Best 321 quotes in «heroism quotes» category

There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy... But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason... A love, inspired, it seems, by the gods, which it is impossible to fight, distort, destroy, or weaken. In fact, the attempts to destroy such loves only strengthen them. And to do nothing allows them to continue to grow at their natural pace, inexoribly, till this love becomes a wide and silent adoration.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

To stand up on a stage alone with an acoustic guitar requires bravery bordering on heroism. Bordering on insanity.

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.

The true epic of our times is not "Arm's and the Man," but "Tools and the Man"--an infinitely wider kind of epic.

The woman who led [downed airmen] was named Andrée De Jongh and her story - one of heroism and peril and astounding courage - became the inspiration for my novel.

There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.

The system of heroism depends on women to be weak so men can be strong.

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.

This lack of imagination gives his heroism to the hero.

Those persons who are burning to display heroism may rest assured that the course of social evolution will offer them every opportunity.

We are the planet, fully as much as water, earth, fire and air are the planet, and if the planet survives, it will only be through heroism. Not occasional heroism, a remarkable instance of it here and there, but constant heroism, systematic heroism, heroism as governing principle.

Volunteering is an act of heroism on a grand scale. And it matters profoundly. It does more than help people beat the odds; it changes the odds.

War is elevating, because the individual disappears before the great conception of the state... What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men!

War can so easily be gilt with romance and heroism and solemn national duty and patriotism and the like by persons whose superficial literary and oratorical talent covers an abyss of Godforsaken folly.

Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism; which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.

We have more to learn today from the spectacle of a great man at a great moment than from any number of monographs on ancient wage levels.

A hero lives forever for the ones who carry on.

What is a society without a heroic dimension?

What keeps India safe really is the heroism of millions of poor Indians who every day reject the allure of terrorism. What keeps India safe is just the courage of poor Indians, not the actions of its government.

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic. Women face childbed and the scrubbing brush, revolutionaries keep their mouths shut in the torture chamber, battleships go down with their guns still firing when their decks are awash.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

After September 11th, I never much liked the trend of everyone and his brother wearing the hats and jackets of the NYPD and FDNY. Only the people who do the job should get to wear the hat. Would you wear someone else's Medal of Honor? Yes, it's a tribute, and sincere tribute is always appropriate for these brave people. But wearing their symbols is also rubbing off a piece of heroism that isn't yours.

A Hero: A Moment When You’re Bigger Than Yourself.

Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?

Ability and talent never loose the value, because demand for it highly exceeds the supply of it.

A certain way to have financial security in life is not enough savings, but enough ability.

A heroic act is not always followed by glory and parades and forever freedom,” she said. “It’s often small, disregarded, or forgotten. But it matters.

A heroic, losing battle! I'm tired of brave men who die. There's nothing pretty about losing.

A hero is a matter of perspective. The only sure thing in war is casualties. Ideology, patriotism and religious zeal all fuel heroic notions.

Ali, of course, hasn't whipped every obstacle in his life. Only enough of them that we remember him as having done so.

And where do I go? Where on Earth does a person go when she realizes there's no place for her? You can't possibly try to fit in, because if you do, if you manage to carve out some beautiful niche of happiness for yourself, then one day it will be taken from you as surely and truly as the sun rises each morning.

And my chest swells with an emotion I'm not familiar with . . . happiness? Pride? I'm not sure what it is, but I suddenly feel compelled to do things that will make me feel this way all the time, which gives me pause, since that seems dangerous too.

As a general man I tried watching movies, playing sports, going to picnics and other entertainments but I still got bored, then I tried heroism and now I am hero, and I never get bored.

Between natural ability and education choose natural ability, as it will keep you happy and will fetch you the glory sooner.

Better an unsung hero than a fallen star.

A true hero make people feel like he is part of their family.

Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because one man plays another doesn’t always mean that it’s not the right direction for both of them.

Better an unsung HERO than the source of envy.

But I think I understand now what Shackleton said yesterday, how hero is not always doing something grand. It's when things get so bad, and you keep on anyway.

