Heroes And Heroines Quotes

What's in a fairytale? Shadows and light, good and true, vile and ugly, frightening and comforting, heroes and heroines who know that belief in their own magic spurs them on. It is their own faith and courage as they reach for an unwritten Destiny that grants their deepest hopes and makes dreams, as if by magic, come true. ~ Suzy Davies

Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others. ~ Edward Abbey

Even if we never read a second volume of a book, the characters continue to live on and on and on, and their stories merge into other stories, told by new generations of heroes and heroines. ~ Cat Winters

Often the true hero and heroines of my books are the houses, the places, the communities where people find a home. ~ Jackie French

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. ~ Edward Abbey

People often ask why I write romance. It's because I believe in heroes and heroines who, after fighting their way through often-formidable obstacles, are rewarded with a happy ending. When the story's over, their future is just beginning and I really like that idea. ~ Debra Cowan

(and thus on these evenings as the twilight softly fell and the terrace began to fill with chattering, beautifully dressed sophisticates,) I discerned in the shadows the faces of all the impossible heroes and heroines I had ever dreamed of since that moment when my hapless spirit had become entrapped by the magic of the printed word. ~ William Styron

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture - still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish. ~ Charlotte Bronte

My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete. ~ Joanne Harris

...Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool's paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer, "Make me a healthy animal." But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, "the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on... ~ George Bernard Shaw

At its heart, Gothic Fiction is the introvert's "Hero's Journey" where heroes and heroines must navigate the uncharted territory of the mind in order to solve the mystery of their life's adventure. ~ Barrymore Tebbs

I have to cry out here that language is all we have for the delicacy and truth of telling, that words are the sole heroes and heroines of fiction. Their generosity and forgiveness make one weep. They will accept anything and stand by it, and show no sign of suffering. They will accept change, painlessly, the only pain being that experienced by those who use words, scattering them like beans in a field and hoping for morning beanstalks as high as the sky with heavenly commotion there, upstairs where the giants live. ~ Janet Frame

Furthermore, some of the best people in the country were connected with the Communist movement in some way, heroes and heroines one could admire. There was Paul Robeson, the fabulous singer-actor-athlete whose magnificent voice could fill Madison Square Garden, crying out against racial injustice, against fascism. And literary figures (weren't Theodore Dreiser and W. E. B. DuBois Communists?), ~ Howard Zinn

This metropolitan world, then, is a world where flesh and blood is less real than paper and ink and celluloid. It is a world where the great masses of people, unable to have direct contact with more satisfying means of living, take life vicariously, as readers, spectators, passive observers: a world where people watch shadow-heroes and heroines in order to forget their own clumsiness or coldness in love, where they behold brutal men crushing out life in a strike riot, a wrestling ring or a military assault, while they lack the nerve even to resist the petty tyranny of their immediate boss: where they hysterically cheer the flag of their political state, and in their neighborhood, their trades union, their church, fail to perform the most elementary duties of citizenship.
Living thus, year in and year out, at second hand, remote from the nature that is outside them and no less remote from the nature within, handicapped as lovers and as parents by the routine of the metropolis and by the constant specter of insecurity and death that hovers over its bold towers and shadowed streets - living thus the mass of inhabitants remain in a state bordering on the pathological. They become victims of phantasms, fears, obsessions, which bind them to ancestral patterns of behavior. ~ Lewis Mumford

The heroes and heroines who triumph in his stories are not those with the most powerful magic, but rather those who demonstrate the most kindness, common sense and ingenuity. ~ J.K. Rowling

Great battles can make great heroes and heroines. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Heroes and heroines OR ... Your lead character doesn't have to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and he doesn't have to stop speeding bullets with his bare hands, but he darn well better know the difference between right and wrong, and he better be kind to animals, and it sure wouldn't hurt any if he brushed his teeth regularly"
Dean Koontz in "How To Write Best Selling Fiction ~ Dean Koontz

People in books were always so charming, and all their thoughts and actions so comprehensible. They all invariably had a clear, well-defined object in life, and strove through a few hundred engrossing pages to attain this object. They were all noble and generous, and their lives were bright and beautiful. What interesting and delightful moments Irene had passed in their society! They had made her laugh and cry and suffer and rejoice, and had entertained her with the brilliancy of their wit. How dull and colourless real people had appeared beside these heroes and heroines of fiction. ~ Aimee Dostoyevsky

