#heroism

They say Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. Though I have never led an army, I am a wanderer. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman. ↗

— Roman Payne

#army #dreams #heroism #sleep #the-iliad

War is hell, but sometimes in the midst of that hell men do things that heaven itself must be proud of. A hand grenade is hurled into a group of men. One of the men throws himself on top of it, making his body a living shield. In the burst of wild fire he dies, and the others live. Heroism is only a word, often a phony one. This is an action for which there is no good word because we can hardly even imagine it, let alone give it its proper name. Very literally, one man takes death into his bowels, takes fire into his own sweet flesh, so that the other men can take life, some of them men he hardly knows. ↗

— Frederick Buechner

#heroism #life #sacrifice #war #death

No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even - perhaps even especially - those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call 'hard but necessary steps' for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#heroism #tyranny #motivational

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. ↗

— John Keats

#birth #continually #creatures #electric #finding

So the difference between a criminal and a hero is the order in which their vile crimes are committed. And justice comes with a sell-by date. In that case, you’d better hurry. You wouldn't want your heroism to spoil. ↗

— Lois McMaster Bujold

#criminal #criminals #good-and-evil #heroism #hypocrisy

Duty comes in many forms; at times duty to country may conflict with duty to family. Yet, with a lucid mind the guises can be torn away and in the end, duty becomes but one, and that duty is to value justice above everything--to do what is right not because someone ordains it, but because the heart which is the seat of truth decrees it so. ↗

— F. Sionil José

#filipiniana #heroism #justice #philippines #family

To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little. ↗

— Criss Jami

#courage #courageous #crazy #death #definition

Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me. ↗

— Fred Rogers

#heroes #heroism #life

We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants...I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. she walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. She knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either. People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. ↗

— John Green

#depth #hero #heroism #intimacy #the-fault-in-our-stars

I come in a world of iron...to make a world of gold ↗

— Dale Wasserman

#generosity #giving #goals #goals-in-life #heroism