"Heroism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appear in the history of Canada. In the days of New France they had been its most intrepid explorers, its most undaunted missionaries. 'Not a cape was turned, not a river was entered,' declares Bancroft, 'but a Jesuit led the way.' With splendid heroism they suffered for the greater glory of God the unspeakable horrors of Indian torture and martyrdom. But in the Old World their abounding zeal often led them into conflict with the civil authorities, and they became unpopular, alike in ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful young sister of old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers. Life along the frontier, attacks by Indians, Betty's heroic defense of the beleaguered garrison at Wheeling, the burning of the Fort, and Betty's final race for ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... slang; hence his cleverness in spinning, a yarn never to the purpose, but blathered with long phrases and bubbling with cant. He took up the cause of the diggers, not so much for the evaporation of his gaseous heroism, as eternally to hammer on the unfortunate death of his country-man Scobie, for the ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... religious denunciations of the most awful kind hung over the head of whoever should dare to touch it, no matter what the exigency might be. To this epoch belonged those marvels of daring recorded in Roman tradition, those acts of heroism tinged with fable, which are met with amongst so many peoples, either in their earliest age, or in their days of great peril. In the year 361 B.C., Titus Manlius, son of him who had saved the Capitol from the night ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... easy to see that the officers of the battleships and cruisers, deeply imbued with the somewhat fantastic and high-flown ideas of the Japanese with regard to the almost divine virtue of heroism and self-sacrifice, were profoundly disappointed that they were not to be afforded an opportunity to display their ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... trembled for the gallant Tim's safety, but for the moment I could think of nothing but the fearful danger to which my dear young sister was exposed. I am very sure that it was the idea that he might help to save Marian which prompted him to the performance of the unexampled act of heroism. It may, however, be considered an Irish way of proceeding, as he would certainly have rendered her more service by swimming out and supporting her. As soon as I had recovered from my terror, which for the moment almost deprived me of reason, I leaped into the ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... genuine evil; it pursues a hateful end by despicable means, and desires not so much its own happiness as another's misery. To avoid depravity like this, it is not necessary that any one should aspire to heroism or sanctity; but only that he should resolve not to quit the rank which nature assigns, and wish to maintain the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... beginning of January struck down Mrs. Elsmere, whose strange ways of living were more the result of certain long-standing delicacies of health than she had ever allowed any one to imagine. A few days of acute inflammation of the lungs, borne with a patience and heroism which showed the Irish character at its finest—a moment of agonised wrestling with that terror of death which had haunted the keen vivacious soul from its earliest consciousness, ending in a glow of spiritual victory—and Robert found himself motherless. He and Catherine had never left ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my point. What I'm thinking of is the excellent effect it will produce in the constituency if I publicly sacrifice myself by handing over my nurse to my political opponent. The amount of electioneering capital which could be made out of an act of heroism of that kind—why, it would catch the popular imagination more than if I jumped into a mill race to save Vittie from a runaway horse, and everybody knows that if you can bring off a spoof of that sort an election is as good ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... all the more highly of myself, if I had shown equal heroism in resisting another class of beggarly depredators, who assailed me on my weaker side and won an easy spoil. Such was the sanctimonious clergyman, with his white cravat, who visited me with a subscription-paper, which he himself had drawn up, in a case of heart-rending distress;—the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of success. It has never occurred to me to consider acquiescence to the Government of England as a moral obligation or as other than a dire necessity. We have never, thank God, lied to our oppressors by saying we were loyal to them. And when we have condemned the rebels whose heroism and self-sacrifice we have loved and wept over, we condemned not their want of loyalty, but their want of prudence. We thought it wrong to plunge the land into the horrors of war with no hope ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... is winter, and the water is cold. Perhaps there are not enough people present to witness his heroism. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and rushed out to sea, against wind and tide, under an impulse equal to the united strength of 11,500 horses. No small portion of the ocean's tale this, comprising many chapters of deeds of daring, blood, villainy, heroism, and enterprise. But with this portion of its story we have nothing to do just now. It tells us, also, of God's myriad and multiform creatures, that dwell in its depths, from the vast whale, whose speed is so great, that it might, if it chose, circle round the world in a few ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... forgot the great doctrine of humility, and declared that "Mister" Weston should have the volume that very night. There was nothing better to give a clear view of the character of the work than Brother Matthias Pennel's account of the heroism of Sister Flora. So we composed ourselves again to hear of the battle to the death between the noble missionary woman ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... The magnificent physical strength and active energy of Felix, and the strong bent to heroic effort and Christian devotion given to him in his earliest years, were thrown away in this tranquil English village, where there was clearly no scope for heroism. How was it that Canon Pascal could not see it? His curacy was a post to be occupied by some feebler man than Felix; a man whose powers were only equal to the quiet work of carrying on the labors begun by ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... brown stone, with a beautiful square tower of elaborate design, gave a touch of colour and richness to a vista otherwise somewhat cold and bare. This was St. George's Church, whose vestry, in the days when it required some degree of heroism to be an Episcopalian in that uncongenial atmosphere, had founded St. George's Hall. The present edifice, though numbering seventy-five years of life, was young compared with the First Church; and the lapse of time had not served to alter their respective positions in the community. In Warwick the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... been likewise mentioned; a strain of heroism, which would have been in his condition romantick and superfluous. Ecclesiastical benefices, when they become vacant, must be given away; and the friends of power may, if there be no inherent disqualification, easonably expect them. Swift accepted, 1713, the deanery ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Rome was speedily retrieved by an action, to which, according to the event, the public opinion would apply the names of rashness or heroism. After the departure of Totila, the Roman general sallied from the port at the head of a thousand horse, cut in pieces the enemy who opposed his progress, and visited with pity and reverence the vacant space of the eternal city. Resolved to maintain a station so conspicuous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that not one man in fifty is free to disregard. While it is called your day—before you are compassed behind and before with a commonplace that locks up so many lives like a numbing fate—signalize your record by some bit of heroism. If you would have posterity call you wise, seize your chance, while you have it, to be God's fool. Find the faith that can help you to play a man's part in the world; find in your faith the power which can grasp you by your weakness ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... deservedly requited as it is by feminine arrogance; it affords continual food for laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks would have joined in it. In the golden Middle Age the practice developed into a regular and methodical service of women; it imposed deeds of heroism, cours d'amour, bombastic Troubadour songs, etc.; although it is to be observed that these last buffooneries, which had an intellectual side, were chiefly at home in France; whereas amongst the material sluggish Germans, the knights distinguished themselves ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... is robust. There is not very much that can be called plot; what there is concerns itself with the fortunes of Miss Jessie's tenants, the chief objects of her ministrations. In the end an air-raid, of which the details are surely unusual, provides Miss Jessie with the opportunity for a deed of heroism that I am still trying to visualize (her nephew had thrown her down and was protecting her body with his own; but the heroine, seeing this, changed places with her defender "between the flash of the shell's impact and the explosion") and finishes, with an appropriately tearful death-scene, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... with more than human valor. The men fought as though they were resolved to give their lives to their cause. The memory of the king's words in the morning thrilled them. Nothing could stand before such heroism. Pappenheim fell. The Imperialists were routed. The Swedes at night, victorious, possessed the field, but they had lost the bravest of kings, and one of the most ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... good opinion we would fain have, or, if we stand in some public position, the poisonous slanders of the press, and the contumacious epithets, are trivial but very real tokens of dislike. We have the assassin's tongue instead of the assassin's dagger. But yet such things may call for as much heroism as braving a rack, and the spirit that shoots out the tongue may be as bad as the spirit that yelled, 'Christianos ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... mixture of grief and sleepiness on his face, had not her own heart been so loaded with care and sadness. The post brought in what Tom described as "bushels" of letters every day, and he was working away at them now with sleepy heroism. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... dinner? Ah, Agnes, always look out for heroism at dinner. It is their great time. They live up to the stiffness of their shirt fronts. Do you mean to say that you never noticed how he set ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... that has gone perhaps out of the world. I do not know in literature better friends and lovers. When one of the Fianna finds Osgar dying the proud death of a young man, and asks is it well with him, he is answered, "I am as you would have me be." The very heroism of the Fianna is indeed but their pride and joy in one another, their good fellowship. Goll, old and savage, and letting himself die of hunger in a cave because he is angry and sorry, can speak lovely words to the wife whose help he refuses. "'It is best ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... protests against the cold commercial rationalism which held Parliament and the schools through the earlier Victorian time, in so far as those protests were made in the name of neglected intellect, insulted art, forgotten heroism and desecrated religion. But already the Utilitarian citadel had been more heavily bombarded on the other side by one lonely ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of maintaining her average, has implanted in our breasts—a timid, meek-eyed creature, one of those women to whom death is less terrible than danger, and fate easier to face than fear. Such women have been known to run screaming from a mouse and to meet martyrdom with heroism. They can no more keep their nerves from trembling than an aspen tree can stay the ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... increasingly attuned to a serious, but very real congratulation. For she perceived that the tragedy of human life also constitutes the magnificence of human life, since it affords, and always must afford, supreme opportunity of heroism. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... remember them, and he knew by heart their history. He knew the heroism of Prince Zilah Sandor falling in Mohacz in 1566 beside his wife Hanska who had followed him, leaving in the cradle her son Janski, whose grandson, Zilah Janos, in 1867, at the very place where his ancestor had been struck, sabred the Turks, crying: "Sandor and Hanska, look ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... people of Korea against Japan in the spring of 1919 came as a world surprise. Here was a nation that had been ticketed and docketed by world statesmen as degenerate and cowardly, revealing heroism of a ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... living, of being about their business in some sort or other, do the brave, serviceable men of every nation tread down the nettle danger,[21] and pass flyingly over all the stumbling-blocks of prudence. Think of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end! Who, if he were wisely considerate of things ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stoical heroism of my slave I could not but insist on his branding me and was exalted to the point of nerve-tension at which I bit in my half-uttered scream as the heat seared my flesh. Agathemer dressed each brand with an oil-soaked rag and we composed ourselves ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Milly "liked" was to do, it thus appeared, as she was doing: our young man's glimpse of which was just what would have been for him not less a glimpse of the peculiar brutality of shaking her off. The choice exhaled its shy fragrance of heroism, for it was not aided by any question of parting with Kate. She would be charming to Kate as well as to Kate's adorer; she would incur whatever pain could dwell for her in the sight—should she continue to be exposed to the sight—of the adorer ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... affairs rendered it prudent for many years that this action of Grizel Cochrane's should be kept secret; but after the Revolution, when men could speak more freely, her heroism was known and applauded. She lived to marry Mr. Ker, of Morriston, in Berwickshire, and doubtless was as good a wife as she ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... with me every morning to the Works, and I shall find her there when I come out to walk home with me. I see, on reading over, that this is what I meant by "our" in speaking above of our little daily heroism in that direction. The heroism is easier, and becomes quite sweet, I find, when she comes so far on the way with me and when we linger outside for a little more last talk ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... with you!" But when it was suggested that John Quincy go, too, the parting did not seem so easy. But it was a fine opportunity for the boy to see the world of men, and the mother's head appreciated it even if her heart did not. And yet she had the heroism that is ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... doubtful then; what now is past and certain, was then future and contingent; what this and that subordinate, this force and that force could {p.135} endure and would endure we now know, but who could surely tell six months ago? Who, whatever his faith in the heroism and patience of the garrisons, believed in December, 1899, that Ladysmith and Kimberley and Mafeking could hold out, without relief, as long as they did? What therefore, between the known uncertainties of the past and the certainly ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... everything to a false and degrading appetite in his neighbours! Nothing could have made him put up with him but the love of Mercy, his dove in a crow's nest! But it would be all in vain, for he could not lie! Truth, indeed, if not less of a virtue, was less of a heroism in the chief than in most men, for he COULD NOT lie. Had he been tempted to try, he would have reddened, stammered, broken down, with the full shame, and none of the success of ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... manliness, manhood; nerve, pluck, mettle, game; heart, heart of grace; spunk, , guts, face, virtue, hardihood, fortitude, intestinal fortitude; firmness &c. (stability) 150; heart of oak; bottom, backbone, spine &c. (perseverance) 604a. resolution &c. (determination) 604; bulldog