Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Heroes
My valet-de-chambre sings me no such song.
Antigonus I. See Plutarch—Apothegms. Also Concerning Isis and Osiris. Ch. XXIV.
The hero is the world-man, in whose heart
One passion stands for all, the most indulged.
Bailey—Festus. Proem. L. 114.
Tel maître, tel valet.
As the master so the valet.
Like master, like man.
Attributed to Chevalier Bayard by M. Ciniber.
Ferryman ho! In the night so black
Hark to the clank of iron;
’Tis heroes of the Yser,
’Tis sweethearts of glory.
’Tis lads who are unafraid!
Ferryman, ho!
Lucien Boyer—La Maison du Passeur.
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto I. St. 1.
Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man.
Carlyle—Heroes and Hero-Worship. Lecture I.
If Hero mean sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?
Carlyle—Heroes and Hero-Worship. Lecture IV.
Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among Mankind.
Carlyle—Sartor Resartus. Organic Filaments.
Il faut être bien héros pour l’être aux yeux de son valet-de-chambre.
A man must indeed be a hero to appear such in the eyes of his valet.
Marshal Catinat.
He’s of stature somewhat low—
Your hero always should be tall, you know.
Churchill—The Rosciad. L. 1,029.
Il n’y a pas de grand homme pour son valet-de-chambre.
No man is a hero to his valet.
Mme. de Cornuel. See Mlle. Aissé—Letters. 161. (Paris, 1853.)
The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails.
Emerson—Essays. Heroism. Introduction.
Self-trust is the essence of heroism.
Emerson—Essay. Heroism.
Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever he says has an enhanced value.
Emerson—Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
Es gibt für den Kammerdiener keinen Helden.
To a valet no man is a hero.
Goethe—Wahlverwandtschaften. II. 5. Aus Ottilien’s Tagebüche.
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word,
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Fitz-Greene Halleck—Marco Bozzaris.
It hath been an antient custom among them [Hungarians] that none should wear a fether but he who had killed a Turk, to whom onlie yt was lawful to shew the number of his slaine enemys by the number of fethers in his cappe.
Richard Hansard—Description of Hungary, Anno 1599. Lansdowne MS. 775. Vol. 149. British Museum.
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck,
Shone round him o’er the dead.
*****
The flames roll’d on—he would not go
Without his Father’s word;
That Father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
Felicia D. Hemans—Casabianca.
Heroes as great have died, and yet shall fall.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. XV. L. 157. Pope’s trans.
Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause.
Joseph Hopkinson—Hail, Columbia!
Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi: sed omnes illacrimabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longa
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
Many heroes lived before Agamemnon, but they are all unmourned, and consigned to oblivion, because they had no bard to sing their praises.
Horace—Carmina. IV. 9. 25.
The idol of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow.
Washington Irving—The Sketch Book. Westminster Abbey.
Still the race of hero spirits pass the lamp from hand to hand.
Charles Kingsley—The World’s Age.
Rarement ils sont grands vis-à-vis de leur valets-de-chambre.
Rarely do they appear great before their valets.
La Bruyère—Caractères.
There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
La Rochefoucauld—Maxims. No. 194.
Crowds speak in heroes.
Gerald Stanley Lee—Crowds. Bk. IV. Ch. III.
There is never any real danger in allowing a pedestal for a hero. He never has time to sit on it. One sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out from under him, and using it to batter a world with.
Gerald Stanley Lee—Crowds. Bk. V. Pt. III. Ch. XVI.
Dost thou know what a hero is? Why, a hero is as much as one should say,—a hero.
Longfellow—Hyperion. Bk. I. Ch. I.
’Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father’s graves.
Lowell—The Present Crisis. St. 15.
Tel a esté miraculeux au monde, auquel sa femme et son valet n’ont rien veu seulement de remarquable; peu d’hommes ont esté admirez par leur domestiques.
Such an one has been, as it were, miraculous in the world, in whom his wife and valet have seen nothing even remarkable; few men have been admired by their servants.
Montaigne—Essays. Bk. III. Ch. II.
See the conquering hero comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!
Dr. Thos. Morell—Words used by Handel in Joshua, and Judas Maccabæus. (Introduced in stage version of Lee’s Rival Queens. Act II. Sc. 1.)
My personal attendant does not think so much of these things as I do.
Plutarch—De Iside. Ch. XXIV. Also in Regnum et Imperatorum. Apothegmata. II. 28. (Tauchnitz Ed.)
Do we weep for the heroes who died for us,
Who living were true and tried for us,
And dying sleep side by side for us;
The martyr band
That hallowed our land
With the blood they shed in a tide for us?
Abram J. Ryan—C. S. A.
The last flash … and the hideous attack
Dies like a wisp of storm—discouraged flame;
And soon these battered heroes will come back,
The same but yet not the same.
Louis Untermeyer—Return of the Soldiers.