Top 100 Quotes About Martyrdom
#1. The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.
Chuck Palahniuk
#2. May all Christians be found worthy of either the pure white crown of a holy life or the royal red crown of martyrdom.
Cyprian
#3. Even the Son of God trod this path of martyrdom for the sins of all mankind, and all who suffer in a similar manner are simply following in his very steps, identifying with his sorrow over a lost world that he willingly died for.
Greg Gordon
#4. You should have gone yourself, you ask for a Coke and they come back with orange drink. No one understands the martyrdom of the volunteers for the trip to food concession.
Colson Whitehead
#7. For all have not the gift of martyrdom.
John Dryden
#8. Once you have built something - something that takes all your passion and will - it becomes more precious to you than your own happiness. You don't realise that, while you are building it. That you are creating a martyrdom - something which, later, will make you suffer.
Sofia Samatar
#10. Martyrdom is often the result of excessive gullibility.
Barbara Mertz
#11. She appeared to adore Thomas's repugnance to her and to draw it out of him every chance she got as if it added delectably to her martyrdom.
Flannery O'Connor
#12. Julian thought he could have stood his lot better if she had been selfish, if she had been an old hag who drank and screamed at him. He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith.
Flannery O'Connor
#13. Wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christian must be ready for martyrdom and death. It is only in this way that man learns faith.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#14. Prominent Christians in Constantine's time waited to be baptized until their deathbeds lest they commit a "major"sin that couldn't be forgiven of those already baptized. Others felt anyone who did anything to avoid martyrdom were apostates had no valid subsequent ministry.
Thomas F. Madden
#15. Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life
W. H. Auden
#16. My grandmother always acted in other people's interests, whether they wanted her to or not. If they'd had an Olympics in martyrdom my grandmother would have lost on purpose.
Emily Levine
#17. Literary dementia seems dated now, but there was a time when a month in the funny farm was as de rigueur for budding writers as an M.F.A. is now. To be sent away was a badge of honor; to undergo electroshock, a glorious martyrdom.
Walter Kirn
#18. We must all have the spirit of martyrdom, though we may not all die martyrs.
George Whitefield
#19. Any theologian understands martyrdom, but only the martyr experiences the fire.
Robertson Davies
#20. Happy are those who have departed through martyrdom. Unhappy am I that I still survive ... Taking this decision is more deadly than drinking from a poisoned chalice. I submitted myself to Allah's will and took this drink for His satisfaction.
Ruhollah Khomeini
#21. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at he victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life, and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are hours.
Ruhollah Khomeini
#22. A. D. 1560, pope Pius the Fourth, ordered all the protestants to be severely persecuted throughout the Italian states, when great numbers of every age, sex, and condition, suffered martyrdom.
John Foxe
#23. To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement
Thomas Jefferson
#24. Military strikes on Afghanistan will not prevent something this terrible from happening again, for the simple reason that bombs will not deter people who are unafraid of death and desire martyrdom.
Jemima Khan
#25. Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.
Thomas Browne
#26. One book that has influenced the writer very strongly is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man ... It is still an extraordinarily inspiring presentation of human history as one consistent process.
William Winwood Reade
#27. Do not speak to me of martyrdom, of men who die to be remembered on some parish day. I don't believe in dying though, I too shall die. And violets like castanets will echo me. SONIA SANCHEZ
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#28. The way I see it, there is no greater spiritual beauty than fanaticism, of a sort so sincere it can only end in martyrdom.
Isabelle Eberhardt
#29. Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.
Arthur Schnitzler
#30. At the heart of every established religion is one sacred mystery that supports belief and induces fidelity, even to the point of martyrdom.
Stephen King
#31. I will not make a sonnet from
Each little private martyrdom;
Nor out of love left dead with time
Construe a stanza or a rime.
We do not suffer to afford
The searched for and the subtle word:
There is too much that may not be
At the caprice of prosody.