courage. prowess, heroism, chivalry. exploit, feat, achievement; heroic deed, heroic act; bold stroke. man, man of mettle; hero, demigod, Amazon, Hector; lion, tiger, panther, bulldog; gamecock, fighting-cock; bully, fire eater &c. 863. V. be courageous &c. adj.; dare, venture, make bold; face danger, front ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Krupps; and so on until they will have to stop fighting for the lack of munitions of war. I shall endeavour as far as possible to avoid loss of life, but," with an ironical smile, "if these people wish to indulge in a fanatical display of heroism and patriotism, I shall allow them the privilege of sinking with their ships, or dying with ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... not been crazy, unless acts of heroism and suffering for the sake of others can be described as crazy! The knitting women wish now that there had been "crazy" women in Germany to direct the thought of the nation to the brutality of the military system, to have aroused the women to ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... he said, reproachfully; "but when you are as old as I am, and have had my experience, you will know that the accomplishment of a duty is, under certain circumstances, a heroism of ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... Cambridgeshire. Still he felt that his errand was to the multitude, and his great anxiety was to penetrate the darkest places of the land, and preach to the most abandoned people. In these labours of unostentatious heroism, he sometimes excited the jealousy of the regular parish ministers, and even under the tolerant rule of the Protector, was in some danger of imprisonment. However, it was not till the Restoration that he was in serious jeopardy; but thereafter he was among ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... all the members are connected together by intimate relations. The Duchess Louisa of Saxe Weimar is the true model of a woman destined by nature to the most illustrious rank; without pretension, as without weakness, she inspires in the same degree confidence and respect; and the heroism of the chivalrous ages has entered her soul without taking from it any thing of her sex's softness. The military talents of the duke are universally respected, and his lively and reflective conversation continually brings to our recollection that he was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... himself nor did he swerve from the path he had marked out. In the midst of all he kept an unshaken faith. He accepted the trials that came, not as a matter of course, not tamely, nor with any mock heroism, but as a passing necessity. His resolution was of iron, his will of steel, his heart of gold; he was fighting in the splendid armor ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... knew what it cost me to counsel you wisely, to bid you do your duty; when the vision of a happy life with you was smiling at me all the time, when the warm grasp of your dear hand made my heart thrill with joy, what a heroine you would think me! And yet nobody will ever give me credit for heroism; and I shall be remembered only as a self-willed young woman, who was troublesome to her relations, and had to be sent ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... harsher feelings are chiefly excited where he suspects deceit or imposition; and in that respect, perhaps, his character was formerly misunderstood by one who was dear to him. He has, too, a tinge of romance in his disposition; and I have seen the narrative of a generous action, a trait of heroism, or virtuous self-denial, extract tears from him, which refused to flow at a tale of mere distress. But then, Brown urges, that he is personally hostile to him—And the obscurity of his birth—that would be indeed a stumbling-block. O Matilda, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... her, as it never struck the noble penitents in the Middle Ages, that it might be very trying to the object of these expiatory actions. She felt at the moment that it must be a comfort to her mother to receive all the love and devotion that she would offer her. And there was real heroism in the letter that Molly proceeded to write to Madame Danterre. For she knew that if her offer were accepted she risked the loss of all that at present made life very dear, both in what she already enjoyed, and in the hope that was hidden in ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... heart against Halfvorson. The latter had destroyed a, whole family of mice for him, and now he meant to be revenged. Before his eyes he still saw the white mother with her helpless offspring. She had not made the slightest attempt to escape; she had remained in her place with steadfast heroism, staring with red, burning eyes on the heartless murderer. Did he not deserve a short time of anxiety? Petter Nord wished to see him come out pale as death from his office and begin to look for the fifty crowns. He wished to see the same despair in his watery eyes as he had seen in the ruby ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... twenty-feet diameter of her cheese-box? All the pomp and splendor of naval warfare are gone by. Henceforth there must come up a race of enginemen and smoke-blackened cannoneers, who will hammer away at their enemies under the direction of a single pair of eyes; and even heroism—so deadly a gripe is Science laying on our noble possibilities—will become a quality of very minor importance, when its possessor cannot break through the iron crust of his own armament and give the world a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an inn near by, where she was put to bed and doctored under his care, for she was very weak. She told him all the story of their wanderings, and he heard it with astonishment and wonder to find such a great heart and heroism in a child. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... in that shivering circle of light the two men saw the king kneeling up in the cart and Peter on the barn floor beside him. The old fox looked at them sideways—snared, a white-faced evil thing. And then, as with a faltering suicidal heroism, he leant forward over the bomb before him, they fired together and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Fletcher became one of the little party before he knew whom he was meeting. "I am delighted," she said, "that you two Silverbridge heroes should meet together here as friends." It was almost incumbent on her to say something, though it would have been better for her not to have alluded to their heroism. Mrs. Lopez put out her hand, and Arthur Fletcher of course took it. Then the two men bowed slightly to each other, raising their hats. Arthur paused a moment with them, as they passed on from the Duchess, thinking that he would say something ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... peaceful and silent protest, the only one, he said, which was suitable to a priest, who was a man of mildness and not of blood; and everyone, for twenty-five miles around, praised Abbe Chantavoine's firmness and heroism, in venturing to proclaim the public morning by the obstinate silence of his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... time ago, no hand has been raised to perpetuate its history. This is singular, when it is remembered how largely the soldiers of this historic brigade contributed to win for the State of South Carolina the glory rightfully hers, by reason of the splendid heroism of her sons in the war between the States, from the year 1861 to that of 1865. If another generation had been allowed to pass, it is greatly feared that the power to supply the historian with the information requisite to this work would have passed ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... again, a want of depth, characterize the poetry of Iran, whose bards do not touch the chords which rouse what is noblest and highest in our nature. They give us sparkle, prettiness, quaint and ingenious fancies, grotesque marvels, an inflated kind of human heroism; but they have none of the higher excellencies of the poetic art, none of the divine fire which renders the true poet, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... burning rage against the sluggard who had made his name a thing of reproach in all lands. With the overstrong bitterness of youth he had meant to die sword in hand, fighting for Ireland. The few burning words of Owen Ruadh had stripped all this false heroism from him, however, and had sent a flame of sanity ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... heroism and loyalty there was a general exclamation of enthusiasm, and no one in that company could tell whom he at that moment most admired, the Princess or ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... utilitarian morality is the offspring and adjunct of our condition here. But is there not an aspiration to character which points to something more spiritual and higher than conformity to the utilitarian code? Heroism and self-sacrifice are ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... house. And he was an awful wicked giant, and he used to bite people's heads off. And he wanted to fight everybody, and everybody was scared 'cept just me." She paused, overcome by the contemplation of her own heroism. "Wasn't that funny? Everybody was 'fraid 'cept a teenty, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... questioned. West Point has, in too many instances, nursed imbecility and treason; but in our honest contempt for the small men of whom, in common with other institutions, she has had her share,—we must not ignore those bright pages of our history adorned with the skill and heroism of her nobler sons. McClellanism did not follow its chief from Warrenton; or Burnside's earnestness, Hooker's dash, and Meade's soldierly stand at Gettysburg, backed as they were by the heroic fighting of the Army ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... suffered martyrdom for her religious views during the persecution of the Christians in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. But let us read the poem, which will make her more immortal than her heroism." ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... revenged myself on both—heroically, as I thought; though where the heroism comes in, and where the revenge, does ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... herself alone knowing the reason for this sudden change. Annie Forest, who had been at Lavender House for four years, had once, for a solitary month of her existence, owned her own special drawing-room. She had obtained it as a reward for an act of heroism. One of the little pupils had set her pinafore on fire. There was no teacher present at the moment, the other girls had screamed and run for help, but Annie, very pale, had caught the little one in her arms and had crushed out the flames ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... heroisms of romance look beside it! Thompson's heroism, which is real, which is colossal, which is sublime, and which is costly beyond all estimate, is achieved in profound obscurity, and its hero walks in rags to the end of his days. I had forgotten Thompson ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... prophets was, of all men, Thomas Carlyle. Soured and embittered, in the same spirit which led him to find more heroism in a marauding Viking or in one of Frederick the Great's generals than in Washington, or Lincoln, or Grant, and which caused him to see in the American civil war only the burning