with what is taught,
  Will have the teacher in her thought.
  . . . .
  A blockhead with melodious voice,
  In boarding-schools may have his choice.

  Jonathan Swift

  Girl, Teacher, Teaching

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1843). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.681

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• A man may be a great statesman, and yet dislike his wife, and like somebody else's. A man may be a great hero, and yet he may have an unseemly passion, or an unpaid tailor. But the British public does not understand this. ... It thinks, unhappily or happily as you may choose to consider, that genius should keep the whole ten commandments. Now, genius is conspicuous for breaking them.

  Ouida

  Passion, Men, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• War! war! war!
  Heaven aid the right!
  God move the hero's arm in the fearful fight!
  God send the women sleep in the long, long night,
  When the breasts on whose strength they leaned shall heave no more.

  Edmund Clarence Stedman

  War, Moving, Sleep

  Edmund Clarence Stedman (1873). “The Poetical Works of Edmund Clarence Stedman”, p.111

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Troops of heroes undistinguished die.

  Joseph Addison

  Battle, Troops, Dies

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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero,--the wise, the good, or the great man,--very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light.

  Joseph Addison

  Education, Wise, Art

  Joseph Addison (1856). “The works of ... Joseph Addison, with notes by R. Hurd”, p.96

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the theater, as in life, we prefer a villain with a sense of humor to a hero without one.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Sense Of Humor, Villain, Theater

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.85, BookBaby

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  94 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Morning, Men, Sun

  Zora Neale Hurston, Chic Street Man, George C. Wolfe (2000). “Spunk: Three Tales”, p.42, Dramatists Play Service Inc

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game,
  Where wasted nations raise a single name;
  And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret,
  From age to age in everlasting debt;
  Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey
  To rust on medals, or on stones decay.

  Samuel Johnson

  Regret, War, Games

  Samuel Johnson (1820). “The Poems of Dr. Samuel Johnson. To which is Prefixed, a Life of the Author”, p.36

  4 Copy quote

  Show source