Quotes About Martyrdom

I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.

The Scandinavian king St Olaf made his subjects choose between baptism or death.

By contrast, the growth of Christianity in its first three centuries, the most crucial period, was largely by a combination of the power of persuasion, whether in preaching, intellectual argument, "miracles" exhibiting the power of Jesus' name, and simply the moral suasion of Christian behavior, including martyrdom. Granted,

Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.

The second crusade was there arranged, and the Templars, with the sanction of the Pope, assumed the blood-red cross, the symbol of martyrdom, as the distinguishing badge of the order, which was appointed to be worn on their habits and mantles on the left side of the breast over the heart, whence they came afterwards to be known by the name of the Red Friars and the Red Cross Knights.

How numerous are the crowds that have heroically faced death for beliefs, ideas, and phrases that they scarcely understood!

Se es mexicano, entre otras cosas, porque se comparte la veneración de esas violencias y esos martirologios.

There can be no war to end wars, because all wars begin other wars. There can be no such thing as a war to save democracy, because all wars destroy democracy. There could have been a peace to save what was left of democracy, but the chance of that came and went in 1919—the saddest year in all the martyrdom of man.

Prominent Christians in Constantine's time waited to be baptized until their deathbeds lest they commit a "major"sin that couldn't be forgiven of those already baptized. Others felt anyone who did anything to avoid martyrdom were apostates had no valid subsequent ministry.

It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.

The more you mow us down, the more numerous we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.

We will not stop resisting the occupation until liberation or martyrdom.

For a radical Jihadist, this fight is all about dying the right way while killing an infidel. For us, it's all about living the right way because all the dying necessary was done for us two thousand years ago on a hill called Calvary.

Was John Brown simply an episode, or was he an eternal truth? And if a truth, how speaks that truth today?

John Brown taught us that the cheapest price to pay for liberty is its cost to-day.

I killed one man to save one hundred thousand.

Criminal Minds, Believer: "A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

Marx makes it not aphoristically but by implication. The censorship is not only a police measure, "but it is even a bad police measure, for it does not achieve what it wants and does not want what it achieves." It succeeds only in adding the allure of martyrdom and mystery to the victims of censorship.

I'm begging you, Taz, don't die a hero with no cause.

Heroes exterminate each other for the benefit of people who are not heroes.

The day they brought him forth to die they feared he might incite the crowd (the man was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors placed upon his face an iron mask in which he could not speak. That is how they burned him. That is how he died, without a word, in front of everyone.

In 869 we have an event which rapidly achieved almost mythic status in English Christian folklore: the horrible martyrdom of King Edmund of East Anglia by the appalling Ivar the Boneless, who according to some traditions brought a great Viking army to England in pursuit of revenge for the killing of his father, the semi-legendary Ragnar Lothbrok, executed by the king of Northumbria.

anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.