A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

Cannot Common Heroic Nor

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.

Samuel Smiles

Common sense in religion is rare, and we are too often trying to be heroic instead of just ordinarily good and kind.

Dorothy Day

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

Lascelles Abercrombie

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

Henry David Thoreau

A lack of common sense usually ends in some heroic feat, much like the soldier who dives onto the grenade so that others may live.

Criss Jami

We don't relate to her too much because you don't want the heroic character to not be heroic.

Radha Mitchell

We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy - the white man. He's an enemy to all of us. I know some of you all think that some of them aren't enemies. Time will tell.

Malcolm X

He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.

Thomas Carlyle

The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner. A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue.

Bonaventure

a woman, when she is heroic, is not heroic by halves.

George Sand

What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort. Christians come together because they have all been loved by Jesus himself. They are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus' sake.

D. A. Carson

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

If there's reason for hope, it lies in man's occasional binges of cooperation. To save our planet, we'll need that kind of heroic effort, in which all types of people join forces for the common good

George Meyer

Many heroic exploits and chivalrous adventures are related to me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.