Sacrificing Quotes

To fill the fathomless caverns of my thirsty soul I must work entirely contrary to impulses of my own humanity, for it is in emptying myself at the very point where I am most empty that I fill myself. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

It is quite in the order of things in folk-tales . . . that a parent should purchase his own safety by sacrificing his son to a ferocious animal or to a supernatural enemy. ~ C. Fillingham Coxwell

WE END UP with the following situation: on the one hand, we have a news agenda dominated by reports of the workings of a highly complicated social science that wrestles with problems of near cosmic scale and incomprehensible difficulty, upon which it periodically delivers pronouncements at once pessimistic and resigned; and on the other hand, we have a host of inchoate, naive, innocent, impassioned but powerful longings that are carefully concealed and mostly go unmentioned for fear of sacrificing claims to decency and adult seriousness. ~ Alain De Botton

Crooked, grasping, evil-hearted people were easy to find. Honest, concerned, self-sacrificing people were harder to come by. ~ Darren Shan

It's encouraging to watch what people will do to contribute to a love story. It's as though we universally recognize the union of souls is worth sacrificing for. ~ Donald Miller

I fight for the man next to me. It don't matter about me, what matters about me is sacrificing for you; for the ultimate goal which is us. ~ Ray Lewis

A thousand wheels of labor are turned by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-sacrificing endurance; and the crowds that pour forth in the morning and return at night are daily procession of love and duty. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Sacrificing myself to kill Hilary Clinton was the best thing I could possibly do for humanity ~ Jeff Foxworthy

I'm proud, I've been working with this kind of self-sacrificing people like you. ~ Islom Karimov

To be of great wit and conversational powers, and simultaneously strong and serious and silent. To be generous and open and self-sacrificing, yet to be somewhat mysterious and sensitive and even a little bitter with melancholy. To be both light and dark. To harmonize this, to melt all this down into a single man - ah, there was something to be done. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The greatest difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Napoleon affords us an example of the danger of elevating one's self to the absolute, and sacrificing everything to the carrying out of an idea. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We'll organize workers in this movement as long as we're willing to sacrifice. The moment we stop sacrificing, we stop organizing. ~ Cesar Chavez

Worrying about what does not yet exist, is that a gesture of love or the worst kind of argument putting pressure on the living, an excess of scrupulous conscience? For fear of soiling our hands, we prefer to cut them off right now. [...] How far can responsibility go without turning into an abstraction? To extend it to all coming generations is to empty it of its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our shoulders. By being accountable for everything, we are accountable for nothing. We can receive no pardon for our errors, since those who would be in a position to grant it have not yet been born! A vicious circle: isn't sacrificing people today for the benefit of those to come also a way of penalizing the latter [...]? ~ Pascal Bruckner

And you can tell that Britney Spears is struggling with who she is. I think she has a team of agents and managers who are saying, yes, push the envelope, kiss Madonna, take off all your clothes. And she's doing that because she doesn't want to sacrifice this enormous platform that she's built. But at the same time, she is sacrificing herself and you can see that in her eyes when she talks. ~ Christine O'Donnell

Because your attainment is always ahead, you will always be sacrificing yourself now for some ideal in the future. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

It seems an odd idea, life being centered around pleasure." "What is life supposed to be, then?" "It's about duty, and sacrificing for others. And if we've been good, our pleasure comes later when we're rewarded in the hereafter." "I'll take my rewards now. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The concept of deferred gratification, or sacrificing now to save for the future, can be helpful in setting aside money in a retirement account for old age. It can also serve as an effective rationalization for life avoidance. ~ Chris Guillebeau

Mme. de Gallardon, who could never stop herself from sacrificing her greatest social ambitions and highest hopes of someday dazzling the world to the immediate, obscure, and private pleasure of saying something disagreeable. ~ Marcel Proust

The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister. ~ Emma Goldman

The temple of Ceres should be in a solitary spot out of the city, to which the public are not necessarily led but for the purpose of sacrificing to her. ~ Vitruvius

