If it be true, as I believe, that humanity is worth just as much as the sum total of latent heroism which it contains, then we may declare that humanity was never stronger nor more exemplary than now and that it is at this moment reaching one of its highest points and capable of braving everything and hoping everything. And it is for this reason that, despite our present sadness, we are entitled to congratulate ourselves and to rejoice.

You could mistake your ability to go this far for strength. So you go on. Strength is admirable, after all, and you are ashamed of everything else about yourself. This endurance at least — this you can admire.

No, being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none. To strike a match to light up the void. To show us a possibility for a better world — not a better world we want to exist, but a better world we didn’t know could exist. To take a situation where everything seems to be absolutely fucked and still somehow make it good.

Strength is not measured by physical prowess alone, but by the resilience and determination of the human spirit.

The strength of the human spirit knows no boundaries.

Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.

In the face of all the inhumanity, their humanity feeds the capacity to endure and continue to pursue honorable solutions to our pain.

The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.

Strength isn’t being tough. It’s choosing not to turn into an asshole when you have every right to be.

The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to make oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule.

Ah! This movement of force and energy, this love of happiness, this plan of courage amid the insane who surround us attests to the strength of reason, which has imperceptibly advanced across the centuries. So many sublime outbursts of patriotism on the part of the French prove that servitude is an outrage to the dignity of human nature, and that there is no nation on earth that can return them to their former slavery.

In reality, heroes are heroic because they, despite their weaknesses - and sometimes because of them - do great things. If they were perfect, they wouldn't be here in earth's classroom.

There is no human quality more attractive than the courage of the weak.

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh — that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.