Joseph Auslander
#32. I wrap the potential for bitterness, resentment, martyrdom in the blanket of forgiveness and just set it down. Then it just melts in the warmth. And goes away.
Mary Anne Radmacher
#33. In the heat of the Russian summer a sleeping car is the most horrible instrument of martyrdom imaginable.
Manfred Von Richthofen
#34. Just outside Tehran we passed a sign that said, 'Servitude is never accepted in an ideology that believes in Martyrdom'. Below was a picture of a white dove copping a bullet in the heart.
Peter Moore
#35. They [terrorists] can't claim that their suicide bombings are martyrdom operations and that they become the heroes of the Muslim Ummah [global brotherhood]. No, they become heroes of hellfire, and they are leading towards hellfire.
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri
#36. Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.
Mahatma Gandhi
#37. Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted history of suffering.
Charles Dickens
#39. We can see clearly that the end of following Christ wholeheartedly is to share, very possibly, in his very end. We can have great confidence that multitudes of fellow pilgrims have won the contest, fought the good fight, and endured martyrdom before the watching hosts of heaven.
Greg Gordon
#40. You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity ... servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes ... and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violences of bold despotism.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#41. You can't sustain [anger]. You become bitter. Nothing's going to change. Anger leads to resentment, then to spiking your orange juice, then to martyrdom.
Sherman Alexie
#43. Islam is not unusual in having a tradition of martyrs. What is unique to Islam is the tradition of murderous martyrdom, in which the individual martyr simultaneously commits suicide and kills others for religious reasons.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
#44. To set their sufferings alongside the sufferings of another people was to compare them (which hell was worse?), demoting Sarajevo's martyrdom to a mere instance.
Susan Sontag
#45. Now I understand that this passion for pain, even in the torture of martyrdom, represents the haste and impatience to no longer be interrupted and disturbed by the evil that can come from this side (meaning this life).
Lou Andreas-Salome
#46. Martyrdom is a lonely business.
Jukebox
Saira Viola
#47. Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom.
Ayn Rand
#48. A martyr is, he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom.
T. S. Eliot
#49. Why would the apostles lie? ... Liars always lie for selfish reasons. If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks!
Peter Kreeft
#50. He learned that love is not all pleasure, but can be agony and heartache, martyrdom and sacrifice. He learned what the clergyman was talking about in the marriage service: for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.
Upton Sinclair
#51. The whole church considered itself to be involved in mission and to have a missionary duty, and every believer was a witness, felt called to the work of evangelization, even so far as the supreme witness of bloody martyrdom that was always on the horizon.
Edward L. Smither
#52. Our relationship with Israel is another reason we're being attacked. But an American politician - whether Muslim or not - who criticizes Israel as a martyrdom operation in American politics cannot survive as an official or as a politician.
Michael Scheuer
#53. The severest prosecutions have never been followed by revelations changing a divine law, obedience to which brought imprisonment or martyrdom. Though I go to prison, God will not change his law of celestial marriage.
Lorenzo Snow
#54. Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.
Thomas Jefferson
#55. Do good under all circumstances, but with no care for any profit, or any blessedness, or any damnation, or any salvation, or any martyrdom; but all you do or omit should be for the honor of Love.
Hadewijch
#56. To live for oneself is a terrifying prospect; there is comfort in martyrdom ...
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Melanie Benjamin
#57. Lord, in our work for justice, let us not seek after martyrdom for its own sake, but neither let us turn away from your truth because we fear suffering. Give us grace to live faithfully whatever the cost. Amen.
Shane Claiborne
#58. Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.
Indira Gandhi
#59. Christ is the meritorious cause of the bestowing of those good gifts, faith and constancy unto martyrdom, upon you.
John Owen
#61. Mediocrity cherishes rules; as for me, I hate them; I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.
Gustave Flaubert
#62. A love of celibacy and a zeal for martyrdom does not bode well for the future of the sect." - regarding the Essenians
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
#64. Not being ambitious of martyrdom, even in the cause of gastronomical enterprise, especially if the instrument is to be a contemptible, rank-smelling fungus, I never eat or cook mushrooms.
