Hero S Death Quotes & Sayings

Let's get going. I don't like being alone out here. The sooner we can blend in with the Imperial population the safer we'll be. It's not hard to cross here," Mari added as they waded through the stream.
"We are fortunate," Alain told her. "It is more difficult downstream."
She felt a shadow cross her mind. "Where that bridge was? Where you almost died?"
"Yes."
"I'm really proud of you for that, but don't do it again. I'm being selfish. I need you." Mari waved one finger at Alain. "Don't be a hero?"
He regarded her impassively. "Even if you need a hero? — Jack Campbell

Gatekeepers will always try to stop you getting in. But as a true hero, you have to snatch victory from death's jaws. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

We had set out in a rain of flowers to seek the death of heroes. The war was our dream of greatness, power and glory. It was a man's work, a duel on the fields whose flowers would be stained with blood. There is no lovelier death in the world ... Anything rather than stay at home, anything to make one with the rest. — Ernst Junger

He held up one finger. "I thought it wasn't loaded" Shane said. Second finger. "Hand me a match so I can check the gas tank." Third finger. "Killed over ice cream. Basically, any death that requires me to be stupid first."
Michael shook his head. "So what's on your good list?"
"Oh you know. Hero stuff that gets me rerun on CNN, Like I died saving a busload of supermodels" Claire smacked his arm. "Ow! Saving them! What did you think I meant? — Rachel Caine

In the end, there's no sort of difference between dying from ignorance and dying under the feet of thousands of men who have regained their freedom. You close your eyes, and then there's nothing anymore. And death is never difficult. It requires neither a hero nor a slave. It eats what it's served. — Philippe Claudel

One day I realized something obvious: In all these movies, there was a similar plot. The hero is always weak at the beginning and strong at the end, or a jerk at the beginning and kind at the end, or cowardly at the beginning and brave at the end. In other words, heroes are almost always screwups. But it hardly mattered. All the hero has to do to make the story great is struggle with doubt, face their demons, and muster enough strength to destroy the Death Star. That said, I noticed another thing. The strongest character in a story isn't the hero, it's the guide. Yoda. Haymitch. It's the guide who gets the hero back on track. The guide gives the hero a plan and enough confidence to enter the fight. The guide has walked the path of the hero and has the advice and wisdom to get the hero through their troubles so they can beat the resistance. The more I studied story, the more I realized I needed a guide. — Donald Miller

To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That's the basic motif of the universal hero's journey - leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition. — Joseph Campbell

There's a thine line between being a hero and being a memory. — Optimus Prime

The story depicts also the troubled part of the hero's life which precedes and leads up to his death; and an instantaneous death occurring by 'accident' in the midst of prosperity would not suffice for it. It is, in fact, essentially a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death. — A. C. Bradley

Mr. Blue's way of death was fitting. He had been utterly corrupted by America, and I find it proper that his carotid artery should have been severed by flak from a jumbo-sized can of mentholated shave cream. Like James Joyce, who tried to bend and subjugate the ironmongery of the cosmos with words (wasn't it The Word Joyce was after?), Mr. Blue tried to undo the empyrean mysteries with Seedy and his red carpet, with his elevated alligator shoes, with the ardent push-ups he seemed so sure would make him outlast time's ravages, with his touching search for some golden pussy that would yield to his lips the elixir of eternal life. And like Joyce's Leopold Bloom, like Quixote, Mr. Blue had become the perennial mock-epic hero of his country, the salesman, the boomer who believed that at the end of his American sojourn of demeaning doorbell-ringing, of faking and fawning, he would come to the Ultimate Sale, conquer, and soar. — Frederick Exley

The Poison Maiden has conceived by him, and is plumb ready to enter the divine category of mother, only one last fiend clubs her to death. The final clinch of male romanticism is that each man kills the thing he loves; whether she be Catharine in A Farewell to Arms, or the Grecian Urn, the 'tension that she be perfect' means that she must die, leavinf the hero's status as a great lover unchallenged. The pattern is still commonplace: the hero cannot marry. The sexual exploit must be conquest, not cohabitation and mutual tolerance. — Germaine Greer

It was only by escaping into the desert that Moses and the Jews were able to solidify their identity and reemerge as a social and political force.
Jesus spent his forty days in the wilderness, and Mohammed, too, fled Mecca at a time of great peril for a period of retreat. He and just a handful of his most devoted supporters used this period to deepen their bonds, to understand who they were and what they stood for, to let time work its good. Then this little band of believers reemerged to conquer Mecca and the Arabian Peninsula and later, after Mohammed's death, to defeat the Byzantines and the Persian empire, spreading Islam over vast territories. Around the world every mythology has a hero who retreats, even to Hades itself in the case of Odysseus, to find himself. — Robert Greene

The day is crisp and clear, almost like every other morning he's taken the same walk in the snow, hiking to the forest and back. — M.C. Frank

I stole your childhood and now I've led you by the hand to your death. But the worst thing is, I knew. I knew this would happen. This is what always happens. Forget your faith in me. I took you with me because I was vain. Because I wanted to be adored. Look at you. Glorious Pond, the girl who waited for me. I'm not a hero. I really am just a mad man in a box. And it's time we saw each other as we really are. Amy Williams, it's time to stop waiting. — Steven Moffat

A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing. That's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war. — Jim Morrison

Dickinson is my hero because she was a joker, because she would never explain, because as a poet she confronted pain, dread and death, and because she was capable of speaking of those matters with both levity and seriousness. She's my hero because she was a metaphysical adventurer. — Helen Oyeyemi

Myths of the heroes speak most eloquently of man's quest to choose life over death. — Dorothy Norman

For Ares, lord of strife,
Who doth the swaying scales of battle hold,
War's money-changer, giving dust for gold,
Sends back, to hearts that held them dear,
Scant ash of warriors, wept with many a tear,
Light to the hand, but heavy to the soul;
Yea, fills the light urn full
With what survived the flame
Death's dusty measure of a hero's frame! — Aeschylus

Trustan's eldest son, Crispin, had been the one who'd chased him across the schoolyard that fateful day. While Maris hadn't really understood the insults they'd yelled, he knew the misery of being punched and slapped while being unable to strike back. Tired of it all, he'd been praying for death when out of nowhere a boy half his size had slammed into Crispin and knocked him away from Maris. Like some mythical hero, Darling had beat the bastard down and told him that he better never touch Maris again. Then he'd turned around, bleeding and bruised, and extended his hand to Maris. "Hi, I'm Darling Cruel. We should be friends." In that heartbeat, Maris had fallen head over heels in love with him. And he'd been that way ever since. He'd never met anyone who came close to Darling's loyalty, kindness, or generous spirit. Until Ture. For — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The true Christians are the true citizens, lofty of purpose, resolute in endeavor, ready for a hero's deeds, but never looking down on their task because it is cast in the day of small things; scornful of baseness, awake to their own duties as well as to their rights, following the higher law with reverence, and in this world doing all that in their power lies, so that when death comes they may feel that humanity is in some degree better because they lived. — Theodore Roosevelt

The Renaissance did not break completely with mediaeval history and values. Sir Philip Sidney is often considered the model of the perfect Renaissance gentleman. He embodied the mediaeval virtues of the knight (the noble warrior), the lover (the man of passion), and the scholar (the man of learning). His death in 1586, after the Battle of Zutphen, sacrificing the last of his water supply to a wounded soldier, made him a hero. His great sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella is one of the key texts of the time, distilling the author's virtues and beliefs into the first of the Renaissance love masterpieces. His other great work, Arcadia, is a prose romance interspersed with many poems and songs. — Ronald Carter

[7] The Shadows Code In the 1930's a mysterious crime-fighter called the Shadow was the hero of a popular pulp magazine and an even more popular radio show. Dressed all in black, the Shadow could glide unseen through the darkness to battle the forces of evil. Stories about the Shadow, written by Maxwell Grant (pseudonym for the Shadow's creator, Walter B. Gibson), often contained curious codes. This cipher, from a novelette called The Chain of Death, is one of the best. — Martin Gardner

I take you as my queen, to protect and honor, to be my light in darkness, my courage in fear, my healing in sickness, my riches in need, my peace in war, my life in death. In token I present to you my sword by which I so swear from this hour henceforth, until death take me or the world end. I name you now Calista Vandal."
(Hero's wedding vow to his bride.) — Ashlyn Macnamara

In Valiente's world," Eden wrote,"Love is never consummated, but remains a figment of the hero's own imagination. In preferring dreams to reality, the hero dooms himself. He would rather risk a physical death than the death of his beloved illusion. — Ava Zavora

My mother's death brought me to my knees. She was my hero, my role model, my very best friend. I spoke to her every single day of my life. I really tried hard when I grew up to make her proud of me. — Maria Shriver

It's only human,' you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept 'human' mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure - as if 'to feel' were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not - as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not. — Ayn Rand

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he s not he s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.
Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some it takes an hour. For some it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor his sense of duty to his country and his innate manhood.
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. — George S. Patton Jr.

Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare. — James Baldwin

Today words like 'persevere' and 'hero's death' had been so ceaselessly bandied about that they had long since acquired an ironic sound - at least wherever there was actual fighting. . . . Once, before an attack, Sturm had heard an old sergeant say the following: 'Kids, we're going over there now to gobble up the Englishmen's rations.' It was the best battle address that he had ever heard. That was surely something good in the war - that it destroyed glorious-sounding phrases. Concepts that hung fleshless in the void were overcome by laughter. — Ernst Junger

Then, abruptly, it was his turn to feel ashamed, not only for having extended, however momentarily, the consideration of his sympathy to a Nazi, but for having produced work that appealed to such a man. Joe was not the early creator of comic books to perceive the mirror-image fascism inherent in his anti-fascist superman - Will Eisner, another Jew cartoonist, quite deliberately dressed his Allied-hero Blackhawks in uniforms modeled on the elegant death's-head garb of the Waffen SS. But Joe was perhaps the first to feel the shame of glorifying, in the name of democracy and freedom, the vengeful brutality of a very strong man.
[...] Now it occurred to Joe to wonder if all they have been doing all along, was indulging their own worst impulses and assuring the creation of another generation of men who revered only strength and domination. — Michael Chabon

They say you never know who's the real hero and who's the real coward until you're looking death in the face. I've always been afraid of plenty of things, but fear isn't what makes you a coward. It's how depraved your heart becomes when fear gets pumped through it. — Neal Shusterman

I couldn't stand by and watch you put yourselves in harm's way. No way. And fuck those SAVAK bastards, and their Western masters, and the grand servant of the West. Fuck anyone who wants to put me in jail because I stood by my friends to mourn the death of a hero, screw them all. I don't care if I have to spend the rest of my life behind bars, I don't, I really don't. I learned today that friendship is worth making sacrifices for. Doctor proved that life is a small price to pay for your beliefs. — Mahbod Seraji

And while I'm on the subject, let me say something about Harry Potter. [Gravels her voice.] Warlocks are enemies of God!! [Back to normal screech.] And I don't care what kind of hero they are, they're an enemy of God. And had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter woulda been put to death! [Applause.] You don't make heroes out of warlocks. This is the generation that's gonna stand for purity, an' righteousnesss, an' holiness, an' you're gonna serve the lord all the days of your life. — Becky Fischer

Under the olive trees, from the ground Grows this flower, which is a wound. It is easier to ignore Than the heroes' sunset fire Of death plunged in their willed desire Raging with flags on the world's shore. — Stephen Spender

That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death - heroes who died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day. How — Willa Cather

People use their leaders almost as an excuse. When they give in to the leader's commands they can always reserve the feeling that these commands are are alien to them, that they are the leader's responsibility, that the terrible acts they are committing are in his name and not theirs. This, then, is another thing that makes people feel so guiltless, as Canetti points out: they can imagine themselves as temporary victims of the leader. The more they give in to his spell, and the more terrible the crimes they commit, the more they can feel that the wrongs are not natural to them. It is all so neat, this usage of the leader; it reminds us of James Franzer's discovery that in the remote past tribes often used their kings as scapegoats who, when they no longer served the people's needs, were put to death. These are the many ways in which men can play the hero, all the while that they are avoiding responsibility for their own acts in a cowardly way. — Ernest Becker

Marseilles isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see. And you realize, too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy. An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Do not think that heroes cannot be broken! We are only more difficult to break, Hermione." The old wizard's eyes had grown sterner than she had ever seen. "When you have been exhausted for many hours, when pain and death is not a passing fear but a certainty, then it is harder to be a hero. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Gagarin's death was shameful not just because of the loss of a national hero in muddled circumstances, but because of the dangerous flaws revealed in the Soviet military technology of his time. Obviously their radar systems were not capable of simultaneous mapping of aircraft heights and positions, nor of positively identifying one target from another. The implications of this were highly alarming. — Jamie Doran

You shall delve in the darkness of the endless maze," I remembered. "The dead, the traitor, and the lost one raise. We raised a lot of the dead. We saved Ethan Nakamura, who turned out to be a traitor. We raised the spirit of Pan, the lost one." Annabeth shook her head like she wanted me to stop. "You shall rise or fall by the ghost king's hand," I pressed on. "That wasn't Minos, like I'd thought. It was Nico. By choosing to be on our side, he saved us. And the child of Athena's final stand - that was Daedalus." "Percy - " "Destroy with a hero's final breath. That makes sense now. Daedalus died to destroy the Labyrinth. But what was the last - " "And lose a love to worse than death." Annabeth — Rick Riordan

In life one of Midnight's favourite movies had been It's a Wonderful Life, a touching story where a man called George Bailey is shown how poor the world would have been if he'd never existed, but now the young ghost of Midnight Merlot was sat imagining himself not as the kind hero of his own narrative, but, - but as the anti-George. — Tom Conrad

Adam swallowed thickly. "Can you see the future?"
"I see many futures."
"Many?"
"As many futures as there are choices."
"Do I defeat the Death Collector in any of them?"
"No."
A wave of helplessness rolled over him. So all this was pointless. The Collective was going to win after all. He couldn't breathe. He braced his hands on his knees as a devastating roar filled his head.
Abigail clucked with her tongue. "Look at you. So arrogant. So self-important. You've gone and cast yourself as the hero. Do you really think this war is about you?"
Adam's head snapped up. — Erin Kellison

It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. — Thomas Carlyle

It's not about you, it's about the story. It's not about the folks who raise an eyebrow because you're not yet published or not yet J.K. Rowling. It's not about what that lady at church may think or, for that matter, the critics. It's not about the fact that you can't please everyone, and it's sure as heck not about the odds. In the immortal words of Gold Five, "Stay on target." You may or may not be the one who destroys the Death Star. But you're a hero if you get out of your own way, put it all on the line, and try. — Cynthia Leitich Smith

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt's, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero's grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast. — John D. MacDonald

When species live, As they are meant to be, That is the true diversity. Say what they will of freedoms plight, When the truth comes down, It's "Might Is Right"!

Life can be hard and life can be Hell, But no man fears death, Who lives life well. False pleasures and comforts will get you by, Yet wretched is the man, who lives a lie. — Magnus Soderman

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. — Molly Ivins

It's not about Al," I snap. "It's about everyone watching! Everyone who now sees
hurling themselves into the chasm as a viable option. I mean, why not do it if everyone
calls you a hero afterward? Why not do it if everyone will remember your name? It's ... I
can't ... — Veronica Roth

My food hero has to be Auguste Escoffier. And the villain? The man who's been most responsible for the death of food in my time is Ronald McDonald. He's always scared me, I think he's evil - he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Him and the Hamburglar. — Arthur Potts Dawson

For me to accept baptism, I had to believe in Christ's reality - in the reality not just of his life but also of his miracles and death and resurrection. But how could I? Such things don't happen. Look around you. There are no miracles. There can be no resurrection. The clockwork world is all in all. But such things don't happen, I knew now, was the ultimate irrational prejudice of the human mind: the belief that the symbols of reality are more real than the reality they symbolize. That's us all over. We believe that money is more valuable than the work it represents, that sex is more essential than the love it expresses, that an actor is more admirable than the hero he portrays, that flesh is more alive than spirit. That's the whole nature of our deluded lives, the cause of so much of our misery. — Andrew Klavan