Being yourself sounds like a saccharin prescription for how to make it in an aggressive culture but it's not as sweet as it sounds. It means not acting in a way that is false just to fit in. It's expressing your talent, values, and opinions in your style, defending your rights, and never sacrificing yourself respect. That is power. ~ Melinda Gates

They get married, but their marriage will look quite different from marriage as the world understands it. Christian marriage will be undertaken "in the Lord" (I Cor. 7.39). It will be sanctified in the service of the Body of Christ and in the discipline of prayer and self-control (I Cor. 7.5). It will be a parable of the self-sacrificing love of Christ for his Church. It will even be itself a part of the Body of Christ, a Church in miniature (Eph. 5.32). ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There is something inherently wrong, something out of accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private gain amid defensive war while another is fighting, sacrificing, or dying for national preservation. ~ Warren G. Harding

The trick to balance is to not make sacrificing important things become the norm. ~ Simon Sinek

You're a death priestess?" the man asked. His urge to have sex with her had diminished greatly, though not entirely. "Like, sacrificing babies and devouring souls to gain the power of daemons and all that? ~ Patrick Weekes

The idols of modern culture have had a profound influence on the shape of our work today. In traditional societies people found their meaning and sense of value by submitting their interests and sacrificing their desires to serve higher causes like God, family, and other people. In modern societies there is often no higher cause than individual interests and desires. This shift powerfully changed the role of work in people's lives - it now became the way we defined ourselves. Traditional cultures tended to see people's place on the social ladder as assigned by nature or convention, each family having its "proper place." That view had put too little stock in the role of individual talent, ambition, and hard work for determining the outcome of one's life. But modern society responded by putting too much stock in the autonomous person. ~ Timothy Keller

Great matter-days remain on the day stone balance, affecting your life on the day the occur and every day thereafter. So the earlier they happen, the better; waiting means potentially sacrificing years or even decades of benefit. ~ Ron Lizzi

Or take this girl, for example. At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique. She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really - that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making Véronique for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other - by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. ~ Jared Diamond

To you, Mom and Dad, and to all the moms and dads and
families and faithful people everywhere, I thank you for sacrificing for your
children, and for other people's children, for wanting so much to give them
advantages you never had, for wanting so much to give them the happiest life
you could provide ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Most blitz leaders have felt that by sacrificing a degree of intelligence or logistics support they gained a greater advantage in the areas of surprise or massing of effort at a critical point. No commander attacks unless he feels that he can win, though on occasion defeat locally may help to gain victory elsewhere. But the decision to attack means that the factors have all been weighed and that superiority lies in better morale, better control for the massing of effort or for quicker reaction, or better weapons. Control is often a more than adequate substitute for supply. There may be risk, but there is no rashness, where advantages outweigh disadvantages. ~ Wesley W. Yale

Empathy doesn't necessarily mean being self-sacrificing. Far from it. Understanding how someone else sees things doesn't imply that you'll act in his interest; in some situations - in war, for example - you want to do exactly the opposite. ~ Paul Graham

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man." ~ 'The Black Cat. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I do know that I fell in love with the moment of falling in love and I wanted to keep that moment alive forever, at the expense of all those moments to follow. ~ Craig Clevenger

Not that this was our intention, but you know how it is with writing, one word often brings along another in its train simply because they sound good together, even if this means sacrificing respect for levity and ethics for aesthetics, if such solemn concepts are not out of place in a discourse such as this, and often to no one's advantage either. It is in this and other ways, almost without our realizing it, that we make so many enemies in life. ~ Jose Saramago

I used to think that loving somebody meant sacrificing anything for them. I thought it meant writing them a blank cheque. I thought it meant that you would die without each other. But it turns out that death and a broken heart are not he same.
These days, I think that love is not so dramatic as all that. Maybe loving somebody means simply they bring out the best in you, and you bring out the best in them - so that together, you are always the best possible versions of yourselves. ~ Leila Sales

Southern food certainly carries a stereotype, but I feel like that's turning around a little. There are great Southern chefs who are finding ways to showcase our traditional recipes in deliciously healthy ways. For me, the key is to use fresh fruits and vegetables and cut some of the butter and fat without sacrificing the yumminess of the dish. ~ Kimberly Schlapman

