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Quotes About Sacrifice

What I must learn is to love with all of me, giving all of me, and yet remain whole in myself. Any other kind of love is too demanding of the other; it takes, rather than gives. To love so completely that you lose yourself in another person is not good. You are giving a weight, not the sense of lightness and light that loving someone should give.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Vitam impendre vero. (To stake one's life for the truth.)
~ Madeleine L'Engle
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
I've got a sweater. Ben pulled off his coat and held it out for her. Here. Thanks, Ben. It's lovely and warm. Then she said, Ben, I-- I can tell you how I feel about-- about everything. I think you're the best friend I've ever had. I-- I'd lie down and die for you if you wanted me to. Honey, Ben said. When I get you to lie down for me it won't be to die.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Jesus, who comes across in the Gospels as extraordinarily strong, begged in the garden, with drops of sweat like blood running down his face, that he might be spared the terrible cup ahead of him, the betrayal and abandonment by his friends, death on the cross. Because Jesus cried out in anguish, we may too. But our fear is less frequent and infinitely less if we are close to the Creator. Jesus, having cried out, then let his fear go, and moved on.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
It was a star, Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but . . . what we are meant to be.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
He knew what she wanted, and he wanted it, too; he was ready, but not, despite her gorgeousness, with Tiglah. Tiglah was not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
We are going to your father, Mrs. Which said. But where is he? Meg went over to Mrs. Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace. Mrs. Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. On a planet that has given in. So you must prepare to be very strong.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Only on love's terrible other side is found the place where lion and lamb abide. 'What's that? he asked sharply. something of Mado's. Marguerite Dominique de la Valeur Renier. She drew out the syllables lovingly. My husband's grandmother. Your great-great-grandmother. Love's terrible other side. The other side of the sun. You can't go around it, Theron. You have to go through it.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
But I wanted to do it for you," Mr. Murry said. "That's what every parent wants.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
What else is the electric chair or lethal injection than human sacrifice?
~ Madeleine L'Engle
The Mother asks the sacrifice of love.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Expand my love, Lord, so I can help to bear the pain, help your love move my love into the tired prostitute with false eyelashes and bunioned feet, the corrupt policeman with his hand open for graft, the addict, the derelict, the woman in the mink coat and discontented mouth, the high school girl with heavy books and frightened eyes. Help me through these scandalous particulars to understand your love. Help me to pray.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
With all our human struggling for power we cannot heal ourselves, so God, with wondrous love, gives away power, gives away himself so that we may be healed.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
In moments of decision, we are to try to make what seems to be the most loving, the most creative decision. We are not to play safe, to draw back out of fear. Love may well lead us into danger. It may lead us to die for our friend. In a day when we are taught to look for easy solutions, it is not always easy to hold on to that most difficult one of all, love.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Nobody said anything about abandoning anybody. That is not our way. But we know that just because we want something does not mean that we will get what we want, and we still do not know what to do. And we cannot allow you, in your present state, to do anything that would jeopardize us all.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
How can we be able to live our lives if we deny the one who we truly love?
~ Madeleine Wickham
They hung there, the jackets she had bought for him, the shirts that she took to the Chinese laundry each week, the shoes that she polished until they shone. 'Oh nonsense, I'm doing my own,' she had said the first time he protested, and he hadn't protested again. Of course she had done too much for him. But if she had done any less it would have ended long ago. Long before now. She felt a chill. Why did she think it was ending now?
~ Maeve Binchy
You know how sorry he is Nan. You must know how he'd give any of us the moon after he's been—not himself." "It's too high a price to pay for the moon
~ Maeve Binchy
He has, Anges sees, done what any father would wish to do, to exchange his child's suffering for his own, to take his place, to offer himself up in his child's stead so that the boy might live.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
She wanted to say, no. She wanted to say, I have a son, there is a child, this cannot happen. Because you know that no one will ever love them like you do. You know that no one will look after them like you do. You know that it's an impossibility, it's unthinkable that you could be taken away, that you will have to leave them behind.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
The closest we have to Holy Fools in modern life are whistleblowers. They are willing to sacrifice loyalty to their institution—and, in many cases, the support of their peers—in the service of exposing fraud and deceit.
~ Malcolm Gladwell
We think we can transform the stranger, without cost or sacrifice, into the familiar and the known, and we can't.
~ Malcolm Gladwell