Lost Heroes Quotes & Sayings

The rising wave of nostalgia and an increasing interest in heritage sites and historic buildings is perhaps not only a sense of yearning for a lost Singapore, but also the recognition that neither 1959 nor 1965 marked Year One (...) In all the campaigns and features on Singapore's 50th anniversary that I've come across, the Kranji War Memorial was never mentioned. It just doesn't fit the slender narrative. That's such a shame because the cemetery is a fitting, dignified tribute to thousands of Singapore heroes, both local and foreign. — Neil Humphreys

So, a crash course for the amnesiac," Leo said, in a helpful tone that made Jason think this was not going to be helpful. "We go to the 'Wilderness School'" - Leo made air quotes with his fingers. "Which means we're 'bad kids.' Your family, or the court, or whoever, decided you were too much trouble, so they shipped you off to this lovely prison - sorry, 'boarding school' - in Armpit, Nevada, where you learn valuable nature skills like running ten miles a day through the cacti and weaving daisies into hats! And for a special treat we go on 'educational' field trips with Coach Hedge, who keeps order with a baseball bat. — Rick Riordan

The story of Sherlock Holmes, on the surface, is about detection, but in reality, it's about the best of two men who save each other - a lost, washed-up war hero and a man who could end up committing murders instead of solving them. They come together. They become this perfect unit. They become the best friendship ever, and they become heroes. That's what we fall in love with, not Sherlock on his own. No one can love that man on his own, but Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson - the best friends ever. — Steven Moffat

Traitor!" Hera shouted. "You meddlesome, D-list goddess! You aren't worthy to pour my wine, much less rule the world. — Rick Riordan

Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins. — Darren Shan

Elinor had read countless stories in which the main characters fell sick at some point because they were so unhappy. She had always thought that a very romantic idea, but she'd dismissed it as a pure invention of the world of books. All those wilting heroes and heroines who suddenly gave up the ghost just because of unrequited love or longing for something they'd lost! Elinor had always enjoyed their sufferings - as a reader will. After all, that was what you wanted from books: great emotions you'd never felt yourself, pain you could leave behind by closing the book if it got too bad. Death and destruction felt deliciously real conjured up with the right words, and you could leave them behind between the pages as you pleased, at no cost or risk to yourself. — Cornelia Funke

I've lost so many battles than I can even remember. But I didn't know I was stronger than I thought. — Ufuoma Apoki

Thats what happens to Snow in Texas, lady. It freaking MELTS!! Leo Valdez- The Lost Hero — Rick Riordan

Zhukov was the most successful commander of World War II, who fell from grace under Khrushchev, but never lost his place in the pantheon of Soviet heroes. — Georgy Zhukov

Rock n' roll is our religion, and we will continue to lose disciples as we go, but we pick up the fallen flag and keep moving forward, bringing forth the good news that our heroes have helped create, their bodies lost, but their spirits and their good work everlasting. — Steven Van Zandt

I have been so very, very fortunate in my life. I've met or been in contact with several of my childhood heroes. I've interacted with people all over this planet, and even though I couldn't possibly hope to remember all their names, I remember a photograph, a poem, a sound, a joke, kind words of encouragement. All is not lost. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. — Lord Byron

We shoot our heroes and enjoy peripeteia as a spectacle akin to sport and perhaps harshly disavowing the past protects us from the disappointment of our outsized hopes--who knows, really, but shifts in taste don't fully account for the phenomenon. At any rate, nearly everything urgent and alive becomes doo-wop down the road, at least in this country's pop culture, and along the way a somewhat self-hating irony lays waste not only to the work but to the desires it once carried. It's like we die into adulthood. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Vivas to those who have fail'd!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known! — Walt Whitman

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in a war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here — Pink Floyd

When the feminine and our vitality become lost to power drives and life becomes a wasteland, the stage is set for the mythic world to give rise to a hero to transform and revitalize the situation. They mythic hero is a metaphor for our struggle to transform our consciousness and bring new life to ourselves. — Massimilla Harris

Society gained more by not placing excessive power in the hands of mediocre politicians than it lost by limiting the power of great heroes and statesmen who might or might not appear once every few centuries. — Yoshiki Tanaka

Cowards live for the sake of living, but for heroes, life is a weapon, a thing to be spent, a gift to be given to the weak and the lost and the weary, even to the foolish and the cowardly. — N.D. Wilson

The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics is important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we've lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we're feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage. Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today's world, that's pretty extraordinary.1 — Brene Brown

Your grandfather was a hero in a war, girls. He wasn't a bad man or a weak man. Maybe he was too old to have a second family, a second wife and your mother and me, so many years after he lost his first. Maybe he was too old to fight anymore, and that's why he let me be taken away. I've thought about this for years and years. All I know is there are no heroes in this world. Not really. Just men and women who become old and tired and lose the strength to fight for what they love any longer. — Joseph Boyden

Between the ages of ten and fifteen in St. Petersburg, I must have read more fiction and poetry - English, Russian and French - than in any other five-year period of my life. I relished especially the works of Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Alexander Blok. On another level, my heroes were the Scarlet Pimpernel, Phileas Fogg, and Sherlock Holmes. In other words, I was a perfectly normal trilingual child in a family with a large library. At a later period, in Western Europe, between the ages of 20 and 40, my favorites were Housman, Rupert Brooke, Norman Douglas, Bergson, Joyce, Proust, and Pushkin. Of these top favorites, several - Poe, Jules Verne, Emmuska Orezy, Conan Doyle, and Rupert Brooke - have lost the glamour and thrill they held for me. The others remain intact and by now are probably beyond change as far as I am concerned. — Vladimir Nabokov

These are nonviolent people who have lost their freedom simply because they expressed their ideas ... In truth, they are heroes of our time. — Ai Weiwei

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

War doesn't have heroes, it only has the men who lost so many things in their life that they just keep going and do the most unthinkable things, just because they don't care anymore. — Wouter Van Gastel

When so much is lost, heroes are found. — Lydia Criss Mays

Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw. — Madeline Miller

You're not really grown until you've lost your heroes. — Daniel H. Wilson

I get my heroes so that they're lean and hard muscled and mocking and sardonic and tough and tigerish and single, of course. Oh and they've got to be rich and then I make it that they're only cynical and smooth on the surface. But underneath they're well, you know, sort of lost and lonely. In need of love but, when roused, capable of breathtaking passion and potency. Most of my heroes, well all of them really, are like that. They frighten but fascinate. They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape: men it's dangerous to be alone in the room with. — Violet Winspear

Oh, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Slaying a villain in the service of your king is the stuff of legends and what heroes are made of." [Fanen told Myron]
"It didn't feel very heroic. It made me sick. I don't even know why I ... no, that's a lie. I really have to stop doing that." [Myron said]
"Doing what?"
"Lying. ( ... ) It's evidence of self loathing. You see, when you are so ashamed of your actions, thoughts, or intentions, you lie to hide it rather than accept yourself for who you really are. The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you.
"It's like when a man would rather die than be thought of a coward. His life is not as important to him as his reputation. In the end, who is the braver? The man who dies rather than be thought of as a coward or the man who lives willing to face who he really is?" [Myron finished]
"I'm sorry, you lost me there" Fanen said with a quizzical look. — Michael J. Sullivan

Fire Fighter
Not many people remember us, not many people care
unless a life is saved or lost, while we are fighting there.
We learn to respect the fire we fight, and even love it too.
In order to end its destructive path,
It's what we train to do.
There are many who can't comprehend,
why we love the things they fear.
We're the first they call in their time of need, it's the reason why we're here
The next alarm might make us proud,
And heroes of the same kind,
Or maybe it will be our last, in service to man kind.
But whatever fate brings us,
It doesn't change our hearts.
We're firefighters to the end. We'll always do our part. — Anonymous

We lost faith in authority in the '50s, up to a point, and we spawned a lot of anti-heroes in movies, which were refreshing and open. But at this point, with the distrust that's there and the disillusionment with leadership that is so acute, we need some kind of a focus on taking the irony out and taking the anti-hero element away. — Brendan Gleeson

Jason muttered "And I saw something ... Really terrible."
"That was Hera," Thalia grumbled, "Her Majesty, the Loose Cannon."
"That's it, Thalia Grace," Said the goddess. "I will turn you into and aardvark, so help me-"
"Stop it, you two," Piper said. Amazingly, they both shut up. — Rick Riordan

Hermes tilted his head. Percy, that almost sounded like sarcasm. You know very well the gods can't go around busting heads and ripping up mortal cities looking for our lost items. If we did that, New York would be destroyed every time Aphrodite lost her hairbrush, and believe me, that happens a lot. We need heroes for that sort of errand. — Rick Riordan

...the disappearance in our lives of a sense of the sacred. With nothing to evoke awe, wonder, or devotion, we inevitably feel empty within, Maslow contended, for these are intrinsic human needs. In a similar way, we have lost genuine heroes; the very concept of heroism has become suspect, old-fashioned, and seemingly obsolete. The same has occurred with such traditional virtues as courage, fidelity, and reverence. — Edward Hoffman

Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The moment he'd wrapped his fingers around her wrist, she'd toed the edge of a cliff. The second his fangs had pierced her flesh she'd toppled over. Flying. Lost to sensation. Spellbound by the male who devoured her. — Jessica Lee

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.
In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall from a tree, you break some bones.
Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.
I just wanted to make that clear before I begun. — Darren Shan

We are all inspired by the incredible stories of handicapped people who write novels with their toes, cancer victims who run marathons for cancer research, bereaved parents who set up memorial funds for their lost children. How much easier is it for most of us to be small heroes simply by taking responsibility for our daily lives and transcending our ordinary obstacles? — Danah Zohar

God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies gray and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to your honor and glory. — Saint Augustine

Maybe it's the other way around," Jason suggested. "Maybe people with special gifts show up when bad things are happening because that's when
they're needed most. — Rick Riordan

In the emergency of growing up, we all need heroes. But the father I grew up with was no hero to me, not then. He was too wounded in the head, too endlessly and terribly sad. Too funny, too explosive, too confusing. Heroes are uncomplicated. *This* makes them do *that* ... But the war does not make sense. War senselessly wounds everyone right down the line. A body bag fits more than just its intended corpse. Take the 58,000 American soldiers lost in Vietnam and multiply by four, five, six - and only then does one begin to realize the damage this war has done ... War when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable. It is not an occasion for heroism. It is an occasion only for survival and death. To regard war in any other way only guarantees its inevitable reappearance. — Tom Bissell

Our national fondness for celebrating the physical heroism of soldiers - the apparent readiness with which they sacrifice their lives to larger causes - eclipses the far less romantic displays of moral and intellectual fortitude that also distinguish so many of them. In turning them all into heroes, we have lost a sense of the individuality they also fight to preserve. — Elizabeth Samet

We love, while knowing that someday our love might be lost forever. We laugh as we stride along, even while recognising that doom lies at the end of the road. We give, while comprehending that in the end 'twill all be taken away. we are nothing less then heroes. — Cecilia Dart-Thornton

We be warriors in this war of life
Forging battle-knives as we fight
Never-ceasing to sharpen the dull blades
Our own Heroes in not so shining armour'"

-Lost Voyagers- — Chamindra Warusawitharane