Many a friendship, long, loyal, and self-sacrificing, rested at first on no thicker a foundation than a kind word. ~ Frederick William Faber

Who would be so base as to pick on a wizened, shriveled old lady, well stricken in years, who has consecrated her entire life to the needy and the destitute? On the other hand, who would be so incurious as to leave unexamined the influence and motives of a woman who once boasted of operating more than five hundred convents in upward of 105 countries - "without counting India"? Lone self-sacrificing zealot, or chair of a missionary multinational? The scale alters with the perspective, and the perspective alters with the scale. ~ Christopher Hitchens

All our contemporaries ... had some big ideology to live for. Everybody thought he had to either fight in Spain or die for something else, and most of us had to be in prison for one reason or another. And then at the end it turns out that none of these great ideologies was worth your sacrificing anything for. Even doing personal good is very difficult to be absolutely sure about. It's very difficult to know exactly whether to live for an ideology or even to live for doing good. But there cannot be anything wrong in making a pot, I'll tell you. When making a pot you can't bring any evil into the world. - Eva Zeisel, ceramist. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

True biblical love is sacrificing, purifying, nurturing, and enduring. ~ Elizabeth George

Cinema is a very difficult and serious art, it requires sacrificing of yourself. You should belong to it, it shouldn't belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

Although I'm seldom aware enough to see it, the greater cost regarding that which I possess was not what I paid for it, but what someone along the way sacrificed so that I might have the opportunity to pay for it. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many. Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate. ~ Paz Marquez Benitez

What matters most is not if our love makes other people change, but that in loving, we change. What matters is that in the sacrificing to love someone, we become more like Someone. Regardless of anything or anyone else changing, the success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving. ~ Ann Voskamp

I'd like to protect children, too, but ... is everything worth sacrificing to that? I mean, drugs have done a lot of good ... They've midwived a lot of good ideas ... lot of great songs, you know? I think Penny Lane is worth 10 dead kids ... I think Dark Side of the Moon is worth 100 dead kids. There, I said it. ~ Bill Maher

The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime. ~ Richard Rohr

You don't have any control over anyone's feelings.

You can't make your parents feel proud of you.
You can't make anyone like you.
You can't make anyone love you.

You can make it easier for them, by sacrificing your time and energy, but you cannot MAKE THEM, you can only make it easier for them - and yet again, what have you gained? Nothing. You're gambling. Putting trust coins into a slot machine hoping that love comes out. ~ M. Kirin

I love her, and I love Mom, and I would do just about anything for them. But when you think stuff like that ... you think of grand, heroic gestures. Pushing someone out of the way of a moving vehicle. Standing between them and danger. Sacrificing something important. But it's not like that. Not at all. It's not one big moment, it's a thousand. It's every day. And you don't sacrifice just one important thing, you sacrifice a little more and a little more until you start to feel hollowed out. It's not the sacrifice that hurts so much as the thought that it will never end. That you're stuck in your fate, and nothing and no one can change it. You'll just keep giving and giving until you don't even know who you are. ~ Cora Carmack

Why were there no words that spoke positively about being concerned about the self? Why was there only negative connotation in terms like "selfish", "self-interested", "self-centred", "self-obsessed" and so on? Why was it so much better to be without a self: "selfless", "self-sacrificing", "self-effacing", etc? ~ A.J. Dalton

It's like a firstborn son: you spend your life working for him, sacrificing everything for him, and at the moment of truth, he does just as he pleases. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Being famous very often means sacrificing your privacy and that of others. You have to impose on those close to you a pace and lifestyle that might be a bigger sacrifice for others than it is for you. ~ Giorgio Armani

Peace will never be entirely secure until men everywhere have learned to conquer poverty without sacrificing liberty or security. ~ Norman Thomas

If the church does not restore the idea of faith as "being", and not "believing," then the gospel story of Jesus as the heart of God in the flesh will wither and perish.

In the end, to say one "believes" something like the virgin birth as biological fact or the miracle stories as literal suspensions of natural law requires nothing in the way of a changed heart or a self-sacrificing spirit.