Dickens' hypocrites are the prime beneficiaries of his inventive genius. The heroes and heroines have no imagination. We could scrap all the solemn parts of his novels without impairing his status as a writer. But we could not remove Mrs. Gamp or Pecksniff or Bounderby without maiming him irreparably. ~ John Carey

Nature I believe in. True art aims to, represent men and women, not as my little self would have them, but as they appear. My heroes and heroines I want not extreme types, all good or all bad; but human, mortal
partly good, partly bad. Realism I need. Pure mental abstractions have no significance for me. ~ Ouida

The history of struggle is rich with stories of heroes and heroines - some of them leaders, some of them followers, all of them deserve to be remembered. ~ Nelson Mandela

She did not care for children's books in which the children grew up, as what "growing up" entailed (in life as in books) was a swift and inexplicable dwindling of character; out of a clear blue sky the heroes and heroines abandoned their adventures for some dull sweetheart, got married and had families, and generally started acting like a bunch of cows. ~ Donna Tartt

The key element in tragedy is that heroes and heroines are destroyed by that which appears to be their greatest strength. ~ Robert Shea

There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were ~ Nina Simone

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds. ~ Maeve Binchy

If we look to people who make no mistakes, who were always on the right side, who never apologized for tyrants or unjust wars, we shall have few heroes and heroines ~ Richard M. Rorty

There are always these moments in life when the limits of suffering are reached and we become heroes and heroines. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I think, with the gay liberation movement has had need for heroes and heroines, and it would be rather nice to have Abraham Lincoln as your poster boy, wouldn't it? ~ David Herbert Donald

It will take time for you to get the recognition that you deserve.

This world will not recognize real people and their real struggle. Because the majority are fake here. They have sold their souls to live the life of luxury and comfort.
They deal in the currency of glitz and glamour. They are driven by the pettiness of greed and patheticity of selfishness. They don't recognize honesty, integrity, and real struggle!

But you do not become a cynic. You cannot give up on your idealism and integrity. Lend a hand to the poor and needy. Stand up for the Innocents. Be a voice for the voiceless in this world!

Let the fake heroes and heroines show off their fake happiness by gloating on social media. Don't let them take away the real hero or real heroine in you! Believe in yourself. Never doubt your capabilities. Stay real and stay humble.

Some of these fake people buy likes and followers to show a fake achievement on social media. Some even buy 'bought awards' to make themselves feel better! You will never do this I know!

Just don't give up on your struggle.
Stand alone. Stay strong.
Live a life of real achievement.
Fight On! ~ Avijeet Das

Regarding heroism, I grew up in a culture where you learn about heroes and heroines all the time. In a way, when you call someone a hero or heroine, it's the same as calling them a villain. ~ Yiyun Li

In fiction, as in real life, love might inspire acts that are at best foolish and at worst life-threatening, but in the best romances, love is the final, secret ingredient that turns mere mortals into heroes and heroines. ~ Sarah MacLean

The standard heroes and heroines of novels, are personages in whom I could never, from childhood upwards, take an interest, believe to be natural, or wish to imitate: were I obliged to copy these characters, I would simply
not write at all. Were I obliged to copy any former novelist, even the greatest, even Scott, in anything , I would not write
Unless I have something of my own to say, and a way of my own to say it in, I have no business to publish; unless I can look beyond the greatest Masters, and study Nature herself, I have no right to paint; unless I can have the courage to use the language of Truth in preference to the jargon of Conventionality, I ought to be silent. ~ Charlotte Bronte

We are drawn to the Renaissance because of the hope for black uplift and interracial empathy that it embodied and because there is a certain element of romanticism associated with the era's creativity, its seemingly larger than life heroes and heroines, and its most brilliantly lit terrain, Harlem, USA. ~ Clement Alexander Price

Aren't hidden doors the most alluring? The old stories point that out surely. Even the greatest heroes and heroines fall under the spell of a locked door. ~ Jane Yolen

While campaigning, I got to know many high-school teachers, and let me say that the good ones are the unsung heroes of our society, and the bad ones are the gravediggers. ~ Gore Vidal

