f33e180
|
Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.
|
|
heroes
inspirational
|
Peter S. Beagle |
bb4e988
|
"Hazel squinted. "How far?" "Just over the river and through the woods." Percy raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? To Grandmother's house we go?" Frank cleared his throat. "Yeah, anyway."
|
|
heroes
neptune
zhang
olympus
olympians
son
jackson
percy
hazel
|
Rick Riordan |
8190244
|
"Aphros nodded, a glint of pride in his eyes. "We have trained all the famous mer-heroes! Name a famous mer-hero, and we have trained him or her!" "Oh, sure," Leo said. "Like...um, the Little Mermaid?" Aphros frowned. "Who? No! Like Triton, Glaucus, Weissmuller, and Bill!" "Oh. "Leo had no idea who any of those people were. "You trained Bill? Impressive."
|
|
heroes
mermaids
hero-training
the-little-mermaid
heroes-of-olympus
percy-jackson-and-the-olympians
the-mark-of-athena
leo-valdez
|
Rick Riordan |
7c45f29
|
Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.
|
|
heroes
loras-tyrell
jaime-lannister
villains
knights
legend
memory
stories
|
George R.R. Martin |
71cda0d
|
Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
|
|
heroes
death
life
the-traitor
tobias-eaton
fourtris
divergent
four
tris-prior
veronica-roth
|
Veronica Roth |
a75c081
|
But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will.
|
|
heroes
gallantry
lord-of-the-rings
oath
|
J.R.R. Tolkien |
c90f516
|
To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little.
|
|
heroes
heroic
stand-out
heroism
clever
courage
living
death
motivational
success
life
inspirational
stand
courageous
winning
definition
living-life-to-the-fullest
soldier
warrior
hero
crazy
|
Criss Jami |
87c29cd
|
The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.
|
|
heroes
feminism
women
religion
ayaan-hirsi-ali
azar-nafisi
heroines
taliban-treatment-of-women
women-in-afghanistan
women-in-iraq
women-s-rights-in-iran
women-s-rights-movement-in-iran
iran
women-and-religion
women-in-iran
women-in-islam
role-models
theocracy
iraq
islam
|
Christopher Hitchens |
9c6a8eb
|
All heroes are shadows of Christ
|
|
heroes
|
John Piper |
b3f8133
|
"You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you."
|
|
heroes
|
Peter S. Beagle |
9ce3504
|
"Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes."
|
|
heroes
christianity
spirituality
philosophy
culture-critique
jesus-shock
culture
theology
|
Peter Kreeft |
6c5dda1
|
"Thats what happens to Snow in Texas, lady. It freaking MELTS!!" Leo Valdez- The Lost Hero"
|
|
earth
heroes
heo
melts
of-olympus
valdez
freak
texas
leo
jackson
percy
rick-riordan
lady
hilarious
lost
snow
|
Rick Riordan |
db15e40
|
"I took in a deep breath, and smoke twisted around my head as I let it slip through my teeth. "Do you know what my favorite show was when I was a little kid?" The look again. "I would have no idea." "Doctor Who. British sci-fi show." "I am familiar with it. Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt--" "No," I said. "The new show's great, but I grew up on the old one. The low-budget, rubber monster show with Tom Baker and Peter Davison. I watched it on PBS all the time as a kid." I looked out at the dark ruins of Hollywood, at the stumbling shadows dotting the streets as far as you could see. The only other living person within half a mile was standing behind me, her eyes boring into my head. "The Doctor didn't have super-powers or weapons or anything like that. He was just a really smart guy who always tried to do the right thing. To help people, no matter what. That struck me when I was a kid. The idea that no matter how cold and callous and heartless the world seemed, there was somebody out there who just wanted to make life better. Not better for worlds or countries in some vague way. Just better for people trying to live their lives, even if they didn't know about him." I turned back to her and tapped my chest. "That's what this suit's always been about. Not scaring people like you or Gorgon do. Not some sort of pseudo-sexual roleplay or repressed emotions. I wear this thing, all these bright colors, because I want people to know someone's trying to make their lives better. I want to give them hope." --
|
|
heroes
|
Peter Clines |
78401fc
|
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
|
|
heroes
famous-beginnings
coincidence
clocks
birth
midnight
|
Charles Dickens |
91cd67b
|
Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed.
|
|
heroes
cowards
fighting
|
Margaret Mitchell |
dda68f1
|
Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.
|
|
heroes
humanity
love
robert-cormier
psychology
sin
|
Robert Cormier |
6f7495d
|
History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.
