Quotes About Martyrdom

Real heroes are those who face death for a principle - say, to save the lives of others - without any promise of reward.

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.

Nothing would bother me more than if they found me strange at the office. I like to revel in the irony that they don't find me at all strange. I like the hair shirt of being regarded by them as their equal. I like the crucifixion of being considered no different. THere are martyrdoms more subtle than those recorded for the saints and hermits. There are torments of our mental awareness as there are of the body and of desire. And in the former, as in the latter, there's a certain sensuality.....

Its face was like the face she had seen in some medieval paintings where the martyr's limbs are being sawed off and his expression says he is being deprived of nothing essential.

Julian thought he could have stood his lot better if she had been selfish, if she had been an old hag who drank and screamed at him. He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith.

She appeared to adore Thomas's repugnance to her and to draw it out of him every chance she got as if it added delectably to her martyrdom.

Sohan Singh Bhakna, Gurdit Singh, Teja Singh Sutantar, Banta Singh Sanghwal... they are my fathers. Those who gave their lives for freedom are my fathers.

His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr.

I come now to tell you for what I am brought here to die, and to give you an account of my faith, which I shall do as in the sight of the living God before whom I am shortly to stand.

May nothing entice me till I happily make my way to Jesus Christ! Fire, cross, struggles with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs - let them come to me, provided only I make my way to Jesus Christ.

I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way... Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God.

Muhammad vs. Jesus "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven." Jesus (Matthew 5:11) "And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter." Qur'an 2:191

People unable to bear the martyrdom [...] unintelligently jump off the path, and choose instead, conveniently enough, the world's admiration of their proficiency. The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and in this lies the deep humanity in him which is more worth than this foolish concern for others' weal and woe which is honoured under the name of sympathy, but which is really nothing but vanity.

Christianity will not be content to be an evolution within the total category of human nature; an engagement such as that is too little to offer to a god. Neither does it even want to be the paradox for the believer, and then surreptitiously, little by little, provide him with understanding, because the martyrdom of faith (to crucify one's understanding) is not a martyrdom of the moment, but the martyrdom of continuance.

Either we shake one another's hands in joy at he victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life, and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.

But this awakening of sensitivity for the martyrdom of childhood has far-reaching consequences: Suddenly it is no longer possible to regard cruelty, perversion, and crime as a form of upbringing for our own good; we are forced to come to a decision and stop finding excuses for crime.

He was like a holy person in a Bible story, someone who can heal the ripped and infected parts of you with a laying-on of hands. You know how Bible stories go. That kind of person, they're never around long. Losers and jerks put nails in them and watch the air run out.

In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest-without asking to be paid.

Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.

The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured—especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.

From Switzerland in the south, throughout central Europe and Germany, and as far north and west as England, where Henry VIII burned a dozen Anabaptists at the stake, thousands of men and women were subjected to the most terrible persecution. Many of the more moderate leaders who abjured violence were martyred, leaving a gap in the leadership that was often filled by men of little education but much passion.

It is not the punishment but the cause that makes the martyr.

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

Prophets have a way of dying by violence.