Faith as 'assensus' (intellectual assent) is relatively impotent, relatively powerless. You can believe all the right things and still be in bondage. ~ Robin R. Meyers

I've been sacrificing my life for my work for 30 years, and now I want it the other way around. I want to find work that fits into my life and that would be based here. ~ Glenn Close

But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him, drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans. ~ Hermann Hesse

Suffering so someone else didn't have to suffer. Sacrificing your body for someone else's well being. ~ Jodi Picoult

An idea without sacrifice, regardless of grand it might be, will never be anything more than an idea. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

So many times in a single day we glimpse a view beyond the apparent. Write those moments down. They might not speak to you at first. But eventually they might. Everybody writes too long and too much anyway, sacrificing significance for story. Truth be told, we all want to be poets. ~ Joy Williams

It is only by sacrificing everything to sensual pleasure that this being known as Man, cast into the world in spite of himself, may succeed in sowing a few roses on the thorns of life. ~ Marquis De Sade

Unlike Virgil, Homer is no part of the classical age, has no truck with judicious distinction or the calm management of life and society. He precedes that order, is a preclassic, immoderate, uncompromising, never sacrificing truth for grace. ~ Adam Nicolson

In my fantasies, I was always caught up in heroic struggles, and I saw myself saving lives, sacrificing myself for others. I had far loftier ambitions than mere romance. ~ Irene Gut Opdyke

Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored. ~ Thomas Sowell

Good humor, Jefferson added, "is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society all the little conveniences and preferences which will gratify them, and deprive us of nothing worth a moment's consideration; ~ Jon Meacham

Fiction isn't bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states or corporations, no complex human society can function. We can't play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can't enjoy the benefits of markets and courts without similar make-believe stories. But stories are just tools. They shouldn't become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget that they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality. Then we begin entire wars `to make a lot of money for the cooperation' or 'to protect the national interest'. Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; why do we find ourselves sacrificing our life in their service. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

This was because, after the birth of Priapus, they had developed a love/hate relationship with each other. They loved & hated each other at the same time. And even when he assured her that he would do his best to bring back Metis from the dead, she was not satisfied. She wanted Asteria & Semele to be reborn as well. And he had even issued instructions that human sacrifices should be stopped, in particular, the sacrificing of young virgin girls, since, Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, liked to see young virgin girls loved rather than cut into pieces to feed the sacrificial flame of Hestia. The Athenians, as a whole, had stopped the practice of sacrificing Hyacinthids, after Macaria. And indeed, Artemis had stopped the sacrifice of Iphigenia. And after Polyxena & Periboae were sacrificed, Athena had stopped the sacrifice of the Locrian girls by the Trojans. ~ Nicholas Chong

The anarch is oriented to facts, not ideas. He fights alone, as a free man, and would never dream of sacrificing himself to having one inadequacy supplant another and a new regime triumph over the old one. In this sense, he is closer to the philistine; the baker whose chief concern is to bake good bread; the peasant, who works his plow while armies march across his fields. ~ Ernst Junger

There are some truths so terrible that they should not be spoken aloud, so appalling that even to acknowledge them is to risk sacrificing a crucial part of one's humanity, to exist in a colder, crueler world than before. ~ John Connolly

Don't do this self-sacrificing bullshit, Dylan. Not again. I'm sick and tired of it. For once, it would be nice if you would just let me help you. You deserve to live. You deserve to be as happy as any of us. You're not a monster. - Miya ~ Dannielle Wicks

Total surrender to the will of God actually is sacrificing oneself as a burnt offering to God. The proof of this state is dying to oneself, - to one's own opinions, wishes and feelings or tastes, in order to live by Divine intellect, in conformity with the Divine will and in partaking of God. In the forefront of this endeavor is our Lord and Savior. He surrendered the whole of Himself to God the Father, and us in Himself, 'For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones' (Eph. 5:30). So let us hasten in His footsteps? ~ Lorenzo Scupoli