|
|
heroes
history
villain
uncertainty
hero
villains
|
Ian Fleming |
ba0b1c2
|
Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.
|
|
heroes
effort
name
|
Chuck Palahniuk |
7fcae9a
|
He was dirty, his hair unkempt, his clothes stained with blood. Heroes in stories somehow managed to rescue maidens while looking like court dandies. Next time he went adventuring he'd remember to bring a comb.
|
|
heroes
hero
|
J.V. Jones |
295ab10
|
That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say.
|
|
heroes
madmen
|
Paulo Coelho |
1a84b71
|
I'm not a legend or a hero, I don't slay dragons, I don't do any of the things that a real hero can. But I can make things better, one day at a time, for most of the kingdom.
|
|
heroes
heroism
|
Mercedes Lackey |
acb2b8e
|
The rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?
|
|
heroes
steward
protecting
stewardship
|
J.R.R. Tolkien |
40c8506
|
It takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
|
|
madness
heroes
strength
innocence
memory
|
James Baldwin |
49ac5ff
|
"And you came back to Lyrian?" Galloran said in disbelief. "Believe it or not, I came through the same hippopotamus that brought me here the first time. Jumped into the tank on purpose. I wanted to keep others from wasting their time pursuing the Word. And I couldn't ditch Rachel." Galloran smiled. "Truly, you are possessed by that species of madness that begets heroism."
|
|
rebellion
heroes
heroism
seeds
brandon
mull
|
Brandon Mull |
76ede5e
|
He had read lots of stories where heroes succeeded in spite of long odds, where they accomplished a task that everyone else had failed at. He wondered for the first time about all the people who'd gone before those heroes, about whether they'd been heroic too or whether they'd been at each other's throats, before everything had gone wrong. He wondered if there was a point where they realized they weren't going to make it, weren't going to beat those long odds -- that in the legend that would follow, they were going to be the nameless people that failed.
|
|
heroes
quests
failure
|
Holly Black |
de2bd14
|
We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.
|
|
heroes
reading
books
imagination
dreams
|
Peter S. Beagle |
8e7e6f1
|
I know who the real hero is, and it isn't me or brave Lanaya. It's an old man with a white beard and a walking stick and a heart so big it won't let him stop thinking he can change the world by writing down things in a book no one will ever read.
|
|
heroes
dreams
old-man
book
hero
|
Rodman Philbrick |
a395b0a
|
Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgements to Joseph Conrad.
|
|
heroes
espionage
spy
|
John le Carré |
6abd03d
|
Heroes, well, they don't live so long. But they're muy suave, and we all admire them.
|
|
heroes
heroism
young-adult
|
Nancy Farmer |
f22b832
|
"There's no happy ending ... Nevertheless, we might well say that is exactly Harriet Beecher Stowe's point. In 1852 slavery had not been abolished. Slaves were still on the plantations and many of them were in the hands of people like Legree. Her book was written to shame the collective conscience of America into action against an atrocity which was still continuing. So a happy ending would have been, frankly, a lie and a betrayal. ...
|
|
heroes
thomas-a-shippey
uncle-tom-s-cabin
|
Thomas A. Shippey |
c0954de
|
Well, the ancients might not have been very heroic. Most of them were probably like Mother, crouched somewhere trying to work out how to make fake jawbone jewelry that would look like the real thing.
|
|
heroes
history
people
|
Barbara Kingsolver |
d13739d
|
The difference between being Achilles and almost being Achilles is the difference between living and dying.
|
|
heroes
illiad
patroclus
sidekicks
|
Thomas C. Foster |
e81c60a
|
war. Or, rather, wars. Not one, not two, but many wars, both big and small, just and unjust, wars with shifting casts of supposed heroes and villains, each new hero making one increasingly nostalgic for the old villain. The names changed, as did the faces, and I spit on them equally for all the petty feuds, the snipers, the land mines, bombing raids, the rockets, the looting and raping and killing.
|
|
war
heroes
kabul
justice
|
Khaled Hosseini |
b2e0240
|
Ah, the world was ever so. How sad are heroes when their tasks are done...
|
|
fate
heroes
|
Michael Moorcock |
5077a1a
|
"He is a true hero," she said, "a dragonslayer, a giantkiller, a rescuer of maidens, a solver of impossible riddles. He may be the greatest hero of all, because he's a good man as well. They aren't always." --
|
|
heroes
|
Peter S. Beagle |
0264512
|
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.
|
|
heroes
heroism
america
war-on-terror
patriotism
|
Bill Maher |
5c1b7ae
|
They blew out a breath and did the thing all heroes must do--they took that terrifying first step.
