Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Quotes

The lives of heroes have enriched history, and history has adorned the actions of heroes ; and thus I cannot say whether the historians are more indebted to those who provided them with such noble materials, or those great men to their historians.

The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.

The coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic.

A wicked Hero will turn his back to an innocent coward.

Would we be the heroes or the cowards of the piece? Would we follow orders or stick to our principles, if those two things ever conflicted? Would we be the brave ones who still found the capacity for love - and for laughter - even while we were terrified?

Death is the fate no one can escape. The question, then, is, How does one die? A person can die like a hero or like a coward. The difference is that the hero can face death without fear, whereas the coward can't.

What I fear is not being forgotten after my death, but, rather, not being enough forgotten. As we were saying, it is not our books that survive, but our poor lives that linger in the histories.

The second death. To think that you died and no one would remember you. I wondered if this was why we tried so hard to make our mark in America. To be known. Think of how important celebrity has become. We sing to get famous; expose our worst secrets to get famous; lose weight, eat bugs, even commit murder to get famous. Our young people post their deepest thoughts on public web sites. They run cameras from their bedrooms. It’s as if we are screaming Notice Me! Remember Me! Yet the notoriety barely lasts. Names quickly blur and in time are forgotten.

The hero's need of the people outlasts their need of him.

The funny thing is, I was never much of a fighter. Better a live coward than a dead hero, that was my motto.

My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes. And invaders r worse.

After I am dead, I would rather have men ask why Cato has no monument than why he had one.

Compared to the coward that never made the attempt, he is a hero.

Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it; or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up; or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead; but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us.

There is no merit where there is no trial; and till experience stamps the mark of strength, cowards may pass for heroes, and faith for falsehood.

You wanna be remembered for making an impact and changing things.And I guess for the good or for the bad, it don't matter. But I guess you just wanna be remembered when it's all said and done.

If I have done any deed worthy of remembrance, that deed will be my monument. If not, no monument can preserve my memory.

It is the hero alone, not the coward, who has liberation within his easy reach.

Do not confound noise with fame. The man who is remembered, is not always honored.

I say, without characters, fame lives long.

Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.

I don't expect to live forever, nor do I repine over that, but I am weak enough to want to be remembered forever. - Yet how few of those who have lived, even of those who have accomplished far more than I have, linger on in world memory for even a single century after death

A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.

For the greater a man's works for the future, the less the present can comprehend them; the harder his fight, and the rarer success. If, however, once in centuries success does come to a man, perhaps in his latter days a faint beam of his coming glory may shine upon him. To be sure, these great men are only the Marathon runners of history; the laurel wreath of the present touches only the brow of the dying hero.

Really the writer doesn't want success. . . . He knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall - Kilroy was here - that somebody a hundred, or a thousand years later will see.