Quotes About Sacrifice

The greedy man who is fond of his fish stew has no compunction in cutting up the fish according to his need. But the man who loves the fish wants to enjoy it in the water; and if that is impossible he waits on the bank; and even if he comes back home without a sight of it he has the consolation of knowing that the fish is all right. Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.

Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.

XXIX You have set me among those who are defeated. I know it is not for me to win, nor to leave the game. I shall plunge into the pool although but to sink to the bottom. I shall play the game of my undoing. I shall stake all I have and when I lose my last penny I shall stake myself, and then I think I shall have won through my utter defeat.

Chain Of Pearls Mother, I shall weave a chain of pearls for thy neck with my tears of sorrow. The stars have wrought their anklets of light to deck thy feet, but mine will hang upon thy breast. Wealth and fame come from thee and it is for thee to give or to withhold them. But this my sorrow is absolutely mine own, and when I bring it to thee as my offering thou rewardest me with thy grace.

In pleasure and in pain I stand not by the side of men, and thus stand by thee. I shrink to give up my life, and thus do not plunge into the great waters of life.

On the day when death will knock at thy door what wilt thou offer to him? Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life---I will never let him go with empty hands. All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days and summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings of my busy life will I place before him at the close of my days when death will knock at my door.

When it was day they came into my house and said, `We shall only take the smallest room here.' They said, `We shall help you in the worship of your God and humbly accept only our own share in his grace'; and then they took their seat in a corner and they sat quiet and meek. But in the darkness of night I find they break into my sacred shrine, strong and turbulent, and snatch with unholy greed the offerings from God's altar.

Oh! what lies we women have to tell! When we are mothers, we tell lies to pacify our children; and when we are wives, we tell lies to pacify the fathers of our children. We are never free from this necessity.

Women lose their delicacy and refinement, when they are compelled night and day to haggle with their destiny over things pitifully small, and for this they are blamed by those whom their toil supports.

The one who plants a tree knowing he may never sit in its shade has learnt a little about life.

Why did the lamp go out? I shaded it with my cloak to save it from the wind, that is why the lamp went out. Why did the flower fade? I pressed it to my heart with anxious love, that is why the flower faded. Why did the stream dry up? I put a dam across it to have it for my use, that is why the stream dried up. Why did the harp-string break? I tried to force a note that was beyond its power, that is why the harp-string is broken.

El destino del hombre es equivocarse, afanarse inútilmente y sufrir, pero lo que no puede es quedar estancado; sacrifica su vida en aras de lo que considera su deber.

It is the continual and stupendous dead pressure of this inhuman upon the living human under which the modern world is groaning. Not merely the subject races, but you who live under the delusion that you are free, are every day sacrificing your freedom and humanity to this fetich of nationalism, living in the dense poisonous atmosphere of world-wide suspicion and greed and panic.

To the Goddess? Then I cannot blame him. For a man loses his humanity when it concerns his gods.

Unless this boy is claimed by the one who gave him to me, I'll die rather than let anyone else take him away.

According to the Gita, the deeds that are done solely for the sake of self fetter our soul; the disinterested action, performed for the sake of the giving up of self, is the true sacrifice. For creation itself comes of the self-sacrifice of Brahma, which has no other purpose; and therefore, in our performance of the duty which is self-sacrificing, we realize the spirit of Brahma.

If you want to look at the state of humans, you should look at the state of animals first. People are choosing whether or not they can feed an animal and their family. And every shelter coast-to-coast is stuffed.

When she is with them she is not herself; when she is without them she is not herself; and so it is as difficult to leave your children as it is to stay with them. To discover this is to feel that your life has become irretrievably mired in conflict, or caught in some mythic snare in which you will perpetually, vainly struggle.

It was possible, I had realised, to resist evil but in doing so you acted alone. You stood or fell as an individual. You risked everything in the attempt: it might even be the case, I said, that evil could only be overturned by the absolute sacrifice of self. The problem was that nothing could give greater pleasure to your enemies.

I could never reconcile myself to the fact that just as you've recovered from your own childhood, and finally crawled out of the pit of it and felt the sun on your face for the first time, you have to give up that place in the sun to a baby you're determined won't suffer the way you did, and crawl back down into another pit of self-sacrifice to make sure she doesn't!

Their father - her ex-husband - had relinquished all responsibility for them when the marriage ended: it almost gave him pleasure, Lawrence believed, to see them suffer, partly because their suffering dramatized his own - as bullies enjoy seeing their own fear in their victims - and partly because it was a sure-fire way of punishing (her)

The baby can seem like something her husband has given her as a substitute for himself, a kind of transitional object, like a doll, for her to hold so that he can return to the world.

Now and again,' she continued presently, 'I have met people who have freed themselves from their family relationships. Yet there often seems to be a kind of emptiness in that freedom, as though in order to dispense with their relatives they have had to dispense with a part of themselves. Like the man trapped in the glacier who cut off his own arm,' she said, with a faint smile.

find it difficult to answer my own needs. The sight of other people getting what they want, jostling and demanding things, makes me decide I would rather go without.