out of a foul chimney, he, with the petulance natural to a dyspeptic eunuch, railed at Darwin ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... listening to him with a breathless interest, looking at him with a breathless wonder, as those fearful stories—made doubly vivid by the simple language in which he told them—fell, one by one, from his lips. His noble unconsciousness of his own heroism—the artless modesty with which he described his own acts of dauntless endurance and devoted courage, without an idea that they were anything more than plain acts of duty to which he was bound by the vocation that he followed—raised ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... go back to the plowing and I'll go and unload and begin my work," I answered, with positive heroism. I wanted to get out and go and be introduced to the mule, but I came to Sam to be not a clinging vine, but ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... at Carlton House are worthy of notice, both on account of the extreme virulence which characterized the disease at that post, and also as no official record of this visitation of small-pox would be complete which failed to bring to the notice of your Excellency the undaunted: heroism displayed by a young officer of the Hudson Bay Company who was in temporary charge of the station. At the breaking out of the disease, early in the month of August, the population of Carlton: numbered ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... always looking into the past. All the worth of things is there. They are forever talking about the good old times, and how different things were when they were young. There is no romance in the world now, and no heroism. The very winters and summers are nothing to what they used to be; in fact, life is altogether on a small, commonplace scale. Now that is a miserable sort of thing; it brings a sort of paralyzing chill over the life, and petrifies ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... suppose he reckoned that if he pulled Campbell out he'd stand a good show of getting clear of his trouble; anyway, if he didn't save Campbell it might be said that he killed him—besides, Bogan was a good swimmer, so there wasn't any heroism about it anyhow. Campbell was only a few feet from the bank, but Bogan started to strip—to make the job look as big as possible, I suppose. He shouted to Campbell to say he was coming, and to hold on. Campbell said afterwards that Bogan seemed an hour undressing. The weight of the current was ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... the cross of the A meets and cuts the right stroke, is La Haie Sainte. At the middle of this cross is the precise point where the final battle word was spoken. There the lion is placed, the involuntary symbol of the supreme heroism of the Imperial Guard. The triangle contained at the top of the A, between the two strokes and the cross, is the plateau of Mont Saint Jean. The struggle for this plateau was the whole of ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the two most interested ever knew of this encounter. Albert, of course, did not tell. He was rather ashamed of it. For the son of Miguel Carlos Speranza to conquer dragons was a worthy and heroic business, but there seemed to be mighty little heroism in licking Sam Thatcher behind 'Lije Doane's cranberry shack. And Sam did not tell. Gertie next day confided that she didn't care two cents for that stuck-up Al Speranza, anyway; she had let him see her home only because Sam had danced so many times with ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... done, men can still do. Nay, shall we not rather believe that the best is yet to be done? The peoples whom we call ancient were but rude beginners. We are the true ancients, the inheritors of all the wisdom and all the heroism of the past. We stand in a wider world, and move forward with more conscious purpose along more open ways. Of the past we see but the summits, illumined by the rays of genius and glory. Could we look upon the plains where the multitudes lie in darkness, wearing the triple chain ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... "Polyolbion," he nevertheless possessed an abounding exuberance of delicate fancy and sound poetical judgment, traces of which flash not unfrequently even athwart the dulness of his magnum opus, and through the mock-heroism of "England's Heroical Epistles," while they have full play in his "Court of Faery." Drayton's great defect was the entire absence of that dramatic talent so marvellously developed among his contemporaries,—a defect, as we shall presently see, sufficient of itself to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... had begun with this, had intimated respectfully that it was a case in which both practice and principle rebelled, and then, perceiving how little Mr. Locket was affected by his audacity, had felt weak and slightly silly, left with his heroism on his hands. He had armed himself for a struggle, but the Promiscuous didn't even protest, and there would have been nothing for him but to go away with the prospect of never coming again had he not chanced to say abruptly, irrelevantly, as he got ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... they ply their paddles. Days pass. At last they sweep round a bend, and behold familiar scenes: they are once more at home, coming upon their sorrowing friends like apparitions from the dead. It is a marvellous story they have to tell of endurance, heroism, and victory. No one can doubt their words, for there are the scalps, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... his men for another dash. A man of less flexible and steel-like frame would probably have been so jarred and stunned by the shock as to be unable to rise; he, though