Quotes about heroism

Maybe not thinking about the price of failure was what marked a hero. On the other hand, maybe it just marked a damn fool.

Great times call for great men. There are unknown heroes who are modest, with none of the historical glamour of a Napoleon. If you analysed their character you would find that it eclipsed even the glory of Alexander the Great. Today you can meet in the streets of Prague a shabbily dressed man who is not even himself aware of his significance in the history of the great new era. He goes modestly on his way, without bothering anyone. Nor is he bothered by journalists asking for an interview. If you asked him his name he would answer you simply and unassumingly: 'I am Švejk….'

History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.

“A hero is someone who gets the job done, Albert,” Clara once said. “Bravely when necessary. Courage is an admirable last resort, for when intelligence fails.”

"Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui—these are the true hero’s enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real."

What he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.

What heroes like best is themselves.

The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. … Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.

In reality, heroes are heroic because they, despite their weaknesses - and sometimes because of them - do great things. If they were perfect, they wouldn't be here in earth's classroom.

For heroes do not make history—that is the historians’ job—but, passive, let themselves be borne along, swept up to the crest of the tide of change, of chance, of war.

"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."

Boldness governed by superior intellect is the mark of a hero.