In those moments of moving through the streets with people who share one's beliefs comes the rare and magical possibility of a kind of populist communion ... At such times it is as though the still small pool of one's own identity has been overrun by a great flood, bringing its own grand collective desires and resentments, scouring out that pool so thoroughly that one no longer feels fear or sees the reflections of oneself but is carried along on that insurrectionary surge. These moments when individuals find others who share their dreams, when fear is overwhelmed by idealism or by outrage, when people feel a strength that surprises them, are moments in which they become heroes - for what are heroes but those so motivated by ideals that fear cannot sway them, those who speak for us, those who have power for good? A person who never feels it is condemned to cynicism and isolation. In those moments everyone becomes a visionary, everyone becomes a hero. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Our heroes are fighting to bring stability to the Middle East, and they have put pressure on all of the tyrannies of the Middle East. They have taken a stand against tyranny, against terrorists, and for the prospect of decent societies throughout that region. ~ Orrin Hatch

Hmph. Yes. Him. He had the nerve to turn down our offer of immortality and tell us to pay better attention to our children. Er, no offense."
"Oh, how could I take offense? Please, go on ignoring me. ~ Rick Riordan

Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state. ~ Umberto Eco

The Prince's name preserved, in the boldness with which its opening syllables were - to borrow an expression from music - attacked, and in the stammering repetition that scanned them, the energy, the mannered simplicity, the heavy refinements of the Teutonic race, projected like green boughs over the "Heim" of dark blue enamel which glowed with the mystic light of Rhenish window behind the pale and finely wrought gildings of the German eighteenth century. This name included, among the several names of which it was composed, that of a little German watering-place to which as a small child I had gone with my grandmother, under a mountain honoured by the feet of Goethe, from the vineyards of which we used to drink at the Kurhof the illustrious vintages with their compound and sonorous names like the epithets which Homer applies to his heroes. And so, scarcely had I heard it spoken than, before I had recalled the watering-place, the Prince's name seemed to shrink, to become imbued with humanity, to find large enough for itself a little place in my memory to which it clung, familiar, earthbound, picturesque, appetizing, light, with something about it that was authorized, prescribed. ~ Marcel Proust

I got my first television at Stanford when I was 20, and I used to watch 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'. He played my father on 'Becker,' and he's still one of my heroes. Along with John Cleese, he's my favourite physical comedian. ~ Ted Danson

I like to see the long line we each leave behind, and I sometimes imagine my whole life that way, as though each step was a stitch, as though I was a needle leaving a trail of thread that sewed together the world as I went by, crisscrossing others' paths, quilting it all together in some way that matters even though it can hardly be traced. A meandering line sutures together the world in some new way, as though walking was sewing and sewing was telling a story and that story was your life.

A thread now most often means a line of conversation via e-mail or other electronic means, but thread must have been an even more compelling metaphor when most people witnessed or did the women's work that is spinning. It is a mesmerizing art, the spindle revolving below the strong thread that the fingers twist out of the mass of fiber held on an arm or a distaff. The gesture turns the cloudy mass of fiber into lines with which the world can be tied together. Likewise the spinning wheel turns, cyclical time revolving to draw out the linear time of a thread. The verb to spin first meant just this act of making, then evolved to mean anything turning rapidly, and then it came to mean telling a tale.

Strands a few inches long twine together into a thread or yarn that can go forever, like words becoming stories. The fairy-tale heroines spin cobwebs, straw, nettles into whatever is necessary to survive. Scheherazade forestalls her death by telling a story that is like a thre ~ Rebecca Solnit

My heroes have always been the hardworking and unflappable. Those who light a candle rather than curse the darkness. ~ Matthew Gray Gubler

True heroes are never heroes for the recognition. They do what they are supposed to do, play the hand they've been dealt. And true heroes don't seek out heroism. It's thrust upon them. ~ Darynda Jones

Historical periodization always tells a story. It is a narrative device for putting meaning into the flux of historical process - creating protagonists, heroes, pace, and plot. For this reason, the division of history into periods always carries an ideological load, and it is a methodological imperative to approach questions of broad historical periodization with this in mind. ~ James Ferguson

Barrons was powerful, broodingly good-looking, insanely wealthy, frighteningly intelligent, and had exquisite taste, not to mention a hard body that emitted some kind of constant low-level charge. Bottom line: He was the stuff of heroes.
And psychotic killers. ~ Karen Marie Moning

My childhood was spent embracing one literary heroine after another. I identified passionately with each one and would slavishly imitate them. ~ Sophie Kinsella

Most people in the ancient world, did not make a sharp distinction between myth and reality. The two were intimately tied together in their spiritual experience. That is to say, they were less interested in what actually happened, than in what it meant. It would have been perfectly normal, indeed expected, for a writer in the ancient world, to tell tales of gods and heroes, whose fundamental facts would have been recognized as false, but whose underlying message would have been seen as true. ~ Reza Aslan

The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they've been given. I believe you must live honestly and develop your abilities to the full. People who do this are the real heroes. ~ Akira Kurosawa

I want a future where my children feel safe and appreciated and proud to be who they are. My heart is one with all the Arab Spring heroes, no matter how small they think their role is. I know they believe, like me, that we are working for a world whereby an Arab can live with the other in a respectful and dignified way. ~ Tawakkol Karman

DRAGON-GAGGERS: Instead of swords, some heroes wield toothbrushes, say they are there to "brush the dragon's teeth," and then they poke the toothbrush into the back gaggy part of its hot tongue. ~ Amy Leach

I have lived long enough to see real, significant changes made for the good...and I have been fortunate enough to have participated in some of them...One person can make a difference!
(Father Ted Hesburgh, C.S.C., quoted in our book, God's Icebreaker by Jill A. Boughton and Julie Walters) ~ Jill A. Boughton

If you took all the killing in Star Wars and replaced it with fucking, you'd have an R-rated movie instead of PG. You ask me what's wrong with society? That's what's fucking wrong with society, that's everything that's wrong with society. From the age we're old enough to watch Star Wars we're told that sexuality is something we should be shy and timid about, while violence makes us heroes. Something we were designed to do is secret and shameful. Something we should never do is how we get things done. Star Wars is a great movie, don't get me wrong, but if you think its more acceptable for children than Looking For Alaska, because of the latter's sexual content, then your view of what it means to be human is seriously disturbed. ~ Max Davine

But war makes heroes. Herakles and Ormenion were warriors, and tey have been made immortal. Father Zeus turned them into stars in the night sky.

Oniacus scowled. 'In a drunken rage Herakles clubbed his wife to death, and Ormenion sacrificed his youngest daughter in order that Poseidon might grant fair winds for his attack on Kretos. ~ David Gemmell

He was taking advantage of the brief lull in the battle to take a little nap, for do not all men, even heroes, need a refreshing little nap now and then? ~ Gunter Grass

Would Grandmother scold him? Would she say, "Frank! Thank the gods, you've come. I'm surrounded by monsters."
More likely she'd scold him, or mistake them for intruders and chase them off with a frying pan. ~ Rick Riordan

In England in the 19th century, advances in printing methods, combined with the rise of a prosperous middle class, engendered a booming new industry of books published just for children. Casting about for cheap story material, English publishers laid hands on the subtle, sensual adult fairy tales of the Continental tradition and revised them into simpler stories instilled with Victorian values. Although these simplified versions retained much of the violence of the older stories, elements of sexuality and moral complexity were carefully scrubbed away - along with the fiesty heroines who appeared everywhere in the older tales, tamed now into models of Victorian propiety and passivity. In the 20th century, the Walt Disney Studios watered down the tales further still in popular animated films like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, continuing the trend of turning active heroines into powerless damsels in distress. Walt Disney considered even the Victorian versions of the tales too dark for 20th century audiences. "It's just that people now don't want fairy stories the way they were written," Disney commented. "They were too rough." ~ Terri Windling

In the current era, more than prodigies in mathematics, science, athletics, or art, I believe we need prodigies of good character and integrity. People who have polished their character and integrity until they shine are the ones who can be the real heroes the world needs to solve its problems. I think that, when people have the correct understanding of the meaning of human character, there will be a solution. ~ Ilchi Lee

Fate refuses to stop at the pretty part of the tale; Fate insists on more tests of courage and wit, a terrible end, even if the heroine's heart be pure and her crime accidental. ~ Susann Cokal

In 1992, teachers all over the country, by the thousands, were beginning to teach the Columbus story in new ways, to recognize that to Native Americans, Columbus and his men were not heroes, but marauders. The point being not just to revise our view of past events, but to be provoked to think about today. ~ Howard Zinn

I am an actor who turned hero at age 32, after many years of struggle. I wanted to break the stereotype that only good-looking men with a good complexion, height and physique can be heroes, which I have managed to do. ~ Duniya Vijay

I brandished my parasol at him like a rapier. You, sir, are an abominable scalawag of a man, and I'll be damned if I let you threaten me. ~ Susan Dennard

Johanna sat by the fire every night and worked on her tapestry. Dumfries waited until she was settled in her chair and then draped himself across her feet. It became a ritual for Alex to squeeze himself up next to her and fall asleep during her stories about fierce warriors and fair maidens. Johanna's tales all had a unique twist, for none of the heroines she told stories about ever needed to be rescued by their knights in shining armor. More often than not, the fair maidens rescued their knights.
Gabriel couldn't take issue with his wife. She was telling Alex the truth. It was a fact that maidens could rescue mighty, arrogant warriors. Johanna had certainly rescued him from a bleak, cold existence. She'd given him a family and a home. She was his love, his joy, his companion.
She was his saving grace. ~ Julie Garwood

I can't imagine a romance novel published today where the hero rapes the heroine and she falls in love with him. ~ Julia Quinn

I don't think I believe in villains. Heroes either. Just people. People with agendas and the things they're willing to do to get what they want. ~ Kerrigan Byrne

how beautiful you are
for never giving up on yourself,
for just waking up
and choosing to get out of bed.

seeing you own your life
and be so willing
to face it
over and over again
is so powerful,
you make me believe
anything is possible.

you make me believe
in heroes again. ~ Ava

in this neighborhood heroes are scarce, or simply lot to be found. Swords in these parts are mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or dish-covers; and dragons are comfortably far-off (and therefore legendary). ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

To see cartoon-me positioned (alphabetically) amongst so many of my women heroes and role models ... well, I just broke down and cried. Happy tears. I surely hope that this one-of-a-kind collection of radical American women reaches the hands of all children who want to grow up and become amazing women. ~ Kate Bornstein

And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion - to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months. ~ Jane Austen

Coach Hedge grumbled as he tended their wounds. How come I never get invited on these violent trips? ~ Rick Riordan

Storytellers lie was right up there at the top of Johnnyboy's rules-to-live-by list with Ignore heroes and Never make decisions based on fear. ~ Thorn Kief Hillsbery

Even without being killed a man can experience death, he can conquer, he can realize the culmination characteristic of a 'super-life'. From a higher point of view, Paradise, the Kingdom of Heaven, Valhalla, the Island of the Heroes, etc., are only symbolic figurations forged for the masses, figurations that in reality designate transcendent states of consciousness, beyond life and death. The ancient Aryan tradition used the term jivan-mukti to indicate such a realization while still in the mortal body. ~ Julius Evola

A champion, he said, wins a World Series or an Olympic and is hoisted on the shoulders of teammates and fans. A hero carries the people on his shoulders. Champions live for the moment- heroes, like Jackie Robinson, transcend time. ~ Sharon Robinson

This book is about street-level cooking and its practitioners. Line cooks are the heroes. ~ Anthony Bourdain

The Dream Lover is a historical novel at once expansively researched yet intimately imagined. George Sand may be the ultimate Berg heroine. 'A life not lived in truth,' Berg writes, 'is a life forfeited.' In this latest work, Elizabeth Berg has poured her own great gifts and her own great heart into the story of a woman determined to refuse any such forfeiture, no matter the cost. ~ Leah Hager Cohen

There was a generation of kids who were just kind of emulating distant heroes and wearing peace symbols, and parents who were thinking of themselves as liberal and removed from barbarity, but it also was the era of Vietnam. I very much was influenced - and I think the whole country was kind of in a state of shock - for the first time seeing the horror and cruelty of war. ~ Wes Craven

Stop grovelling and start working. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Make me laugh. Make me cry. Tell me my place in the world. Lift me out of my skin and place me in another. Show me places I have never visited and carry me to the ends of time and space. Give my demons names and help me to confront them. Demonstrate for me possibilities I've never thought of and present me with heroes who will give me courage and hope. Ease my sorrows and increase my joy. Teach me compassion. Entertain and enchant and enlighten me.
Tell me a story. ~ Dennis O'Neil

If the world could predict who the villains and heroes were going to be, the crisis wouldn't exist in the first place." They ~ Deirdre Gould

And when all was done and all was said, we sat silently staring at the moon's reflection on the rippling river, soaking it all in. The differences between people, cultures and times.
The monsters. The myths.
The heroes.
The victims.
The love and loss.
Loss and love. ~ Alys Arden