Martyr Quotes & Sayings

It is better to say one Our Father fervently and devoutly than a thousand with no devotion and full of distraction. — Edmund The Martyr

Compare two people, one of whom has been crippled by an accident, the other by an early environmental history which makes him lazy and, when criticized, mean. Both cause great inconvenience to others, but one dies a martyr, the other a scoundrel. — B.F. Skinner

The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities. — Benjamin Cardozo

For I choose to follow not men or men's doctrines, but God and the doctrines [delivered] by Him. For if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this [truth], and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians — Justin Martyr

Sound doctrine does not enter into a hard and disobedient heart. — Justin Martyr

It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much. — Ayn Rand

A willing heart will believe anything and die for anything — Bangambiki Habyarimana

A martyr's just a casualty with really good PR. I'd rather be a living coward any day. — Mira Grant

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick. — Flannery O'Connor

People not cry 'coztheir weak,
It Beacaus They've been srong ...
GFor too long !! — Reynilyn

It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb. — Richard Dawkins

Don't you go up on the roof in that!" I exclaimed, sitting up abruptly. "That's your good woolen shirt!" He halted by the door, glared briefly at me, then, with the rebuking expression of an early Christian martyr, laid down his tools, stripped off the shirt, dropped it on the floor, picked up the tools, and strode majestically out to deal with the leak, buttocks clenched with determined zeal. I — Diana Gabaldon

Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty. I doubt whether you would know that St. Cassian of Imola was stabbed to death by his students with their styli. His death, a martyr's honorable one, made him a patron saint of teachers. Pray to him, you deluded fool, you "anyone for tennis?" golf-playing, cocktail-quaffing pseudo-pedant, for you do indeed need a heavenly patron. Although your days are numbered, you will not die as a martyr - for you further no holy cause - but as the total ass which you really are. ZORRO A sword was drawn on the last line of the page. — John Kennedy Toole

Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd. — Soren Kierkegaard

He who leaves his home in search of knowledge walks in the path of God ... and the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr; — Will Durant

Rhianna flashed Rose a small smile.
Sometimes I have a chip on my shoulder. You know, the woe-is-me-I'm-such-a-martyr complex. — Christine Feehan

Although I know very little of the Steppenwolf's life, I have all the same good reason to suppose that he was brought up by devoted but severe and very pious parents and teachers in accordance with that doctrine that makes the breaking of the will the corner-stone of education and upbringing. But in this case the attempt to destroy the personality and to break the will did not succeed. He was much too strong and hardy, too proud and spirited. Instead of destroying his personality they succeeded only in teaching him to hate himself. It was against himself that, innocent and noble as he was, he directed during his whole life the whole wealth of his fancy, the whole of his thought; and in so far as he let loose upon himself every barbed criticism, every anger and hate he could command, he was, in spite of all, a real Christian and a real martyr. — Hermann Hesse

Henceforth we find woman no longer a slave of man and tool of lust, but the pride and joy of her husband, the fond mother training her children to virtue and godliness, the ornament and treasure of the family, the faithful sister, the zealous servant of the congregation in every work of Christian charity, the sister of mercy, the martyr with superhuman courage, the guardian angel of peace, the example of purity, humility, gentleness, patience, love, and fidelity unto death. Such women were unknown before. The heathen Libanius, the enthusiastic eulogist of old Grecian culture, pronounced an involuntary eulogy on Christianity when he exclaimed, as he looked at the mother of Chrysostom: "What women the Christians have! — Philip Schaff

It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr. — Napoleon Bonaparte

And to crown the whole, you must needs come back and make a martyr of yourself, so now anyone who cares a farthing for your life must watch you hanged; that is, if they do not decide to make a spectacle of it and draw and quarter you in the fine old style. I suppose you would go to it like Harrison, 'as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.' Well, I should not be damned cheerful, and neither should anyone else who loved you, and some of them can knock down half of London Town if they should choose. — Naomi Novik

And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus. — Justin Martyr

It fills me with joy to realize that I can lay down my life daily for God, that I can sacrifice it willingly for Him. I may not be a martyr for the faith, but I can be a martyr of charity. — Rose Philippine Duchesne

We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools ... now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us through the Crucified One ... The more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers. — Justin Martyr

Religion is passionate, reckless, destructive, idol-smashing. It's a martyr burning at the stake. It's a crown of thorns and a cross. — Martha Ostenso

