Quotes About Sacrifice

Especially then," she replied sweetly. "That's how it's done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost.

The price was my healthy young body, so long taken for granted.

There were times when taking vengeance for the dead seemed too high a price for abandoning the living.

A fierce resolve that we would not lose what we had now to what we could not have tomorrow.

Sometimes," Chade observed, "It would be much easier to die for one's king than to give one's life to him.

You would throw away all that we have given you for a man's love?" "Not a man's love," I say softly. "But Duval's. And I would find a way to serve both my god and my heart. Surely He does not give us hearts so we may spend our lives ignoring them.

I am a handmaiden of Death. I walk in His dark shadow and do His bidding. Serving Him is my only purpose in this life...

And so it is with us; we serve as handmaidens to Death. When we are guided by His will, killing is a sacrament.

Women will always pay the price for love, that is why God makes us so much stronger than men.

Owing to our first-formed parent's injury, the maker grieved; when he bit the baleful apple and thereby collapsed in death, he himself the wood then marked out that wood's damage to repair. —Venantius Fortunatus

The third section tells the rest of the story also from the cross's perspective, vividly elaborating its feelings as it is pierced with nails, spat upon, then cast aside. The poem concludes when the original narrator awakens. The cross charges him to hold it in awe, share the vision with others, and to follow the path to righteousness.

Roses are for love. Not silly sweet-hearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole, love that gets you through the worst your life'll give you and that pours out of you when you're given the best instead.

Nothing the Western Front can offer, however, matches the intensity of the five days of fighting inside Fort Vaux.

French losses, from August 1914 to 31 December 1915, came to 1,932,051 of whom no less than 1,001,271 were killed or missing. The British total in the same period was 512,420, of whom around 200,000 were killed or missing.

the capture of Douaumont took less than four hours and cost the 24th Brandenburg Regiment just 32 men killed and 40 wounded. It was later estimated that French losses resulting from the fall of Douaumont, or incurred in its recapture many months later, amounted to around 100,000 men.

The defence of Verdun and the French Republic was a splendid cause but that alone was not enough; it needed to be a two-way commitment - and what did the Republic care for them, the infantry soldiers of France, alone and dying in their shell holes, sent in again and again in attacks that withered away under the shelling and machine-gun fire, achieving nothing? By mid-June the murmurs heard among the troops in May were growing louder.

Not so the French poilu. His pay was meagre, his food disgusting - though his wine was drinkable - his leave infrequent, letters from home often failed to arrive, and his life was all too often thrown away in frontal attacks that usually achieved nothing but an extensive casualty list. Much of this was simply due to poor staff work, to incompetence rather than indifference

by electing to hold Verdun, de Castelnau was doing exactly what von Falkenhayn wanted. He was opting to hold a position that could only be defended at a great cost in lives. The fact that it was to cost Germany as many men as France would prove a poor consolation; Germany had more men to lose.

Jesus did not come to die, rendering his life and teaching secondary. He died because of his life and teachings.

Ruined land was accepted as the collateral damage of progress.

People understood that when lives are given on their behalf they have received something precious. Ceremonies are a way to give something precious in return.

A fishnet catches fish, a bug net catches bugs. But a water net catches nothing, save what cannot be held. Mothering is like that, a net of living threads to lovingly encircle what it cannot possibly hold, what will eventually move through it.

It is the fundamental unfairness of parenthood that if we do our jobs well, the deepest bond we are given will walk out the door with a wave over the shoulder.

Mothering is like that, a net of living threads to lovingly encircle what it cannot possibly hold, what will eventually move through it.