covered with blood and dust, kept his saddle during the remainder of the day, and performed prodigies of valor. But no heroism of officers or men could avail to stay the advance of the ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... her at broad sunlit spaces, where struggling hearts work out noble destinies, without any thought of heroism. They saw the moonlight and its drifting shadows on the wheat, and smelled again the ripening grain at dawn. They heard the whirr of prairie chickens' wings among the golden stubble on the hillside, and the glamor ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... heroism of the Virginia legislature," says Wirt, "gave way; and, in a season of despair, the mad project of a dictator was seriously meditated. That Mr. Henry was thought of for this office, has been alleged, and is highly probable; but that the project was suggested by him, or even received his countenance, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... he might, he could not rid himself of the mocking question "Cui bono?" What was the use of this individual heroism to the country at large? As far as the woman herself was concerned it kept her human, but to the big community . . .? Would even the soldiers when they came back be strong enough, and collected enough, to do any good? And how ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... the polished heart of artificial Europe; from the breezy backwoods of young America; from the tropical languor of Asian savannah; from every spot shining through the rosy light of beloved old fables, or consecrated by lofty deeds of heroism or devotion, or shrined in our heart of hearts as the sacred home of some great or gifted one,—they gather ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... revolution. She filled my mind with ideas of the people's sovereignty. She talked of nothing else. She besought me on her knees to join her party, as she called it. She flattered me with dreams of greatness in a great republic, she illuminated crime in the light of heroism, she pushed me into secret societies, and laughed at me for my want of courage. I loved her, and she made a fool of me, worse than a fool, a traitor, worse than a traitor, a murderer, for she persuaded ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... book, and found in the legends of Brutus, and Cocles, and Scaevola, and the retreat to the Mons Sacer, and the Gladiator's war, what The Cause was, and forgot awhile in those tales of antique heroism and patriotic self-sacrifice my own selfish longings ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the expeditionary force, the unexampled heroism and determination of our troops enabled them to establish a foothold on the tip of the peninsula, but photographs confirm the reports of eye-witnesses that they were literally holding on by their eyelids to the positions they had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... memory because of one great deed. It is the supreme portrait in modern times of a young hero, chiselled by artists belonging to a race no longer heroic, but capable of comprehending and expressing the aesthetic charm of heroism. Standing before it, we may say of Gaston what Arrian wrote to Hadrian of Achilles:—'That he was a hero, if hero ever lived, I cannot doubt; for his birth and blood were noble, and he was beautiful, and his spirit was mighty, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... night. At last it has been driven home on all that our fate hangs in the balance, and has hung in the balance for weeks. But it is too late now. If a single link in our chain is broken there will be a sauve qui pent which no heroism ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... mortified. The heroism of common life does not commend itself to the youthful imagination. When his lesson was finished it was time for him to go to bed. "Wake me when father comes in!" was the formula without which he never ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... proof of it this very day... and such a marriage is not a vileness, as you say! And even if you were right, if I really had determined on a vile action, is it not merciless on your part to speak to me like that? Why do you demand of me a heroism that perhaps you have not either? It is despotism; it is tyranny. If I ruin anyone, it is only myself.... I am not committing a murder. Why do you look at me like that? Why are you so pale? Rodya, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I should have done right in striving to prevent him,' said James. 'Who can appreciate the moral effect of heroism?' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forgot the bands, bade the old sexton a gentle good day, and stole away home through the streets. He had wanted to get out, and now he wanted to get in; for he felt very much as Lady Godiva would have felt if her hair or her heroism had proved unworthy ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... their fightings, their loves and their lusts, their blunt, grim humour, their stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity—a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history, un-compromising, sincere; each group in its proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... have seceded, and perhaps their ideas were wrong; but it was heroism, and a good thing for ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... offer cost her not a little. For it was by no means easy to sink her natural pride, and go forth smiling with this son of hers, at once beautiful and hideous in person, for all the world to see. Something of personal heroism is demanded of whoso prescribes heroic remedies, if those remedies are to succeed. At night, alone in the darkness, Katherine, suddenly awaking, would