By doing ordinary actions efficiently you will become the best among ordinary, but you will not be an extraordinary.

But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will to power: and Jung, certainly the most humane and gentlest of them, and possibly the greatest, but nevertheless the descendant of parsons and professors, and himself a super-parson and a super-professor. all men of extraordinary character, and they devised systems that are forever stamped with that character.… Davey, did you ever think that these three men who were so splendid at understanding others had first to understand themselves? It was from their self-knowledge they spoke. They did not go trustingly to some doctor and follow his lead because they were too lazy or too scared to make the inward journey alone. They dared heroically. And it should never be forgotten that they made the inward journey while they were working like galley-slaves at their daily tasks, considering other people's troubles, raising families, living full lives. They were heroes, in a sense that no space-explorer can be a hero, because they went into the unknown absolutely alone. Was their heroism simply meant to raise a whole new crop of invalids? Why don't you go home and shoulder your yoke, and be a hero too?

But the days of true heroism are over, when a citizen fought for his country like a Fabricius or a Washington, and then returned to his farm to let his virtuous fervour run in a more placid, but not less salutary, stream.

By the time I wrote this book I needed to look at heroics from outside and underneath, from the point of view of the people who are not included. The ones who can’t do magic. The ones who don’t have shining staffs or swords. Women, kids, the poor, the old, the powerless. Unheroes, ordinary people—my people. I didn’t want to change Earthsea, but I needed to see what Earthsea looked like to us.

Daredevils aren't the answer; spinal rehab wards are full of daredevils. Fearlessness doesn't really help, either: when your car breaks down, you don't want the mechanic to say, 'I've never done this before, but I'm willing to die trying.' What you want to hear is 'Don't worry. This is right up my alley.' Heroism isn't some mysterious inner virtue, the Greeks believed; it's a collection of skills that every man and woman can master so that in a pinch, they can become a Protector.

Cowards are always much more dangerous than heroes.

Dear Hunger Games : Screw you for helping cowards pretend you have to be great with a bow to fight evil. You don't need to be drafted into a monkey-infested jungle to fight evil. You don't need your father's light sabre, or to be bitten by a radioactive spider. You don't need to be stalked by a creepy ancient vampire who is basically a pedophile if you're younger than a redwood. Screw you mainstream media for making it look like moral courage requires hair gel, thousands of sit ups and millions of dollars of fake ass CGI. Moral courage is the gritty, scary and mostly anonymous process of challenging friends, co-workers and family on issues like spanking, taxation, debt, circumcision and war. Moral courage is standing up to bullies when the audience is not cheering, but jeering. It is helping broken people out of abusive relationships, and promoting the inner peace of self knowledge in a shallow and empty pseudo-culture. Moral courage does not ask for - or receive - permission or the praise of the masses. If the masses praise you, it is because you are helping distract them from their own moral cowardice and conformity. Those who provoke discomfort create change - no one else. So forget your politics and vampires and magic wands and photon torpedoes. Forget passively waiting for the world to provoke and corner you into being virtuous. It never will. Stop watching fictional courage and go live some; it is harder and better than anything you will ever see on a screen. Let's make the world change the classification of courage from 'fantasy' to 'documentary.' You know there are people in your life who are doing wrong. Go talk to them, and encourage them to pursue philosophy, self-knowledge and virtue. Be your own hero; you are the One that your world has been waiting for.

Do what you will. I do not fear death.

Did Ahalya know it would turn out like this? Rama has asked for my chastity test. Isn’t death better than this? Isn’t leaving me to my fate better? Why humiliate me like this? Why wage such a war if this is how I was going to be treated? War is for demonstrating the valour of men. Rama has proved his heroism. He is awaiting the demonstration of his wife’s chastity. Isn’t this what Ahalya called distrust? Wouldn’t accepting her in trust or rejecting her in distrust be better? What should be done now? Sita’s heart was like a volcano.

Deeds of heroism are wrought here more than those of romance, when, defying torture, and braving death itself, the fugitive voluntarily threads his way back to the terrors and perils of that dark land, that he may bring out his sister, or mother, or wife.