Motivational Quotes

Heroes and heroism

True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Heroes and heroism

Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.

Gracian, Baltasar

It is said, that no one is a hero to their butler. The reason is, that it requires a hero to recognize a hero. The butler, however, will probably know well how to estimate his equals.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.

Renan, Ernest

A hero is a man who is afraid to run away.

Proverb, English

My heroes are and were my parents. I can't see having anyone else as my heroes.

Jordan, Michael

Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.

Rogers, Will

To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.

Cooley, Charles Horton

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

10.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

Churchill, Winston

11.

A hero is someone we can admire without apology.

Kelley, Kitty

12.

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

Mencken, H. L.

13.

The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

14.

The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

15.

Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.

Hegel, Georg

16.

The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.

Rogers, Will

17.

A hero is someone right who doesn't change.

Foreman, George

18.

Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.

James, William

19.

Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air nelson stylites in Trafalgar square reminds the British what once they were.

Durrell, Lawrence

20.

Be your own hero, it's cheaper than a movie ticket.

Horton, Doug

21.

What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.

George, David Lloyd

22.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes --ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

Huxley, Aldous

23.

Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.

Scott, Robert Falcon

24.

Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials.

Johnson, Gerald W.

25.

What makes a hero truly great is that they never despair.

Thompson, Roy

26.

One murder makes a villain, millions often a hero.

Porteous, Bishop

27.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

28.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Sarton, May

29.

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.

Miller, Henry

30.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

Shaw, George Bernard

31.

If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.

Shakespeare, William

32.

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.

Mailer, Norman

33.

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.

Adler, Felix

36.

Most people aren't appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn't take the drug money, or the daughter who held her tongue again and again. All this anonymous heroism.

Noonan, Peggy

37.

The great destroyers of nations and men are comfort, plenty and security. A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared, but still goes on.

38.

A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.

Howe, Edgar Watson

39.

No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet.

Hegel, Georg

40.

No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she can give birth to one.

Paul, Jean

41.

The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.

Irving, Washington

42.

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

43.

Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.

Carlyle, Thomas

44.

True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

45.

It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.

Schwarzkopf, Norman

46.

Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.

Brecht, Bertolt

47.

The more characteristic American hero in the earlier day, and the more beloved type at all times, was not the hustler but the whittler.

Sullivan, Mark

48.

You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes, they waste their deaths on us.

Andrews, C. D.

49.

A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is sensitive; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture -- in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.

Dworkin, Andrea

50.

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

Rousseau, Jean Jacques