I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. - Thomas Carlyle

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.

The manner of men's Hero-worship, verily it is the innermost fact of their existence, and determines all the rest,—at public hustings, in private drawing-rooms, in church, in market, and wherever else. Have true reverence, and what indeed is inseparable therefrom, reverence the right man, all is well; have sham-reverence, and what also follows, greet with it the wrong man, then all is ill, and there is nothing.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.