"I am less affected by their heroism..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.
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More by Henry David Thoreau

“As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.”
— Henry David Thoreau

More on Courage

“We are ashamed of our fear; for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“It takes courage to begin something, but it can take even more to end it.”
— Marie Forleo
“The only security is courage.”
— François de La Rochefoucauld

More on Heroism

“Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind whilst ye lie under the illusion that ye are chasing the event,-poor fellows! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus; he should not even know how the chorus is made up.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action.”
— Virginia Woolf
“There is no king or sovereign stateThat can fix a hero's rate;Each to all is venerable.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson