'He is coming! he is coming!' Like a bridegroom from his room, Came the hero from his prison To the scaffold and the doom.

-Aytoun,William Edmonstoune
  Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and other Poems,'The Execution of Montrose', stanza14.

   Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. 61

-Barth,John Simmons
  The End of the Road, ch.1.

In short he was a perfect cavaliero, And to his very valet seemed a hero.

-Rochdale
  Beppo, stanza 33.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

-Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)
  Heretics, ch.15.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

-Emerson, RalphWaldo
  Representative Men,'Uses of Great Men'.

He did the thing that no one else would even dare to think of doing. And that to me's as good a definition of a 'hero'as you'll get. Even when the thing that's done is something of which you disapprove.

-50 Cent originally  CurtisJackson
   Juliet D'Orsey. The Wars, pt.1, section 3.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

-Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott Key
Note Books, E, in Edmund Wilson (ed)  The Crack-Up (1945).

The Huns†chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious inhis life, invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world.

-Gibbon, Edward
^88  Description of the funeralof  Attila the Hun. TheDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.35.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero [smiling] must drink brandy.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark,7  Aug. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision.

-Mailer, Norman Kingsley
  The Presidential Papers, preface.

  So lovely fair was Hero,Venus'nun, As Nature wept, thinking she was undone.

-Marlowe, Christopher
  Hero and Leander (published1598), pt.1, l.45^6.

Roosevelt will probably go down into American history as a great hero. It is one of our Heavenly Father's characteristic jokes upon the American people, and in the usual bad taste.

-Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis)
   Journal entry. Collected in The Diary of H. L. Mencken (published1990).

There's no such thing as a heroöonly ordinary people asked extraordinary things in terrible circumstances öand delivering.

-Mo,Timothy
The Redundancy of Courage, ch.30.

See, the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!

-Morell,Thomas
  Judas Maccabeus,'A Chorus ofYouths'.

   Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

-Pope, Alexander
  An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.87^90.

One murder made a villain Millions a hero.

-Porteus, Beilby
  'Death'.

Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero, and I'll show you a corpse.

-Puzo, Mario
  Fools Die, ch.2.

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.

-Rogers,Will
Quoted in'A RogersThesaurus' in The Saturday Review, 25 Aug 1962. Another form of the quote appeared in a syndicated newspaper article,15 Feb1925:'Heroing is one of the shortest- lived professions there is'.

I am heartily glad you continued to like Waverley to the endöthe hero is a sneaking piece of imbecilityand if he had married Flora she would have set him up upon the chimney-pieceas Count Boralaski'swifeusedto dowith him.

-Scott, Sir Walter
  Letter toJohn Morritt, 28 Jul. Joseph Borowlaski was a Polish dwarf known as'The Little Count' who left France at the Revolution and exhibited himself at fairs throughout Britain.

Forgive the hero, you who would have died Gladly with all you knew; he rode that tide To Ararat; all men are Noah's sons.

-Wilbur, Richard
  Ceremony and Other Poems,'Still, Citizen Sparrow'.