|
|
heroes
heroism
|
Chloe Neill |
0c3789a
|
"Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden," Jacques said. And then: "I wonder why." ... Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road--and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright--and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. ... Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another type of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of the pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."
|
|
madness
pain
heroes
strength
life-choices
innocence-lost
garden-of-eden
innocence
|
James Baldwin |
e77af03
|
There is heroism to be found in great battles, it is true; warriors with stable knees who fight and know that they will die for an idea or for the safety of loved ones back home. But there are also people who spend their entire adulthood at a soulless job they despise to make sure their children have something to eat that night so that one day those kids may lead better, more fulfilling lives than their parents. The warrior and the worker both make sacrifices. Who, then, is more heroic? Can any of us judge? I don't think I'm qualified. I'll let history decide. But I do not think we should leave it all up to warriors and rulers to speak to the future.
|
|
heroes
inspirational
|
Kevin Hearne |
37f45ec
|
He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy . . . who had left upon every field of victory in Europe drops of that same blood which he, Marius, had in his veins, who had grown grey before his time in discipline and in command, who had lived with his sword-belt buckled, his epaulets falling on his breast, his cockade blackened by powder, his forehead wrinkled by the cap, in the barracks, in the camp, in the bivouac, in the ambulance, and who after twenty years had returned from the great wars with his cheek scarred, his face smiling, simple, tranquil, admirable, pure as a child, having done everything for France and nothing against her.
|
|
war
heroes
les-misérables
father-and-son
hero
|
Victor Hugo |
3e67f29
|
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.
|
|
heroes
feminism
heroism
women
heroics
elderly
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
6f63b6c
|
[W]hen one's young, it seems very easy to distinguish between right and wrong, but as one gets older it becomes more difficult. At school it's easy to pick out one's own villains and heroes and one grows up wanting to be a hero and kill the villains.
|
|
heroes
good
youth
villains
|
Ian Fleming |
cff8628
|
Danny could see it in their faces when they shook Steve's hand--they'd have preferred him dead. Death allowed for the illusion of heroism. The maimed turned that illusion into an uncomfortable odor.
|
|
heroes
image
|
Dennis Lehane |
44c34d0
|
"Everyone," Caitlin said, cradling her wine glass, "is the hero of his own story. That goes double for fanatics. Some of the greatest horrors in history were perpetrated by people who insisted, all the way to damnation's door, that they fought on the side of the angels."
|
|
heroes
history
good
|
Craig Schaefer |
8d257a1
|
In fairy tales, the heroes are punished when they run away from a task. The heroes, not their younger brothers...
|
|
heroes
family
fairytales
punishment
siblings
hero
ya
|
Cornelia Funke |
db2464b
|
Literary works are not democracies. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. We may, but the country of Novels, Etc., doesn't. In that faraway place, no character is created equal. One or two of them get all the breaks; the rest exist to get them to the finish line.
|
|
literature
equality
heroes
sidekicks
|
Thomas C. Foster |
0d98343
|
If you're a hero you can be an idiot, behave badly, ruin your personal life, have any number of mistresses and talk about yourself all the time, and nobody minds. Heroes are immune. They have wide shoulders and plenty of hair and wherever they go a crowd gathers. Mostly they enjoy the company of other men, although attractive women are part of their reward.
|
|
heroes
womanizing
|
Jeanette Winterson |
fc01d13
|
You will not say how you are haunted by the faces of the men you killed, how in their last gasp of life they sought your pity and you had none. You will not speak of the boys who died screaming for their mothers while you twisted a blade in their guts and snarled your scorn into their ears. You will not confess that you wake in the night, covered in sweat, heart hammering, shrinking from the memories. You will not talk of that, because that is the horror, and the horror is held in the heart's hoard, a secret, and to admit it is to admit fear, and we are warriors. We do not fear. We strut. We go to battle like heroes. We stink of shit.
|
|
heroes
fear
secret
shit
warriors
horror
|
Bernard Cornwell |
2237b63
|
Heroes, however, have a habit of ending up dead or bankrupt, and, as you know better than anyone, I have much to lose. At my age and in my profession, prudence is more than just a virtue, it's an instinct.
|
|
heroes
|
Arturo Pérez-Reverte |
1870520
|
Despite it all, there were heroes who rose above their circumstances. Those who reached out to people of another race with compassion and even love.
|
|
understanding
heroes
history
inspiration
love
southwest
ethnicity
race
|
Noel Marie Fletcher |