The gospels do not relate the story of a misunderstood ethical teacher, a failed social revolutionary, a model of selfless humility, or even a heroic martyr; they reveal the Savior who is God incarnate, the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Selflessness involves giving up your self. You become a martyr. Like the Hindu kamikaze warriors. These Japanese Hindus chose to give up their lives, and they were killed if they didn't. Imagine what their families felt. One day you have a father, and next, you're watching him fly a plane into a ship on Pearl Harbor on television. Those kids didn't do anything wrong. They just lived in an evil country. The axis of evil. That sort of evil is beyond anything you or I will experience in our lifetimes. So be glad. Be glad we live in the US of A. Be glad we get to choose, with our freedoms. Now get out there and fight! — Bill Konigsberg

Rani, too, was perpetuating memories. Harappa the martyr, the demigod, lived on in his daughter's thoughts; but no two sets of memories ever match, even when their subject is the same (...) — Salman Rushdie

Plain singing is not childish, but only the singing with lifeless organs, with dancing, and cymbals, &c. Whence the use of such instruments, and other things fit for children, is laid aside and plain singing only retained. — Justin Martyr

You're wallowing in guilt and he's playing the martyr. It's like living in the middle of Hamlet. — Susan Mallery

These martyrs of patriotism gave their lives for an idea. — Schuyler Colfax

You are a man with music in his soul. You are capricious, contrary, contradictory. You delight in childish games, and delight even more in winning. For a man of such intense piety, you are surprisingly petty. You are a gentleman, a virtuoso, a scholar, and a martyr, and of those masks, I like the martyr least of all. You are austere, you are pompous, you are pretentious, you are foolish. — S. Jae-Jones

And this food is called among us the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins and to regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. — Justin Martyr

For some not to be martyrs is martyrdom indeed. — Leo Rosten

The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves. When we see the martyr to virtue, subject as he is to the infirmities of a man, yet suffering the tortures of a demon, and bearing them with the magnanimity of a God, do we not behold a heroism that angels may indeed surpass, but which they cannot imitate, and must admire. — Charles Caleb Colton

Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. — Richard Dawkins

God called Abraham and commanded him to go out from the country where he was living. With this call God has roused us all, and now we have left the state. We have renounced all the things the world offers ... The gods of the nations are demons. — Justin Martyr

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom. — Mahatma Gandhi

Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint. He was a martyr. — Ezra Pound

The measure of woman's distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr's crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain. — Quentin Crisp

Someone who accepts that in the world as currently divided war can become inevitable, and even just, might reply that the photographs supply no evidence, none at all, for renouncing war - except to those form whom the notions of valor and sacrifice have been emptied of meaning and credibility. The destructiveness of war - short of total destruction, which is not war but suicide - is not in itself an argument against waging war unless one thinks (as few people actually do think) that violence is always unjustifiable, that force is always and in all circumstances wrong - wrong because, as Simone Weil affirms in her sublime essay on war, "The Iliad, or The Poem of Force" (1940), violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing. No, retort those who in a given situation see no alternative to armed struggle, violence can exalt someone subjected to it into a martyr or hero. — Susan Sontag

Men are prostrated by misfortune; women bend, but do not break, and martyr-like live on. — Anna Cora Mowatt

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

He who suffers wins in politics. The martyr does not obtain the victory personally, but his group, his successors, win in the long run. — Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Without chemical slaughterhouses, without a systematic mass murder, the tragedy of the Jews is just one out of the numerous tragedies that befell the nations of Europe during the Second World War. The Jewish people thus loses its martyr status, and the State of Israel, whose establishing was approved by the world under the impression of an alleged 'unparalleled genocide,' would lose its legitimacy. — Jurgen Graf

The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven. — Charles Caleb Colton

The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation. — John Donne

Other men have said, "If I could only live, I would establish and perpetuate an empire." This Christ of Galilee says, "My death shall do it." Other martyrs have died in simple fidelity to truth. This martyr dies that He may make His truth mighty over all hearts. He was a man; but was He only a man? — Herrick Johnson

Whoever wishes to rise above the common level must be prepared for a great struggle and recoil before no obstacle. A great writer is just simply a martyr whom the stake cannot kill. — Honore De Balzac

Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned. — Giordano Bruno

I swear to God, I will see [the Palestinian state], whether as a martyr or alive. Please, God, give me the honor of becoming a martyr in the fight for Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

Young men, terminate, I beseech you, in your own experience, the sad divorce which has too often existed between intellect and piety. Take your stand, unswerving, heroic, by the altar of truth; and from that altar let neither sophistry nor ridicule expel you. Let your faith rest with a child's trust, with a martyr's grip, upon the truth as it is in Jesus. — William Morley Punshon

The Prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel. — Eduard Hanslick

But to procrastinate and prevaricate simply because you're afraid of erring, when others - I mean our brethren in Germany - must make infinitely more difficult decisions every day, seems to me almost to run counter to love. To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love. (Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, 218) — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The girl did not even know the video would be leaked. Yet it is her willingness to suffer hardship that gave her power. Martyrs, you see, are like bees. Their only power comes in death. How many of you would sacrifice yourself to not kill, but merely hurt your enemy? Not one of you, I wager."

