
“Our Lord Jesus Christ, my brethren, is our hero, a hero all the world wants.”
Sermon (23 November 1879)
Letters, etc
“Our Lord Jesus Christ, my brethren, is our hero, a hero all the world wants.”
Sermon (23 November 1879)
Letters, etc
"Germinal" in Vale and Other Poems (1931)
“All actual heroes are essential men,
And all men possible heroes.”
“A Hero is a Hero at all points; in the soul and thought of him first of all.”
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity
Context: Transport yourselves into the early childhood of nations; the first beautiful morning-light of our Europe, when all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of a great sunrise, and our Europe was first beginning to think, to be! Wonder, hope; infinite radiance of hope and wonder, as of a young child's thoughts, in the hearts of these strong men! Strong sons of Nature; and here was not only a wild Captain and Fighter; discerning with his wild flashing eyes what to do, with his wild lion-heart daring and doing it; but a Poet too, all that we mean by a Poet, Prophet, great devout Thinker and Inventor,—as the truly Great Man ever is. A Hero is a Hero at all points; in the soul and thought of him first of all. This Odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to speak. A great heart laid open to take in this great Universe, and man's Life here, and utter a great word about it. A Hero, as I say, in his own rude manner; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man. And now, if we still admire such a man beyond all others, what must these wild Norse souls, first awakened into thinking, have made of him!
“A Nemean steed in terror of the fight bears the hero from the citadel of Pallas, and fills the fields with the huge flying shadow, and the long trail of dust rises upon the plain.”
Illum Palladia sonipes Nemeaeus ab arce
devehit arma pavens umbraque inmane volanti
implet agros longoque attollit pulvere campum.
Source: Thebaid, Book IV, Line 136 (tr. J. H. Mozley)
Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 32
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 390.