"Heroism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been only a Hungarian youth, now bravely defending in some mountain fastness the retreat of fugitives escaping from Austria into America, this would have been sublime heroism; but as it was a youth of African descent, defending the retreat of fugitives through America into Canada, of course we are too well instructed and patriotic to see any heroism in it; and if any of our readers do, they must do it on their own private responsibility. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... appearing sentimental. If Bernard Shaw killed a dragon and rescued a princess of romance, he would try to say "I have saved a princess" with exactly the same intonation as "I have saved a shilling." He tries to turn his own heroism into a sort of superhuman thrift. He would thoroughly sympathise with that passage in his favourite dramatic author in which the Button Moulder tells Peer Gynt that there is a sort of cosmic housekeeping; that God Himself is very economical, "and that is why He is ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism, to sympathize in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes. We cannot judge either ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... i.e., this country's position in the world, above all, her naval supremacy. Germany has held that this rock hinders, even endangers, her just and historical development in the world. With wonderful energy, perseverance, self-sacrifice and heroism, Germany has endeavoured to surmount or destroy the obstacle. The united will of the nation was expressed in the momentum of the onslaught—in vain. And as no reconciling influences are at work, no tendency to accept ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... summer and autumn. Great must have been the joy of his relatives, when he, who had been mourned for as dead, was again an inmate of their house. The fame which he had earned in other quarters by his daring heroism, must have been poor in value, compared with the admiration and interest with which his tales were listened to beneath the domestic roof; and the expressions of wonder which his adventures had extorted from strangers, must to his mind have seemed tame and heartless, when he beheld the astonishment ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
|