Mary Virginia Terhune
#65. Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.
Lord Byron
#66. The highest honor that God can confer upon his children is the blood-red crown of martyrdom. The jewels of a Christian are his afflictions. The regalia of the kings that God has made, are their troubles, their sorrows, and their griefs. Griefs exalt us, and troubles lift us.
Charles Spurgeon
#67. Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.
Jonathan Edwards
#68. With no doubt Al Hussain was one of the greatest rebels, for correcting the path of rulers who deviated from the right path. He, by his stance honorably acquired martyrdom martyrdom that free people wish to acquire.
Leo Tolstoy
#69. If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.
Samuel Johnson
#70. I have read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought.
Vaclav Havel
#71. Politics is a noble activity. We should revalue it, practise it with vocation and a dedication that requires testimony, martyrdom, that is to die for the common good.
Pope Francis
#72. A dead martyr can be manipulated by his heirs; a living one is apt to drag his colleagues to the extremes dictated by the contingent pressures of his martyrdom.
John Peter Nettl
#73. God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#74. Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.
G.K. Chesterton
#75. A christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident.
T. S. Eliot
#76. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man.
Thomas Carlyle
#77. The Bible is always short on details. Didn't Stephen's innate sense of self-preservation thwart his martyrdom at all?
Hope Jahren
#78. Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.
Karl Kraus
#79. God uses prisons to train people for future roles of leadership or martyrdom.
Charles Colson
#80. They say martyrdom is the highest rank a believer can achieve! Do not believe in this! The highest rank is the life itself, it is the existence itself! There is no rank in death, but only nothingness! Rank exists only in life! Stick to the life, stay away from death! Neither kill nor die!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#81. In their (women) quest for rights they have naturally placed emphasis on their wrongs rather than their achievements and possessions, and have retold history as a story of their long martyrdom
Mary Ritter Beard
#82. I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.
Voltaire
#83. When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.
George Bernard Shaw
#84. The ANZACs, clinging lost and leaderless to the hillsides, began, as the hot afternoon gave way to grey drizzle, to experience their martyrdom.
John Keegan
#85. Those who endlessly praise the rank of martyrdom must first attain that rank! No invented rank is superior to the life! You stick to the life and let the fools stick to the death.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#86. We will not stop resisting the occupation until liberation or martyrdom.
Muqtada Al Sadr
#88. The Prayer of the sick person is his patience and his acceptance of his sickness for the love of Jesus Christ. Make sickness itself a prayer, for there is none more powerful, save martyrdom!
Saint Francis De Sales
#89. Do not desire crosses, unless you have borne well those laid on you; it is an abuse to long after martyrdom while unable to bear an insult patiently.
Saint Francis De Sales
#90. I mean who the hell do you think you are, exactly? Saint Roland of the Perpetual Martyrdom?
Catherine Jinks
#91. The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage.
Chuck Palahniuk
#92. The Europeans and Americans have said the martyrdom operations are why Hamas has been put on the terrorist list. But now these operations have stopped. Did they then remove Hamas from the list of terrorist organisations? We do not launch wars. We are people resisting occupation.
Ismail Haniyeh
#93. It's a real job" I said. "Getting promoted to martyrdom is not the top position.
Sam Wazan
#94. Martyrdom is the only path to immortality that requires no talent whatsoever.
George Bernard Shaw
#95. You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
George Eliot
#96. Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
Mark Twain
#97. The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence.
Sam Harris
#98. The noble heart will find no shortage of places to offer itself in martyrdom, but you cannot die on every battlefield."
~ Duncan Sinclair, from The Outcast Highlander
R.L. Syme
#99. It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
Oscar Wilde
#100. The future of modern society depends much more on the quiet heroism of the very few who are inspired by God. These few will greatly enjoy the divine inspiration and will be prepared to stand for the dignity of Man and true freedom and to keep the Law of God, even of it means martyrdom or death.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
