The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
Interpretation
Heroism is often recognized by those who remain, rather than by those who sacrifice themselves.
This quote by Johan Huizinga suggests that the concept of heroism is often conferred by the living onto those who have fallen in a conflict or struggle. The fallen may not even be aware of their bravery or the impact of their actions since heroism is often perceived after the fact by those who continue to carry the emotional and social weight of the loss.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a memorial service to honor fallen heroes.
If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.
A new culture can only grow up in the soil of a purged humanity.
History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.
Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.
History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.
The susceptibility of the average modern to pictorial suggestion enables advertising to exploit his lessened power of judgment.
There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.
But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?
Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.
Men make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.
From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one's passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt - that is the whole question.
Cares that have entered once in the breast, will have whole possession of the rest.
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