Starchy Heroes Quotes

No doubt she'd thought she was doing him a kindness, urging him to kick up his heels and loosen his too-tight cravat and learn to savor careless pleasures. As though he hadn't heard such urgings before, from every feckless acquaintance made uncomfortable by his example of propriety, or every heedless one who sailed through life never noticing that it was vigilant people, the people standing back from the merriment, who stomped out the fiery raisins dropped by others and kept everything from going up in flames. ~ Cecilia Grant

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

Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals ~ Terry Pratchett

Cause I'm Black and I'm proud
I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped
Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps ~ Chuck D

It is not cynical to admit that the past has been turned into a fiction. It is a story, not a fact. The real has been erased. Whole eras have been added and removed. Wars have been aggrandized, and human struggle relegated to the margins. Villains are redressed as heroes. Generous, striving, imperfect men and women have been stripped of their flaws or plucked of their virtues and turned into figurines of morality or depravity. Whole societies have been fixed with motive and vision and equanimity where there was none. Suffering has been recast as noble sacrifice! ~ Josiah Bancroft

The workings of heaven are unfathomable-sometimes encouraging, sometimes suppressing. All this makes sport of heroes and tumbles the great. Enlightened people take adversity in stride and are prepared for trouble even when at ease; therefore, they are not at the mercy of fate. ~ Zicheng Hong

It was just the thrill of a lifetime. Brando and Hackman were two of my heroes. ~ Richard Donner

It shouldn't take an emergency for this Administration to deal with the health care needs of our nation's heroes. Funding the VA and our bringing our troops home safely should never be treated as an afterthought. ~ John Salazar

Always happens with men. They promise friendship. They promise to treat you as an equal. In the end, all they want is to possess you. ~ Rick Riordan

You both passed out," Percy said. "I don't know why, but Ella told me not to worry about it. She said you were ... sharing?"
"Sharing," Ella agreed. She crouched in the stern, preening her wing feathers with her teeth, which didn't look like a very effective form of personal hygiene. She spit out some red fluff. "Sharing is good. No more blackouts. Biggest American blackout, August 14, 2003. Hazel shared. No more blackouts."
Percy scratched his head. "Yeah ... we've been having conversations like that all night. I still don't know what she's talking about. ~ Rick Riordan

He was the epitome of virile beauty, but with that undeniable edge of something dark and dangerous beneath. ~ Abby Green

No one wants to go through life alone, fighting battles single-handedly their whole life. Not even the hardiest of heroes. That's just a miserable existence. Everyone needs someone in their corner, right? ... Even if you could," I wrinkled my brow, "would you really want to? By all accounts, it gets lonely being your own hero. ~ J.M. Richards

The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time. ~ Frank Miller

Our children may learn about the heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the architects of the future. ~ Jomo Kenyatta

There was a moment, however, when the King and I were looking directly into each other's eyes, and in that instant I had a revelation that takes much longer to explain than to experience. Here am I, I reflected, being decorated as a hero, and in the eyes of everybody here I am indeed a hero; but I know that my heroic act was rather a dirty job I did when I was dreadfully frightened; I could just as easily have muddled it and been ingloriously killed. But it doesn't much matter, because people seem to need heroes; so long as I don't lose sight of the truth, it might as well be me as anyone else. And here before me stands a marvellously groomed little man who is pinning a hero's medal on me because some of his forebears were Alfred the Great, and Charles the First, and even King Arthur, for anything I know to the contrary. But I shouldn't be surprised if inside he feels as puzzled about the fate that brings him here as I. ~ Robertson Davies

I know some of these guys who are in that 'stalkerazzi' world, and you really have to separate them from the paparazzi in our industry. That's another breed. They have their heroes who got the big, scandalous shot, which just promotes more of that. ~ Brad Pitt

Even though it is black, black as Egypt's night, the customer is always right ~ Andrew Ewing

It was not the blatant evil that broke the soul. No, in the face of utter darkness, the human spirit often rose to soaring heights. It was the shades of gray, the nuances and subtleties that wore people down. It was dealing with sellouts and side deals, small injustices and petty grievances that turned heroes into stoop-shouldered, weary old men. That was how they crumbled, idealists like this young man. They tripped on the garbage heap of miserly greed and fearful half-measures. ~ Rivera Sun

On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days ... Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The great heroes of other ancient cultures were strong and clever and virtuous, but the great Jewish heroes copulated with slaves (Abraham), showed they were willing to allow others to have sex with their wives (also Abraham), cheated their brothers, seduced their in-laws, murdered, started civil wars through terrible family decisions, yet somehow-through a mixture of humility, near-insanity, and good fortune-served as conduits of God's action in the world. ~ William McDavid

I think that the rhythm sections, drummers in particular, are the unsuing heroes of the music. It's the rhythm section that has changed the styles from one period to the other. ~ Max Roach

(A thrill of dread runs through the whole group; ASGARDSREIEN - the ride of the fallen heroes to Valhal - hurtles through the air.) ~ Henrik Ibsen

When I was young I read stories about great heroes doing great deeds. The truth is, real heroes don't look at all like I pictured. They're far from perfect. Bullheaded. Stubborn. Reckless. And also recklessly brave. They charge in without a thought to themselves. Not without fear or doubt, but in spite of it. ~ Timeless

For me, seeing our history told in this light, the ones who did rebel, the ones who did revolt, the revolutionaries, excited me. Seeing this story of the Underground Railroad ... and that is such a proud part of our history that not a lot of us know about, where these brave men and women, they were heroes, really helped tear down the system of slavery just by running. ~ Jurnee Smollett

How could I explain why I'd acted that way? How could I explain how scary it was, to find out that I needed her so much? Was I supposed to tell her how she'd changed everything? Like how U hadn't even realized how bad I felt until she'd made it better, just by looking at me. Like how I thought she was awesome, bad-ass ninja, and what I hated was the fact that I knew I couldn't protect her, when that's all I wanted to do. How could I explain, without sounding like a complete asshole, that I was so afraid of losing her I pushed her away?
I couldn't. ~ Susan Bischoff

(...) maybe in our bodies there's a whole world of mythology? Maybe there exists some sort of reflection of the great and the small, the human body joining within itself everything with everything - stories and heroes, gods and animals, the order of plants and the harmony of minerals? ~ Olga Tokarczuk

Imagine a pantomime directed by Quentin Tarantino, where villains are booed, heroes are blood-stained, the body-count is high, the entertainment pulsating, the language filthy and the audience screamed behind you' as tackles hurtled in like boulders crashing down a mountain-side. Such was the epic drama that gripped the Emirates yesterday. A derby crammed with sound, fury and significance ended with everyone grasping for breath, with Arsenal regaining the high ground of the Premier League ... This was the Premier League at its raw, mistake-filled, mesmerising best. Utterly compelling. ~ Henry Winter

Father just needed someone to blame. So of course he picked the handsomest, most talented, hopelessly awesome god. Artemis made a gagging gesture. ~ Rick Riordan

Presidents seem to fall into two positive categories: they're one of us, or they're heroes. Both McCain and Obama probably see themselves as potential heroes - presidents who will be looked up to, not presidents everyday people will remark are 'just like me.' ~ Chuck Todd

Sometimes you find your heroes in the unlikeliest places. ~ Ann Aguirre

His hand was a claw, sharp enough to open her. She would be like all the others - Ruta Badowski, in her broken dancing shoes. Tommy Duffy, still with the dirt of his last baseball game under his nails. Gabriel Johnson, taken on the best day of his life. Or even Mary White, holding out for a future that never arrived. She'd be like all those beautiful, shining boys marching off to war, rifles at their hips and promises on their lips to their best girls that they'd be home in time for Christmas, the excitement of the game showing in their bright faces. They'd come home men, heroes with adventures to tell about, how they'd walloped the enemy and put the world right side up again, funneled it into neat lines of yes and no. Black and white. Right and wrong. Here and there. Us and them. Instead, they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Western Front, blown apart in no-man's-land, writhing in trenches with those smiles still in place, courtesy of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds. Or, like James, they'd simply vanished, relegated to history books no one bothered to read, medals put in cupboards kept closed. Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself. ~ Libba Bray

As one half of our nature seeks to create heroes to worship, the other must ceaselessly attempt to cast them down and discover evidence of feet-of-clay, in order to label them as mere lucky fellows, or as villains-were-the-facts-but-known, and the eminent and great are ground between the millstones of envy, and reduced again to common size. ~ Oakley Hall

A wonderful flaw about human beings is that we're incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve. ~ Austin Kleon

You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes. ~ Walter M. Schirra, Sr.

To know how glorious you are, it is only after your death. ~ Auliq Ice

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

Walking companions, like heroes, are difficult to pluck out of the crowd of acquaintances. Good dispositions, ready wit, friendly conversation serve well enough by the fireside but they prove insufficient in the field. For there you need transcendentalists-nothing less; you need poets, sages, humorists and natural philosophers. ~ Brooks Atkinson

Odysseus inclines his head. "True. But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another." He spread his broad hands. "We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?" He smiles. "Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you. ~ Madeline Miller

The sudden passing of Jack Bruce is terribly sad news. One of the greatest rock bassists to ever live and a true and profound inspiration to countless musicians. He was one of my first bass heroes and was a major influence on my playing and my music. My heartfelt condolences to his family and fans. ~ Geddy Lee

WHERE 'S Polly?" asked Fan one snowy afternoon, as she came into the dining-room where Tom was reposing on the sofa with his boots in the air, absorbed in one of those delightful books in which boys are cast away on desert islands, where every known fruit, vegetable and flower is in its prime all the year round; or, lost in boundless forests, where the young heroes have thrilling adventures, kill impossible beasts, and, when the author's invention gives out, suddenly find their way home, laden with tiger skins, tame buffaloes and other pleasing trophies of their prowess. ~ Louisa May Alcott

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. ~ George Eliot

The villains have turned into heroes. The heroes have turned into heals. ~ Waylon Jennings

Travel is the art form available to Everyman. You sit in the coffee shop in a strange city and nobody knows who you are, or cares, and so you shed your checkered past and your motley credentials and you face the day unarmed ... And onward we go and some day in the distant future, we will stop and turn around in astonishment to see all the places we've been and the heroes we were. ~ Garrison Keillor

We don't need heroes so much as recognizing ourselves as heroes. ~ Joss Whedon