Quotes About Sacrifice

You must do as your people do. If my people are poor, I must be poor. People ask me, 'Why don't you find a personal coach or a private car?' I can't. Then I won't be part of my people.

And I figured you'd drive a four-hour round-trip before giving up your car to someone else

It grieves me when I see a priest or a nun with the latest model car.

Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.

We cherish the chance to say thank you in person to Cpl. Frank Buckles.

I read somewhere about a family who had only one son. They were very poor. This son was extremely precious to them, and the only thing that mattered to his family was that he bring them some financial support and prestige. Then he was thrown from a horse and crippled. It seemed like the end of their lives. Two weeks after that, the army came into the village and took away all the healthy, strong men to fight in the war, and this young man was allowed to stay behind and take care of his family.

It was like one of those terrible sights of the racecourse or the battle field where wallowing living beings persevere dumbly in their duty although mutilated beyond repair.

The real challenge of life was not fulfilling one's dreams, but being willing to give them up for the sake of a greater call.

Wars have little to do with justice. Or valour or sacrifice or the other things traditionally associated with them. That's one thing I hadn't quite realised. War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had a disgracefully good press.

Remain pure, not in order to be noble or strong but to be yourself. To give your love is to lose love. Abdicate from life so as not to abdicate from yourself.

I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.

A popular phrase of the time was that 'these be no causes to die for'.

The kings of these territories were executed in the ritual of the 'blood eagle', whereby the lungs were ripped out of the body and draped across the shoulders so that they resembled an eagle's folded wings.

Perhaps if I had been able to put things in plain language, it might have been plain that things between us were so damnably unequal, that I loved her as I would never love anyone else and that she loved me as a young woman might love a devoted brother, a trusted bodyguard, or a horse that never stumbles, never shies, but takes all fences willingly, and carries her safely across.

It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice, but also one of great beauty, silvery, curved, dancing with light.

it was born out of habits of mind produced by Christianity: that if you sacrificed yourself you would somehow attain the object of your desires. It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice...

S]ince humans find it hard to give up a pleasure already experienced, such a sacrifice might come easier if another pleasure was offered in replacement.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.'1 Chancellor Otto von Bismarck

This is what is called dying for your country, but it is actually selling your soul to a few profiteers for a shilling, and being massacred to satisfy their selfish purposes. And they call it WAR--and a legitimate thing at that. -Private Arthur Wrench, Headquarters, 154th Brigade, 51st Division

She was a two-seater and I fired five rounds into her. She burst into flames and fell upside down. Although she dropped like a stone, I saw her observer climb out of his seat and jump clear of the flames. He must have preferred that kind of death to the chance of being roasted.3 Captain Albert Ball, 60 Squadron, RFC

The casualties were beyond comprehension with 57,470 British casualties on the first day alone. Of these a staggering 19,240 were killed.

They were survivors - there was a quiet strength to the congregation, and they had none of the well-dressed smugness of American churchgoers. All of them had paid for their faith, in ways that money could not measure, and Father Li had paid the most of all.

The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life?until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.

But if he had come down from the Cross, he would have made it impossible for them to believe in him, for he would have substituted sight for faith. That is why he does not take us down from our crosses: so that we do not substitute feelings and experiences for faith. He wants the very best for us, the strongest and most precious gift, and that is faith.