Selected sacrifice quotes

1. I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.

2. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

3. May therefore God give us the strength to continue to do our duty and with this prayer we bow in homage before our dead heroes, before those whom they have left behind in bereavement, and before all the other victims of this war.

4. Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

5. For us military men, it is impossible to forget.

6. For me, the moral difficulties lie in the continual pressure brought to bear on my friends and immediate family, pressure which is not directed against me personally but which at the same time is all around me.

7. A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.

8. Any man who concentrates his energies totally on one passion is, by definition, someone who hurts the people close to him.

9. Reading isn't good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn't hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

10. Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.

11. Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.

12. There are numerous bugbears in the profession of a politician. First, ordinary life suffers. Second, there are many temptations to ruin you and those around you. And I suppose third, and this is rarely discussed, people at the top generally have no friends.

13. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

14. I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life.

15. There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

16. Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.

17. We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.

18. The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.

19. I will give up troops gladly as long as I know that they will be used in the right place to bring victory.

20. The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

21. Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.

22. The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?

23. I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.

24. This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell.

25. I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

26. Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

27. As far as we can look back into history, the downfall of any nation can be traced from the moment that nation became timid about spending its best blood.

28. Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

29. Well, you know, I think the American people are sacrificing now. I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before.

30. The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

31. Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer.

32. It doesn't matter whether I'm judged criminal. I have a great feeling of guilt - I have a feeling that I ran after Hitler like a wildfire without reason. If I can sacrifice my life to make something good, I'd gladly do it.

33. She was married for seven years to a concrete castle king. She said she wanted to learn to play the guitar and to hear her children sing. So I'd show up about once a week in my faded tight-legged jeans with a backlog full of hobo stories and dilapidated dreams.

34. Stardom can be a gilded slavery.

35. Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!

36. Duty is the great business of a sea officer; all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be.

37. The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world.

38. All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.

39. Japan will not abandon the fight for the Philippines even if Tokyo should be reduced to ashes!

40. The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

41. Honour the brave who sleep Where the lost 'Titanic' lies, The men who knew what a man must do When he looks Death in the eyes. 'Women and children first,'- Ah, strong and tender cry! The sons whom women had borne and nursed, Remembered,-and dared to die. The boats crept off in the dark: The great ship groaned: and then,- O stars of the night, who saw that sight, Bear witness, These were men!

42. The poor old Past, The Future's slave, She drudged through pain and crime To bring about the blissful Prime, Then-perished. There's a grave!

43. The Holy Prophet (AS) said: Surely, there exists in the hearts of the Mu'mineen, with respect to the martyrdom of Husain (A.S.), a heat that never subsides.

44. If you have a faith, if you've some deep conviction, whether you're a Nazi or a Communist or what the hell else you are - then you can sacrifice yourself and others to your faith. But from the moment you've no faith - from that moment you live in a deep inner confusion - from then on you're exposed to what Strindberg calls 'the powers'.

45. Strangulatus pro republica.

46. Hail to the land whereon we tread, Our fondest boast! The sepulchres of mighty dead, The truest hearts that ever bled, Who sleep on glory's brightest bed, A fearless host: No slave is here:-our unchained feet, Walk freely as the waves that beat Our coast.

47. They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne; Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, Their English mother made her moan.

48. Most Nobel Laureates have carried out our work in safety, but there are others who have acted with great personal courage. None has provided more vivid reminders of the dangers of peacemaking than two of my friends, Anwar Sadat and Yitzak Rabin, who gave their lives for the cause of peace in the Middle East.

49. Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me. What part should I play in the great purification? Most likely that of the Biblical scapegoat.

50. For we accomplish these things not by spending money but by making the correct choice. Almsgiving above all else requires money, but even this shines with a brighter luster when the alms are given from our poverty. The widow who paid in the two mites was poorer than any human, but she outdid them all.

51. I've sold my soul to the devil.

52. My dear ones, I will not make a comparative analysis. I will only say that it is what costs that constitutes value. It is not, in fact, possible to be truly free without an honest and profound relationship with values. We do not want a Poland which costs us nothing.

53. With a care both conscious and reverential, Cynthia and I built a love which I believe inspired most who came near it. We felt it was our gift to the world. We wanted to show the hesitant the miracle that comes when two people give their hearts unconditionally, honestly, fearlessly, and without reservation or judgement. We wanted to make our union into a message of hope, and I believe we did, even though we knew that hearts opened so freely can be shattered if something should go wrong. As my heart is shattered now.

54. People say, Well, he wore that body out. Well, maybe I did. But it was to a good purpose. They should be thankful that I wore it out to the purpose I wore it out and that was writing and recording and touring and doing concerts. Everywhere I could possibly do them that I thought I might enjoy them. I thought people might enjoy me.

55. Germans...we do not know how to live: but we know how to die...yes, and fabulously!

56. One of the hardest things about playing a soldier is kinda acknowledging that I've never done, and might never do anything that brave.

57. 'I don't have a social life right now. I try to -- it's something that I miss -- but David Foster told me: 'The golden microphone is in front of your mouth. You have to sing into it or it will get passed onto someone else.' It's very lonely, what I'm doing. Even though you have a lot of people around you, they're not experiencing it first-hand. It's hard to name more than five close friends. As much as people want to understand, it's hard when you don't see someone for five months at a time, and they're like, 'C'mon, make time.' But I don't have time. My days are gone. There are a lot of firsts for me. And I'm not going to toss it off. It would be silly to say, 'No, I'd rather go see a movie.' I know there will be time for that later.'

58. Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett, McDonough and Hunt and Pearse See now why their hatred of tyrants Was so insistently fierce. Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp To cheat a poet's eye? Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause In which to sing and to die!

59. I'm giving it all in a moment or two. I'm giving it all in a moment, for you.

60. In Malta, catch a swallow, For all of the guilty - to set them free. Wings fill the window, And they beat and bleed. They hold the sky on the other side Of borderlines.

61. All for love Just for the sake of love.

62. Split me open With devotion You put your hands in And rip my heart out Eat the music.

63. I'll do it for you I'll be the Rose of Sharon for you Ooh I'll come in a hurricane for you I'll do it for you...

64. Many years ago, back near the start of her career, she regarded the domestic demands of motherhood as a dubious prospect, claiming her work was her love, and how could she do that and bring up a child at the same time? The answer, presumably, was not to work for a dozen years.

65. Kesey creates finally in McMurphy a modern unhero or anti-hero who expands himself, through a gradual shift in his concern from himself to those around him, into the role of the traditional hero. It is a strange and preposterous role... In the modern world, such a hero, individualistic to the point of disaffiliation but at the same time altruistic to the point of self-sacrifice, is by definition absurd; and all people and actions touched by such heroism are tinted by its absurdity.

66. There are the men who say, 'He preached tenderness and kindliness and filial love, yet He would not heed His mother and His brothers when they sought Him in the streets of Jerusalem.' They do not know that His mother and brothers in their loving fear would have had Him return to the bench of the carpenter, whereas He was opening our eyes to the dawn of a new day. His mother and His brothers would have had Him live in the shadow of death, but He Himself was challenging death upon yonder hill that He might live in our sleepless memory.

67. 'If loving you's a crime, So go on and find me guilty, Just one more fucking time' - From 'One more fucking time'

68. 'For earth to heal, we must die. No one deserves it more.'

69. When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.

70. The poet takes the best things out of his life and puts them into his work. Hence his work is beautiful and his life bad.

71. Arnold must have for us the something of the character of what we nowadays have taken to calling a 'culture hero': that is, a man who gives himself in full submission and sacrifice to his historical moment in order to comprehend and control the elements which that moment brings.

72. Were't the last drop in the well, As I gasp'd upon the brink, Ere my fainting spirit fell 'T is to thee that I would drink.

73. All my life through, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring displeasure of friends.

74. There is no limit to the possibilities of renunciation.

75. Salvation of people depend upon themselves, upon their capacity for suffering and sacrifice.

76. For this cause I too am prepared to die, but for no cause, my friend, will I be prepared to kill.

77. The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.

78. Everyone concerned in the better future of mankind must be deeply moved by the tragic death of Mahatma Gandhi. He died as the victim of his own principles, the principle of nonviolence. He died because in time of disorder and general irritation in his country, he refused armed protection for himself. It was his unshakable belief that the use of force is an evil in itself, that therefore it must be avoided by those who are striving for supreme justice to his belief. With his belief in his heart and mind, he has led a great nation on to its liberation. He has demonstrated that a powerful human following can be assembled not only through the cunning game of the usual political manoeuvres and trickeries but through the cogent example of morally superior conduct of life.

