Quotes & Sayings About Martyrdom In Love

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

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

Soon after they went back, Jules said to Jim: 'I love Magda. But it's a habit; it's not a great Love, not the real thing. To me, she's like a young mother and an attentive daughter, both at once.' 'But that's fine!' 'It's not the love I've always dreamed of having.' 'Does that kind of love exist?' said Jim. 'Of course! My love for Lucie.' Jim checked himself from saying, 'Because you do not possess her.' 'Besides,' Jules went on, 'knowing myself as I do, I shall never be able to forgive any woman for loving me. To love me is a sign of perversion or compromise -- and Lucie doesn't suffer from either. There's not a particle of me that she accepts.' 'With her, any man could think that.' 'Yes, could...' said Jules 'But I do.' 'Oh well,' said Jim, 'it's heroic and one can't help respecting it. It's a bit like martyrdom. And it's the key to your Life. If Lucie loved you...' 'She wouldn't be Lucie.' said Jules. — Henri-Pierre Roche

Her beauty is not just - or even primarily - physical. In her face, I see her wisdom, her compassion, her courage, her eternal glory. This other beauty, this spiritual beauty - which is the deepest truth of her - sustains me in times of fear and despair, as other truths might sustain a priest enduring martyrdom at the hands of a tyrant. I see nothing blasphemous in equating her grace with the mercy of God, for the one is a reflection of the other. The selfless love that we give to others to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest; we carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope. In her it is spark is bright, a light that heals rather than wounds me. — Dean Koontz

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs
for their religion
I have shuddered at it,
I shudder no more.
I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.
My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet. — John Keats

Christ-as always, the model-never sat back, crossed his arms, and dismissed the annoying, the troublesome, or the unpromising. He never name-called, never judged, never treated a single person with contempt. Christ talked to everybody, he mingled with everybody, he shared his message with everybody, and he also loved everybody. So don't count the cost with anybody either. We don't waste our time with people who don't want what we have to offer. But if they do, one form of martyrdom is to give a listening ear or an understanding smile to all comers. — Heather King

We will martyr ourselves, suffering under the weight of a non-reciprocal relationship until some part of us bursts in protest. Suddenly, we lose our mind, and allowing ourselves to heap all manner of nastiness, name calling, patronizing, death threats on the "deserving" jerk who has it coming after all we do for him/her! As the final insult rings across the room and we regain consciousness, we are horrified by what has come out of our mouth. After all, we LOVE these people, and we quickly move into anxious terror that this time we have gone too far . . . this time we crossed the line and they will leave us. So, we hunker back down and the martyrdom begins again. It's a terrible cycle. — Mary Crocker Cook

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

Their example gives witness to the fact that baptism commits Christians to participate boldly in the spread of the Kingdom of God, cooperating if necessary with the sacrifice of one's own life ... This martyrdom of ordinary life is a particularly important witness in the secularized societies of our time. It is the peaceful battle of love that all Christians, like Paul, have to fight tirelessly; the race to spread the Gospel that commits us until death. May Mary, Queen of Martyrs and Star of Evangelization, help us and assist us in our daily witness. — Pope Benedict XVI

God sends such purgations to you, directors of consciences, that you may acquire the science of the saints and the art of directing souls. You will suffer also in another way. Love will be your executioner. Let it do its work; it knows how. In this martyrdom we have need of extraordinary grace and strength; but God will bestow it. Without this divine help it would be impossible to bear up. — Paul Of The Cross

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart
The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd
To fetters and damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom. — Lord Byron

I believe there is no greater act of marital love or martyrdom than attending an event involving your spouse's family without your spouse in attendance. — Melanie Shankle

It is not easy to explain why God permits evil; but it is impossible for an atheist to explain the existence of goodness. How could a spiritless, soul-less, cross-less, Godless universe become the center of faith, purity, sacrifice, and martyrdom? How can decency be the decent thing if there is no God? Since God is love, why should we be surprised that want of it should end in pain, hate, broken hearts, and war? — Fulton J. Sheen

For a true spiritual transformation to flourish, we must see beyond this tendency to mental self-flagellation. Spirituality based on self-hatred can never sustain itself. Generosity coming from self-hatred becomes martyrdom. Morality born of self-hatred becomes rigid repression. Love for others without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of boundaries, codependency, and a painful and fruitless search for intimacy. But when we contact, through meditation, our true nature, we can allow others to also find theirs. — Sharon Salzberg

A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no long desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr. — T. S. Eliot

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

We are at our best when we love the Lord and his church more than our style of life. We do not believe in our country, right or wrong. If evil has such a grip upon the institutions of government, we know that evil must be overthrown by one means or another. We are not monarchists, republicans or socialists, although our membership includes them all and more. We are pilgrims, who want to pass through a land that will support our journey to the Kingdom; and, if need be, the noblest of us will choose to occupy that land for a bit shorter time than usual rather than deny the Lord of the Kingdom. — Urban T. Holmes III

Love makes the whole difference between an execution and a martyrdom. — Evelyn Underhill

He prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon, and that is all. [ ... ] Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love [ ... ] and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will never undergo it. — Charlotte Bronte

Elissa pulled away from Stepmama and rose to her feet. She gazed down at Mr Collingwood's tormented face and smoothed back the jet-black hair from his fore- head. I could have sworn I saw a glowing halo rise around her as she spoke. "You must forgive me, my love, and learn to forget me, for my sake."
"Oh, my Lord," I said. "You've been waiting your whole life for this, haven't you?"
"Can you doubt it?" said Angeline. "Look at the two of them! He's as bad as she is. — Stephanie Burgis

Without love everything can be nothing. Does that make me want to love? No. For me, Ignorance is still better than martyrdom. — Ira N. Barin

Death row groupies mystify me. These women spend their lives visiting the condemned religiously, writing them daily, falling in love with them, and marrying them if they can. For some women, perhaps, condemned killers have that special aura or sex appeal. Apparently it gratifies their sense of romance or martyrdom. — Robert Blecker

We cannot look upon our lives as dreams of a dreamer who has no awakening in all time. We have a personality to which matter and force are unmeaning unless related to something infinitely personal, whose nature we have discovered, in some measure, in human love, in the greatness of the good, in the martyrdom of heroic souls, in the ineffable beauty of nature, which can never be a mere physical fact nor anything but an expression of personality. — Rabindranath Tagore

The most degrading cross has always produced the greatest glory and force, as long as the humility of the martyrdom is sincere. But do you have that humility? What you need is not a challenge but infinite humility and humiliation! You mustn't despise those who judge you, but believe in them sincerely, as in a great church; then you will triumph over them and turn them toward you by your example, and you will be united in love
ah, if only you could endure it! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one's faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one's life — St. Jerome

And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you're a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love. — Eldridge Cleaver

Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted history of suffering. — Charles Dickens