Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Heroes & The Heroic
Any landscape would be glorious to me, if I were assured that its sky was arched over a single hero.—Journal, 26 September 1851
Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 20 May 1860
Greatness is in the ascent. But there is no accounting for the little men.—Journal, 7 February 1841
I kept Homer’s Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then.—Walden
I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen.—"Walking"
It was not the hero I admired but the reflection from his epaulet or helmet.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 27 February 1853
Marching is when the pulse of the hero beats in unison with the pulse of Nature, and he steps to the measure of the universe; then there is true courage and invincible strength.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ
Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer’s requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world.—Walden
Revolutions are never sudden. Not one man, nor many men, in a few years or generations, suffice to regulate events and dispose mankind for the revolutionary movement. The hero is but the crowning stone of the pyramid,—the keystone of the arch.—Journal, 27 December 1837
The great person never wants an opportunity to be great but makes occasion for all about him.—Journal, 1 June 1841
