Even if you've been a coward all your life, death is a heroic act.
Abi Morgan
In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.
Adelbert von Chamisso
Because of England's lack of social mobility, unless they make truly heroic efforts, writers who are privately educated and then go on to Oxbridge or an institution like the BBC will generally embarrass themselves when they attempt to have a go at working- or lower middle-class characters.
Adrian McKinty
That whole heroic notion of the women warriors known as Amazons is extremely appealing. It was appealing in antiquity, and, throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, they're always portrayed as heroic, courageous, and the equals of men, and that's just extremely attractive and has been since antiquity.
Adrienne Mayor
Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
Agnes Repplier
Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.
Al Gore
You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
Alan Furst
I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing.
Alan Moore
Is it absurd to imagine that our social behavior, from amoeba to man, is also planned and dictated, from stored information, by the cells? And that the time has come for men to be entrusted with the task, through heroic efforts, of bringing life to other worlds?
Albert Claude
People aren't universally heroic.
Alexei Sayle
As well as tasting fantastic, blackberries are good for you. Anthocyanin isn't just a pigment, it's a flavonoid, a heroic antioxidant! The stuff of superfoods!
Alice Roberts
After 1945, shamefully, we Brits seemed dedicated to punishing the heroic Poles at every turn for their wartime loyalty.
Alistair Horne
Over the years, the writers at DC Comics softened Wonder Woman's powers in ways that would have infuriated Marston. During the 1960s, she was hardly wondrous at all, less a heroic warrior than the tomboyish girl next door. It was no longer clear whether she was meant to empower the girls or captivate the boys.
Amanda Foreman
I'm all about entertaining and keeping a reader on the edge of their seat, so to me, the social issues have to be meaningful and give the book what's really 'at stake,' but ultimately it's not about them - it's always a personal story of everyday people thrust into life-threatening situations and having to perform heroic acts.
Andrew Gross
Because of the mainstreaming of academia's victimhood culture, we are now in a place where we place more value on being a victim than on being heroic, charitable, or even kind.
Andy Ngo
I don't think most people are all heroic or all villainous, so I find ambiguity of motivations to be a natural human condition.
Ann Nocenti
Catwoman isn't a 'joiner.' She's a solo operator. She isn't naturally heroic; she's fairly selfish.
Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.
Ansel Adams
The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.
Anthony Minghella
Oliver Sacks remains my hero to this day. He was one of the first medical writers I read. The other was Lewis Thomas, who is no longer alive but is just heroic to me.
Atul Gawande
Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
The news of the open military help to Franco from Hitler and Mussolini, and the heroic resistance of the people of Madrid, Barcelona and the big cities fired a widespread wish to help the Republic and its people.
I like characters who aren't typically heroic and come to some sort of epiphany about themselves.
Among the events of John McCain's five-and-a-half years of imprisonment and torture in North Vietnam, probably the most heroic, and surely the most celebrated, was his refusal to accept an early release from his captors.
My father was a coal hewer from Goldthorpe, a coal-mining village in South Yorkshire. He played for the Yorkshire second team as an opening fast bowler - to me he was a gorgeously heroic man. He helped form a union and closed down the Barnsley seam because it was seeping gas, and saved many, many lives.
With all of the people in Cuba who I met - many of them hugely heroic figures - I found learning about their complexity and richness and contradictions just really fascinating, and it was fulfilling to be able to offer a different side to them, to be able to have some kind of unique takeaway from the official narrative.
I think on some level, that's a fear that exists in everybody, that if we're tested, we won't make the courageous choice. We won't make the decision that would make us heroic. We make the decision that would reveal us to be all too human.
Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness.
There are so many stories about boys becoming heroes, learning their powers and becoming incredibly heroic. There have to be those stories for girls, too.
I grew up reading books about heroic collies.
My stepfather, Steve Mallonee, is a retired Miami Beach firefighter, loved and adored by many. After numerous years of heroic work, saving lives through fire and heavy smoke, he has developed a very fatal lunge disease called Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Very few of my characters are totally heroic or totally villainous.
The quality of films out there depends on how much responsibility we're willing to take. I try to play women who are positive and heroic.
It is an Englishman who turns out to be the real villain of 'The Moonstone.' By contrast, the three Indian priests who dedicate their lives to returning the jewel to its proper home in the temple, though they have nothing personal to gain by doing so, are positively heroic.
The Mahabharata might have been a great and heroic battle, but there are no winners. The losers, of course, lose.
I will always be the hopeless romantic, more often pathetic than heroic.
I wanted to write an adventure in the old-fashioned way, something to which I could apply the adjective 'rollicking' and not feel embarrassed. But I've never liked my heroes to be too heroic, so they ended up being a bunch of criminals instead.
Outside of my family, I was always inspired by true heroic stories of leadership and survival. For example, the story of the Shackleton expedition, when their ship became lodged in the Antarctic ice pack while exploring.
With all due respect to the other writers, I don't want to disparage any other writers; I don't want to have to invent a bigger villain than Deathstroke so Deathstroke can seem heroic fighting this bigger villain. I'd rather just have Deathstroke be who is, and he's kind of a bastard.
Deathstroke is a villain. Don't come to the book with any expectations that he will, in any way or sense or form, act heroically. He's a bad guy, and that's the fun of it.
You don't need to be a fan of wars or militarism to note that heroic action - whether being prepared to be jailed as a conscientious objector or putting your life on the line by joining the resistance - creates a sense of meaning when society faces a huge challenge.
None meet life honestly and few heroically.
The idea of sacrifice is integral to the John Henry myth. Heroic figures have to die in order for us to have our stories; we live and stand on their bones.
Generations of heroic Americans have made America more inclusive, more expansive, and more just.
Let's face it: the present self is present. It's in control. It's in power right now. It has these strong, heroic arms that can lift doughnuts into your mouth. And the future self is not even around. It's off in the future. It's weak. It doesn't even have a lawyer present.
I guess I'm always drawn to the underbelly of someone, really, as opposed to how heroic they are. I don't judge those sorts of people.
In the world of poker, it's not heroic to try to function on a couple hours of sleep.
One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events.
I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do.
Many single mothers do a heroic job looking after their children, as mine did with us; but as she found, it becomes twice as hard to set boundaries with half the number of parents.