I taste blood in my mouth. I have the knifeRing Dancer gave me. But I breathe the fury down. I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I am Eo's dream. Still, doing nothing while her murderer gloats feels like a betrayal.

"In time you will receive your Scars from my sword," Augustus closes. "But first you must earn them. — Pierce Brown

Virtue has many preachers, but few martyrs. — Claude Adrien Helvetius

I write not for the sake of glory. Not for the sake of fame. Not of the sake of success. But for the sake of my soul. — Rachel Scott

Forced motherhood results in bringing miserable children into the world, children whose parents cannot feed them, who become victims of public assistance or "martyr children." It must be pointed out that the same society so determined to defend the rights of the fetus shows no interest in children after they are born; instead of trying to reform this scandalous institution called public assistance, society prosecutes abortionists; those responsible for delivering orphans to torturers are left free; society closes its eyes to the horrible tyranny practiced in "reform schools" or in the private homes of child abusers; and while it refuses to accept that the fetus belongs to the mother carrying it, it nevertheless agrees that the child is his parents' thing. — Simone De Beauvoir

Suffering has as much right to be expressed as a martyr has to cry out. So it may have been false to say that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible. — Theodor Adorno

Nothing says romance like hobos, martyrs and decapitations. — Craig Ferguson

And, in the future, while the dumb show of bohemianism plays itself out in the cookie cutter shape of the politically correct martyr/victim, aesthetic terrorists will not involve themselves in the dubious rewards of celebrity. The best of them will work alone, already a part of the enemy camp, and in chameleon-like style master the fifth-column algorithms to subvert the ancient regime. We won't know them by their name but their compensation will be to affect the outcome of the planet. Until then, there's a lot of work to be done. — Adam Parfrey

Don't be a martyr to your imagination. — Sheridan Hay

It is even possible to be a martyr for the Faith and yet not love Jesus Christ. — Oswald J. Smith

It is not the punishment but the cause that makes the martyr. — Saint Augustine

Assassination makes only martyrs, not converts. — Alphonse De Lamartine

I am no martyr upon cross, but I would gladly give my life so that those more deserving may live. — Gannicus

Now bring what we have into common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different tribe, now since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to persuade those who hate us unjustly, to the end that they may become partakers of the same joyful hope of a reward from God the ruler of all. — Justin Martyr

You always were the martyr, weren't you?" The Overlord snickered, and I closed my eyes briefly, relieved and devastated that he was accepting the trade. "So loyal,so brave, so foolishly self-sacrificing. I will see you regret it all before you die."
"You failed the last time you tried," London shot back. "I'm quite eager to see if you've improved. — Cayla Kluver

We should have but one desire today - the desire to die so that India may live - the desire to face a martyr's death, so that the path to freedom may be paved with the martyr's blood. — Subhas Chandra Bose

A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions if he is not even ready to wear a wreathe around his head for them. — G.K. Chesterton

Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Sad is one of those words that has given up its life for our country, it's been a martyr for the American dream, it's been neutralized, co-opted by our culture to suggest a tinge of discomfort that lasts the time it takes for this and then for that to happen, the time it takes to change a channel. But sadness is real because once it meant something real. It meant dignified, grave; it meant trustworthy; it meant exceptionally bad, deplorable, shameful; it meant massive, weighty, forming a compact body; it meant falling heavily; and it meant of a color: dark. It meant dark in color, to darken. It meant me. I felt sad. — Claudia Rankine

Better to be a catalyst for change than a martyr for lies. — Karina Halle

The Law waits for you to stumble on a mode of being, a soul different from the FDA-approved purple-stamped standard dead meat - & as soon as you begin to act in harmony with nature the Law garottes & strangles you - so don't play the blessed liberal middleclass martyr - accept the fact that you're a criminal & be prepared to act like one. — Hakim Bey

But now you have another problem. Keeping him from exploding like a live granade and blitzing all of us." He started walking down the hall. "I've already had a little taste of that and I'm not willing to stand for it again. I'm patient, I'm not a martyr. Fix it Eve. — Iris Johansen

As it stands, motherhood is a sort of wilderness through which each woman hacks her way, part martyr, part pioneer; a turn of events from which some women derive feelings of heroism, while others experience a sense of exile from the world they knew. — Rachel Cusk

Being a martyr is highly overrated. — Patricia Briggs

We pray for our enemies; we seek to persuade those who hate us without cause to live conformably to the goodly precepts of Christ, that they may become partakers with us of the joyful hope of blessings from God, the Lord of all. — Justin Martyr

