William Halsey Quotes

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

The greatest man is he who chooses the Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.

Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles.

Remember that the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability.

The greatest in heroes in life are the anonymous. That's what I believe. Your neighbours are heroes. People who, when you walk down the street, you see them feeding their little baby - these people are heroes because they are living under difficult situations, but they're still trying to save a life.

The poet and the politician have this in common: their greatness depends on the courage with which they face the challenges of life.

Your response to opportunities, adversities and calling, determine the type of leader you become.

The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity.

Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men.

Great crises produce great men, and great deeds of courage.

A great many men - some comparatively small men now - if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses.

The English nation is never so great as in adversity.

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.

The enduring realization that when a great challenge comes, the most ordinary people can show that they value something more than they value their own lives. When the last of the veterans had gone, and the sorrows and bitterness which the war created had at last worn away, this memory remained.

Adversity is an opportunity for heroism.

Great people aren't those who are happy at times of convienience and content, but of how they are in times of catastrophy and controversy.

I teethed on books of heroes such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and King David.

Hard times don't create heroes. It is during the hard times when the 'hero' within us is revealed.

Circumstances don't make a person; they reveal him or her.

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.

A hero has faced it all: he need not be undefeated, but he must be undaunted.

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

There are two types of men: the great and the small.

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.