79. Be to the best thou knowest ever true, Is all the creed; Then, by thy talisman of rosy hue, Or fenced with thorns that wearing thou must bleed, Or gentle pledge of Love's prophetic view, The faithful steps it will securely lead. Happy are all who reach that shore, And bathe in heavenly day, Happiest are those who high the banner bore, To marshal others on the way; Or waited for them, fainting and way-worn, By burdens overborne.

80. Just before the forecastle sunk, the remaining sailors determined to leave. The steward, with whom the child had always been a great favorite, took it, almost by main force, and plunged with it into the sea; neither reached the shore alive. The Marquis Ossoli was soon afterwards washed away, but his wife remained in ignorance of his fate. The cook, who was the last person that reached the shore alive, said that the last words he heard her speak were: 'I see nothing but death before me, - I shall never reach the shore.' It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, and after lingering for about ten hours, exposed to the mountainous surf that swept over the vessel, with the contemplation of death constantly forced upon her mind, she was finally overwhelmed as the foremast fell.

81. It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die that the country may live.

82. In there. The words hit me hard. In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle. Jack, the guy who said he'd give his right arm for a friend and did when he stopped a bastard of a Jap from slitting me in two. He caught the bayonet in the biceps and they amputated his arm.

83. 'There are a few of us -madmen all! -who are in love with knowing, who would sell the last shirt from our backs for one small truth, one tiny star-fire to light up the murk and mystery of what we call our life: We may go blind before we see it, that's the haunting-'

84. It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.

85. We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.

86. Only now, as we feel the onslaught behind us, do we begin dimly to apprehend why the animals fought, begot, and died; and behind them the plants; and behind these the huge reserve of inorganic forces. We are moved by pity, gratitude, and esteem for our old comrades-in-arms. They toiled, loved, and died to open a road for our coming. We also toil with the same delight, agony, and exaltation for the sake of Someone Else who with every courageous deed of ours proceeds one step farther. All our struggle once more will have a purpose much greater than we, wherein our toils, our miseries, and our crimes will have become useful and holy.

87. The bodies breathe, feed, store up strength, and then in an erotic moment are shattered, are spent and drained utterly, that they may bequeath their spirit to their sons. What spirit? The drive upward!

88. Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha. Many, indeed most, reach the first or second step, collapse pantingly in the middle of the journey, and do not attain the summit of Golgotha, in other words the summit of their duty: to be crucified, resurrected, and to save theirs souls. Afraid of crucifixion, they grow fainthearted; they do not know that the cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path.

89. Before I do it, I have to know: is it a cause worth dying for?

90. They've never seen us make a move like that. They don't understand that, yes, humans will always act to preserve their own lives - except for the times when they don't. In the bugger's experience, autonomous beings do not sacrifice themselves. Once they understood our autonomy, the seed of their defeat was sown.

91. If she had the power to make him cry because of his love for her, then there was only one possible solution for him: cease loving her. This was the last time she would ever be able to do this to him.

92. Doesn't love show it's face when it satisfies the need of the loved one, for the loved one's sake alone?

93. Take upon themselves the burden of the world. Have to save everybody, help everybody, provide for everybody. And when they can't do it, they can't think of any other reason to live. Was that [him]? Probably. A man who had forgotten, not how to live, but why.

94. Individual people always sacrifice for the sake of the community. When it matters enough, people sometimes even die, willingly, for the good of the community that they feel themselves to be a part of. As well as a thousand sacrifices short of death. And why? Why do we give up out individual desires, leave them unfulfilled, or work hard at tasks we hate or fear because others need us to do them?

95. I hadn't know that. I hadn't known what price they would pay 'I'll do my best without your help'

96. I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.

97. [He] wanted to die. Not die too, because he wasn't going to think of [her] dying to especially of her already being dead. No, he wanted to die instead. A swap, a trade. Oh god, let me die instead. Put me on this bed and let her go on home... Let it be me they give up on. Let it be my plug they pull. Not [hers]

98. What good is life unless you give it away - unless you give it for a better world, even if you never see that world but have only carried your grain to the building site.

99. When you come back from your escape. Then I could follow you to hell. ~ 'Committed'

100. I have to turn down roles I really want to do because I can't travel. But that's okay, because you make peace with things in your mind.