Quotes About Sacrifice

We pay for sins we do not remember, and seek to do a will we can scarce fathom. That is what it is, to be a god's chosen.

For every victory there is a price.

Battle for the sake of honor may be a fine thing for bards to sing of, but it is no way to preserve one's homeland

I know what you are. I've always known from the beginning, Kushiel's Chosen. It is folly, to make claim on one whom the gods have marked for their own. And unlike the others, I am no fool, to grasp at that which burns to the touch. What you have given... she raised one hand, palm upward, the garnet seal dangling at her wrist, ... I hold in an open hand.

How do you want to die, Admiral? We are D'Angeline. At the hand of numbers, or dreams?

The gods use their chosen hard, but reveal little to them.

For every victory, Necthana whispered, her great dark eyes shining with a mother's tears, there is a price.

No two sacrifices are the same, and yet all are, in the end. It is the commitment to belong, wholly, to that which claims one.

Victory doesn't matter to the dead, nor to the living who mourn them.

Is the world so cruel, then, that that is all that is required to move a man to risk his life? Kindness?

Salvezza. Già, ma cosa significa? A quel tempo pensavo di saperlo, pensavo di averne bisogno, e che gli yeshuiti la offrissero. E che il solo prezzo da pagare fosse avere fede.» «Ma non l'hai accettato.» Joscelin scosse il capo. «No. Alla resa dei conti il prezzo era troppo alto. Non volevo lasciare l'amore sull'altare della fede. Ho imparato ad avere fede nell'amore.»

Gli eroi mi davano la nausea. Una volta, avevo voluto essere uno di loro. Avevo covato sogni gloriosi di diventare un eroe dello stesso stampo di cui credevo Joscelin fosse fatto. Avevo perso quelle illusioni molto tempo fa, ma non avevo capito fino ad ora che eroismo significa vivere nel terrore di non essere in grado di proteggere coloro che ami.

As gloriously, splendidly, intractably single-minded as he was, loving him was like grasping a knife, a clean white blaze of pain that kept me anchored to myself.

How strange it must be, I thought, to be wed not merely as husband and wife but Cruarch and Queen, trading men's lives and the wealth of nations as love-tokens.

They say the gods use their chosen hard. Apparently, the gods are part of a vast conspiracy to share their chosen, too.

Sometimes when the gods thirst, blood is the only sacrifice.

One does not reckon, at such times, the cost to one's limbs and joints; there is a limit to the pliancy of the mortal form.

guess a woman can either love or be loved, but it's almost impossible to have both.

My own father had sold me to a stranger.

War's always the same though—politicians square off and ordinary lads do their dirty work.

It makes my heart so heavy. Young men shouldn't have to die, and their parents shouldn't have to go through the rest of their lives making everything seem right by saying, 'At least my boy was brave.' Or, 'We're proud he did his bit.

But there are many men-and women-who do things in a time of war that they wouldn't dream of doing in peacetime, and all for the common good.

Now that's discrimination—when you look down your nose at the very men who fought to make sure you could still go to work in your tidy, warm office. That's the trouble with people—they cherish their comforts, but they don't want to know where they come from.

Jacqueline Winspear