Hero Quotes - Page 95

Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the grossest sexual provocation; the hero who makes his wife roll her eyes is a perambulating phallus.

The cold hand of history, which is for ever robbing us of some of our oldest and best cherished stories, points rigidly to the fact that no such person as King Arthur ever presided over a Round Table. Be this as it may, romance still hugs her heroes to her heart as possessions to be not willingly let die.

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.

I would like to acquire a document autographed by John Witherspoon, who signed the Declaration of Independence and is one of my American heroes.

We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod.

Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is: what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problems of the modern novel is: what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.

A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.

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.

Men of real talents in Arms have commonly approved themselves patrons of the liberal arts and friends to the poets, of their own as well as former times. In some instances by acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets, and poets heroes.

Better not be a hero than work oneself up into heroism by shouting lies.

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.

We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes.

I have always been a friend to hero-worship; it is the only rational one, and has always been in use amongst civilized people - the worship of spirits is synonymous with barbarism - it is mere fetish. ... There is something philosophic in the worship of the heroes of the human race.

I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ...To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero.

Heroes have a rough time because they stand up when they ought not to, they speak when they ought not to; they always have to go that extra mile.

The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles - preferably of his own making - in order to triumph.

Heroes and cowards feel the same fear and action creates opportunities.

If everyone is a hero, then disasters and atrocities lose their meaning. It's only when certain people are heroes and others are not that these tragedies and disasters that mankind faces take on meaning.

I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything, that only a fool can become something.

You notice that all the minorities are going to be voting for Barack Obama because he's a minority. He's going to be their hero; he's going to be their white knight if you will, or in this case black knight.

Here is a hero who did nothing but shake the tree as soon as the fruit was ripe. Does this seem to be too small a thing to you? Then take a good look at the tree he shook.

We become male automatically because of the Y chromosome and the little magic peanut, but if we are to become men we need the helpof other men--we need our fathers to model for us and then to anoint us, we need our buddies to share the coming-of-age rituals with us and to let us join the team of men, and we need myths of heroes to inspire us and to show us the way.

Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul, which raises it above the troubles, disorders and emotions which the sight of great perils can arouse in it; by this strength heroes maintain a calm aspect and preserve their reason and liberty in the most surprising and terrible accidents.

Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.

Who then will dare to say I'm weak or timid? No, they'll say I'm loyal as a friend, ruthless as a foe, so much like a hero destined for glory.