I doubt if we nuns are really as self-sacrificing as we must seem to be to you who live in the world. We don't give everything for nothing, you know. The mystery plays fair. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

It seems to me that if humans are capable of sacrificing this much collective benefit in the name of stabilizing an economic system that makes daily life so much more expensive and precarious, then surely humans should be capable of making some important lifestyle changes in the interest of stabilizing the physical systems upon which all of life depends. Especially because many of the changes that need to be made to dramatically cut emissions would also materially improve the quality of life for the majority of people on the planet - from ~ Naomi Klein

Your happiness in a relationship depends greatly on your ability to get your needs heard and taken seriously. If these decisions are taken over by an abusive or controlling partner, you experience disappointment after disappointment, the constant sacrificing of your needs. He, on the other hand, enjoys the luxury of a relationship where he rarely has to compromise, gets to do the things he enjoys, and skips the rest. He shows off his generosity when the stakes are low, so that friends will see what a swell guy he is. ~ Lundy Bancroft

I would not flinch from sacrificing even a million lives for India's liberty. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The true test of a father's legacy is that it rests in every life except his own, for to leave a true legacy we must divest ourselves of everything so that the investment in our families can be everything. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

But this isn't their God, she decided. It's my God. This is a God I have found through sacrificing my own life, through my flesh being cut, my skin ripped off, my blood sucked away, my nails torn, all my time and hopes and memories being stolen from me. This is not a God with a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This god has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts. No reward, no punishment. This God doesn't give, and doesn't take away. There is no heaven up in the sky, no hell down below. When it's hot, and when it's cold, God is simply there. ~ Haruki Murakami

Sometimes it's hard to see the difference between change and compromise, between sacrificing something you want for something you want a little bit more. "I ~ Erin Loechner

It would be useless to tell him that I'm done sacrificing other people for my own gain. I won't whip innocent kitchen workers, I won't burn down buildings, I won't ask anyone to give up their inheritance for me, and I certainly won't leave a friend at the mercy of a mysterious magical force-- merely for the sake of my own power. I press my fingers to the stone at my navel, taking comfort in its familiar pulsing. What I tell him is, 'And I have me. I will be enough. ~ Rae Carson

That's what love is – sacrifice. Sacrificing everything ... ~ Alastair Reynolds

The eternal God - the infinite Jehovah - has done all he could do - even to the sacrificing his own Son - to provide a way for man's happiness, and yet they reject him, hate him, and laugh him to scorn! ~ Elijah Parish Lovejoy

By one tomorrow, I'll look enough like her to pass. I'm calling Mavis."
"Oh." Peabody brightened. "Oh, that's iced."
"Easy for you to say. You won't have to listen to lectures from her and Trina on why I haven't had my eyebrows shaped lately, or why I haven't used the butt cream or whatever. And I'll probably have to agree to a full treatment after the op." This was said with undisguised bitterness. "I know how they work."
"You're a true soldier, sir, sacrificing yourself for the cause."
"Wipe that smile off your face, Officer."
"Wiping, sir. ~ J.D. Robb

There is no glory in the sacrificing of oneself in the name of imperialism by order of elitist politicians. But this is what our young service members are led to believe. ~ Aaron B. Powell

The boy who kidnapped Holly Short all those years ago would never have entertained the notion of sacrificing himself. But he was no longer that boy. His parents were restored to him, and he had brothers. And dear friends. Something else Artemis had never anticipated. ~ Eoin Colfer

Let me repeat: the crimes of violence committed for selfish personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majoram gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to a flag, a leader, a religious faith, or a political conviction. Man has always been prepared not only to kill but also to die for good, bad or completely futile causes. And what can be a more valid proof of the reality of the self-transcending urge than this readiness to die for an ideal? ~ Arthur Koestler

It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one's senses play, drank full at the primitive mother's breast - which brought great bliss but was no protection against death; then one lived like a mushroom in the forest, colorful today and rotten tomorrow. Or else one put up a defense, imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life - then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process and lost one's freedom, scope, lust for life...
Ach, life made sense only if one achieved both, only if it was not split by this brittle alternative! To create, without sacrificing one's senses for it. To live, without renouncing the mobility of creating. Was that impossible? ~ Hermann Hesse

We somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are, to inherit the masquerade of what we will be. ~ Shane Koyczan

What did the heroines in dramas and books do in such circumstances?

Frequently, it seemed, they would use their feminine wiles upon their male captors, promising them amorous attention and then turning the tables upon the foe when the moment was right (But before, of course, sacrificing anything like their virtue for the cause).

Bridget hadn't been an agent of the Spirearch for very long, but she felt that she had the concept sufficiently surrounded to see that such a ploy was unlikely to work. Even if Ciriaco had been amenable to such a thing, he had no real reason to release her from her bonds, now, did he? And, in point of fact, what captor with any professionalism at all would be taken in by such a ploy in the first place?

Besides, Bridget was not at all sure that she had any feminine wiles. And even if she did, she felt certain that they would not function as flawlessly in life as they did in tales and dramas. ~ Jim Butcher

A lot of people think that being a Gallagher Girl means not being afraid of anything. Actually, that couldn't be further from the truth. It's not about ignoring fear. It's about facing it, knowing the risks and the costs and sacrificing safety and security anyway. ~ Ally Carter

Chesterton spoke of 'the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.' It would be hard to sum up liberalism for succinctly. ~ Joseph Sobran

Maybe he, like me,
is engaged in the kind of unspoken rebellion
you don't want to perform too brightly
since you're never certain
anyone in your family will notice
your darkened eyes, skeleton shoes, tousled hair,
patchy attendance record.
You may be sacrificing body and soul
on a ghostly battlefield, fighting across a divide
seen by no one
but you. ~ Stasia Ward Kehoe

Those who can truly love, they're like candles; they don't mind sacrificing themselves for the sake of love. But the rest of us are candle holders. We love and appreciate the light of love, but are too afraid to burn ourselves down to light up someone else's life. ~ Uday Mukerji

Because if it's possible to have a partner who gives all of themselves without reservation, who looks forward to working and sacrificing for me just as I look forward to doing the same for her, who can't help but love ferociously, brutally, and unconditionally - and even perhaps without reason or sound judgment - that's what I want. Because that's how I plan to love in return. ~ Penny Reid

But it is impossible for anyone to say 'I am sacrificing myself' without feeling bitterness. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I'd been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. Because, as Suzanne would say, why not? I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother. I wanted to have a work life and a home life, but with some promise that one would never fully squelch the other. I hoped to be exactly like my own mother and at the same time nothing like her at all. It was an odd and confounding thing to ponder. Could I have everything? Would I have everything? I had no idea. ~ Michelle Obama

By sacrificing the public self, by shunning leaders, and especially by refusing to play the game of self-promotion, Anonymous ensures mystery; this in itself is a radical political act, given a social order based on ubiquitous monitoring and the celebration of runaway individualism and selfishness. Anonymous's iconography - masks and headless suits - visually displays the importance of opacity. The collective may not be the hive it often purports and is purported to be - and it may be marked by internal strife - but Anonymous still manages to leave us with a striking vision of solidarity - e pluribus unum. ~ Gabriella Coleman

But how can we effectively represent Christ, who in sacrificial love gave his life for others, if we don't deeply care about those he died for? And since "God is love" (1 John 4:8), doesn't it follow that the one great distinguishing characteristic of Christians everywhere should be a self-sacrificing love for people? Doctrine, apologetics, spiritual gifts, and prophecy charts are all great, but God is love. Without love, everything becomes meaningless (1 Cor. 13). ~ Jim Cymbala

The farmer after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant.This result might well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to end in mortgages and the auctioneer's flag, and removing from bad to worse. It is time to have the thing looked into, and with a sifting criticism ascertained who is the fool. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The idea of popular art, like that of a patriotic art, if not actually dangerous seemed to me ridiculous. If the intention was to make art accessible to the people by sacrificing refinements of form, on the ground that they are "all right for the idle rich" but not for anybody else, I had seen enough of fashionable society to know that it is there that one finds real illiteracy and not, let us say, among electricians. ~ Marcel Proust