be haunted by perception of the curious glances, and curious comments, which must of necessity ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... taken the cue unknowing of what he should find in it; he said nothing, and looked as simple and cheerful as if his life were not to be a daily course of heroism. His wife gave one long, stifled sigh, and looked furtively upon him with her loving eyes, in something of anxious fear, but ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... away; the dusky rafters part to admit the infinite, infinite longin's to do and dare, infinite resolves to emulate those deeds of valor and heroism. How the calm blue eyes look down into the boy's impassioned soul, how the shadowy hands beckon him upward, up the rocky heights of noble endeavor, noble deeds! How the inspiration of this life, these deeds of might and valor, nerve the young heart for future strivings ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... methodically and uninterruptedly accumulating the needed amount, under the perpetual accusation of Irene's inadequate frocks and Mrs. Carstyle's apologies for the mutton, seemed to Vibart proof of unexampled heroism. Mr. Carstyle was as inaccessible as the average American parent, and led a life so detached from the preoccupations of his womankind that Vibart had some difficulty in fixing his attention. To Mr. Carstyle, Vibart was simply ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... over, resolved not to outlive the independence of his country. Had he died in the thick of the fight, a halo of glory would have surrounded him. But, because he lacked, in common with many other great kings and commanders, the quality of heroism, we are not justified in affixing to his memory the stigma of personal cowardice. Like Pompey, like Napoleon, he yielded in the crisis of his fate to the instinct of self-preservation. He fled from the field where ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... become mine, count," replied Morrel; "besides, as I had the honor to tell you, heroism or not, sacrifice or not, that day I owed an offering to bad fortune in recompense for the favors good fortune had on other ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... perhaps, whose only crime was sincerity, and an earnest attachment to master's interests. The booming of a third cannon, and they had fallen, victims of fear, at the feet of their deluded victors. Happily, an act of heroism (which we would record to the fame of the hero) saved the city that bloody climax we sicken while contemplating. Ere the third gun belched its order of death, a mounted officer, sensible of the result that gun would produce, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... from the hut. Not for herself, but for the sake of the little life which depended upon her, she must continue to live and be strong. She pressed her baby to her breast, and with amazing fortitude and heroism, set herself to face the task ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... propaganda in a few days than a thousand pamphlets. The government defends itself, it rages pitilessly; but by this it only causes further deeds to be committed by one or more persons, and drives the insurgents to heroism. One deed brings forth another; opponents join the mutiny; the government splits into factions; harshness intensifies the conflict; concessions come too late; the revolution breaks out."[7] Here at last is the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... bosom friends, my acquaintance?—the idea makes me shudder! Must I be called a parricide, a traitor, a villain, lose the esteem of all those whom I love, to preserve my own; be shunned like a rattlesnake, or be pointed at like a bear? I have neither heroism not magnanimity enough to make so great a sacrifice. Here I am tied, I am fastened by numerous strings, nor do I repine at the pressure they cause; ignorant as I am, I can pervade the utmost extent of the calamities ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... the fable is wild and pleasing. I know not how the ladies will approve the facility with which both Rosalind and Celia give away their hearts. To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroism of her friendship. The character of Jaques is natural and well preserved. The comick dialogue is very sprightly, with less mixture of low buffoonery than in some other plays; and the graver part is elegant and harmonious. By hastening to the end of his work, Shakespeare ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... is the title of a new, very thrilling and intensely interesting novel, by Ernest Daudet, one of the best known and most widely read of the living French novelists. A highly romantic, attractive and touching love story, in which a gypsy girl of great beauty and heroism, named Dolores, and Antoinette de Mirandol, an heiress, are rivals for the possession of Philip de Chamondrin, the hero, forms the main theme, and it is most skilfully and effectively handled. About this double romance of the heart are clustered a series of ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... silence, deep, profound, awe-inspiring, the old Indian guard—the Last of the Great Chiefs—break not the silence. Who can ask death to retreat? And who put in shackles the decrees of destiny? The world annals contain no heroism and no bravery more lofty and enduring than that furnished by the record of the red man. But the summital requirement is at hand. These old heroes, few in number, must with their own moccasined feet measure the distance in yards ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present to the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of keeping or winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer |
