|
True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat. (Ambrose Stephen)
In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs. (Ambrose Stephen)
Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes. (Ambrose Stephen)
Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men. (Ambrose Stephen)
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid... He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. (Ambrose Stephen)
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. (Ambrose Stephen)
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour. (Ambrose Stephen)
The paper tiger hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet. (Ambrose Stephen)
To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self. (Ambrose Stephen)
Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion. (Ambrose Stephen)
The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example. (Ambrose Stephen)
Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air nelson stylites in Trafalgar square reminds the British what once they were. (Ambrose Stephen)
Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life. (Ambrose Stephen)
Every hero becomes a bore at last. (Ambrose Stephen)
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. (Ambrose Stephen)
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. (Ambrose Stephen)
Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right. (Ambrose Stephen)
Bardot, Byron, Hitler, Hemingway, Monroe, Sade: we do not require our heroes to be subtle, just to be big. Then we can depend on someone to make them subtle. (Ambrose Stephen)
I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely with his lips, follow me. (Ambrose Stephen)
The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them. (Ambrose Stephen)
What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in. (Ambrose Stephen)
|
