Quotes About Sacrifice

You have never tasted freedom, friend," Dienekes spoke, "or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.

The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.

I must carry on—for my mates, for England, for Rose and for our child. The alternative is unthinkable. With this, I understand the perverse logic of war and the true tragedy of armed conflict. The enemy against whom we fight are human beings like ourselves, individuals with whom each of us might have been friends except for the deranged fictions of nation, doctrine, race and religion, and whom now we must murder (as they seek to murder us) in the name of those very same fictions.

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life. — Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C.

The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood. The artist wears combat boots. He looks in the mirror and sees GI Joe. Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride.

We slew three hundred of them," replied Artemisia, "and it took two million of us to do it." These

Leonidas began softly, his voice carrying in the dawn stillness, heard with ease by all. "Shall I tell you where I find this strength, friends? In the eyes of our sons in scarlet before us, yes. And in the countenances of their comrades who will follow in battles to come. But more than that, my heart finds courage from these, our women, who watch in tearless silence as we go.

The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist.

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.

The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.   This is invaluable for an artist.

A nation is born in blood and purchases with blood its right to stand in the ranks with other nations.

Xerxes does not want your lives, sir," Tommie called. "Only your arms." Leonidas laughed. "Tell him to come and get them.

In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity.

Never forget, Alexandros, that this flesh, this body, does not belong to us. Thank God it doesn't. If I thought this stuff was mine, I could not advance a pace into the face of the enemy. But it is not ours, my friend. It belongs to the gods and to our children, our fathers and mothers and those of Lakedaemon a hundred, a thousand years yet unborn. It belongs to the city which gives us all we have and demands no less in requital.

will tell His Majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field.

I will tell His Majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field.

Questions for ourselves: "How much do we want it?" "What sacrifices are we willing to make to see this project succeed?" "Have we 'moved'—lock, stock, and barrel—to our inner Paris?

When you move your material ass to the geographic site of your dream, your peers and potential mentors think at once, This person is serious. She has committed. She has burned the boats. She is one of us.

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.

nothing good in life comes but at a price. Sweetest of all is liberty.

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?

On realising that he is not a born warrior, as the rest of his troop are): A cherished self-conception must be given up, and one feels diminished by it. This is mistaken, however. A person discovers that he has been made stronger by the jettisoning of this sham and disadvantageous bag-gage. In fact, he has become more "himself," by aligning his self-concept more closely with fact.

I stayed nine weeks. The last four were offshore. Pay doubled on the rigs to four dollars an hour but the best part was meals were free (steak for dinner every night with unlimited milk from the machine) and every week was eighty hours with forty of that counting as time-and-a-half.

You have never tasted freedom, friend, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.