He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool. — Charles Caleb Colton

From long experience in places like Afghanisatan and Chechnya, Sokolov recognised, in the black jihadist's movements, a sort of cultural or attitudinal advantage that such people always enjoyed in situations like this: they were complete fatalists who believed that God was on their side. Russians, on the other hand, were fatalists of a somewhat different kind, believing, or at least strongly suspecting, that they were fucked no matter what, and that they had better just make the best of it anyway, but not seeing in this the hand of God at work or the hope of some future glory in a martyr's heavens. — Neal Stephenson

In the narrative of his third voyage Columbus wrote: "For I believe that the earthly Paradise lies here, which no one can enter except by God's leave." As for the people of this land, Peter Martyr would write as early as 1505: "They seem to live in that golden world of which old writers speak so much, wherein men lived simply and innocently without enforcement of laws, without quarreling, judges, or libels, content only to satisfy nature." Or as the ever present Montaigne would write: "In my opinion, what we actually see in these nations not only surpasses all the pictures which the poets have drawn of the Golden Age, and all their inventions representing the then happy state of mankind, but also the conception and desire of philosophy itself. — Paul Auster

Commemoration of Katherine of Alexandria, Martyr, 4th century If ye keep watch over your hearts, and listen for the Voice of God and learn of Him, in one short hour ye can learn more from Him than ye could learn from Man in a thousand years. — Johannes Tauler

Life is about discovering things worth dying for. — Criss Jami

He was a martyr of peace but was the victim of hate. If people can't let go of the hatred of their enemies they risk sowing the seeds of hate among themselves. — William J. Clinton

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle. — Rollo May

Gorky called for the building of a monument to the young martyr, who, the writer said, had 'understood that a relative by blood may also be an enemy of the spirit, and that such a person is not to be spared'.69 — Orlando Figes

Ashlei was free to spout off how much she loved her savior because Jesus was not about to rear back and tell her He did not quite feel the same way, that He had died for the sins of the world just because it was fun and did not want things to be too serious. He was only thirty-three, after all, and might want to martyr himself for other people. — Thomm Quackenbush

India is calling Blood is calling to blood. Get up, we have no time to lose. Take up your arms ! we shall carve our way through the enemy's ranks, or if God wills, we shall die a martyr's death. And in our last sleep we shall kiss the road that will bring our Army to Delhi. The road to Delhi is the road to Freedom. Chalo Delhi (March to Delhi). — Subhas Chandra Bose

We have strayed from the Immortal's ways And worship with a dull and senseless mind Idols, the workmanship of our own hands, And images and figures of dead men. — Justin Martyr

If you die and enough people are watching, then you become a martyr, you become a hero, you become well-known. — Marilyn Manson

Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others
first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one's own interests and desires. Carried to its "perfection," it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother. — Jean Baker Miller

There is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting it of them. The martyr in his 'shirt of flame' may be looking on the face of God, but to him who is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the whole scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or the fall of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe. Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them. — Oscar Wilde

Executing a criminal often makes a martyr of him. Once he's dead and gone, people all too often forget the crimes he's committed and start to see a more sanitised version. A person like that starts to be seen as a victim. — John Flanagan

A dead martyr is just another corpse. — Leo Gordon

Her eyes were misting over, her heart was talking on her lips. To need everything when everything is finished. She no longer knew whether she was sad or whether it was hunger. To live like that, head bent forward, chin resting down near her breasts, without muscles, without sinews, without vertebrae.
She smiled a martyr's smile for her own benefit: for her wretchedness was also a tenderness, and resignation is not the same as oblivion. — Violette Leduc

Mom brought me some peanut butter cookies and a biography of Judy Garland. She told me she thought my problem was that I was too impatient, my fuse was too short, that I was only interested in instant gratification. I said, "Instant gratification takes too long." The glib martyr. — Carrie Fisher

It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait. — Erica Jong

Her function in existence was to carry blasting destruction at high speed to floating islands of men; and her intended destiny, at the opposite pole from that of the male bee, was to die in this act of impregnating her enemy with death. It was, perhaps, for this reason that she carried her distinctly feminine bow, which was very high and sharp, with graceful arrogance and some slight vindictiveness, after the manner of a perfectly controlled martyr selected for spectacular and aristocratic sacrifice. Her name was Delilah. — Marcus Goodrich

The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority, and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here, is infringing eternal laws, and taking upon himself superhuman authority, which will eventually crush him. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm sure I'm worth a lot more dead than alive - the sum of the parts equal more than the whole. I wonder who might wind up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart. — Jodi Picoult