Small Sacrifices Quotes & Sayings

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure the comfort. — Humphy Davy

Imagine a world where speaking or writing words can literally or directly make things happen, where getting one of those words wrong can wreak unbelievable havoc, but where the right spell you can summon immensely powerful agencies to work your will. Imagine further that this world is administered: there is an extensive division of labour, among the magicians themselves and between the magicians and those who coordinate their activity. It's bureaucratic, and also (therefore) chaotic, and it's full of people at desks muttering curses and writing invocations, all beavering away at a small part of the big picture. The coordinators, because they don't understand what's going on, are easy prey for smooth-talking preachers of bizarre cults that demand arbitrary sacrifices and vanish with large amounts of money. Welcome to the IT department. — Ken MacLeod

Love is all about sacrifices - big and small ones. It's only when you know how much you could give up for somebody that you know what true love really is." The whirring fan spun above them, — Karen White

There's something you need to understand, Jonah. For every person who's stealing and setting fires and turning over police cars, there are three or four others in the same neighborhood who want no part of it, who're more afraid of lawbreakers than they are of the law." "Doesn't look that way." "Because the TV only shows you the ones who're doing it. The news isn't all the news, Jonah. Not by a long shot. It's just what reporters want to tell you about. Riots come and go, wars come and go, but under the tumult, day after day, century after century, millions of people are doing nice things for one another, making sacrifices, mostly small things, but it's all those little kindnesses that hold civilization together, all those people who live quiet lives and never make the news. — Dean Koontz

Small sacrifices must be made. — Otto Lilienthal

She picked up a slice of Victoria Sponge, broke it into large pieces and tossed them in their direction. I hadn't had any yet, and could not suppress a small whimper. 'It's for science, Director,' she said. 'We must all make sacrifices. — Jodi Taylor

Both the fragmentation of power and the conflicting government policies are rooted in the political realities of a democratic system that operates by enacting detailed and specific legislation. Such a system tends to give undue political power to small groups that have highly concentrated interests, to give greater weight to obvious, direct, and immediate effects of government action than to possibly more important but concealed, indirect, and delayed effects, to set in motion a process that sacrifices the general interest to serve special interests, rather than the other way around. There is, as it were, an invisible hand in politics that operates in precisely the opposite direction to Adam Smith's invisible hand. Individuals who intend only to promote the general interest are led by the invisible political hand to promote a special interest that they had no intention to promote. — Milton Friedman

Nick and I, we sometimes laugh, laugh out loud, at the horrible things women make their husbands do to prove their love. The pointless tasks, the myriad sacrifices, the endless small surrenders. We call these men the dancing monkeys. — Gillian Flynn

The sacrifices ordinary American men and women from communities large and small have been willing to make, often before they were past their teenage years, have secured our nation unprecedented freedoms and made us the world's bulwark of liberty. — Steve Buyer

In terms of any sacrifices at the time [of World War II], I was somewhat protected living on a small farm where there was food, different perhaps from living in a city environment. I know such things as gas rationing did exist, but it wasn't anything that interfered with my daily activity. — Paul Smith

She'd always known a simple truth: Intimacy was the heart of marriage. Not just sex. Intimacy meant doing things together, and being together. In marriage, you were no longer just one person, but two-in-one. Part of a greater whole. Both halves needed to make sacrifices for the union to work, but in the best marriages, those sacrifices were small, because the two halves were so even, and so compatible. — Deborah Davitt

The Christian faith is meant to be lived moment by moment. It isn't some broad, general outline
it's a long walk with a real Person. Details count: passing thoughts, small sacrifices, a few encouraging words, little acts of kindness, brief victories over nagging sins. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Most people think they want Main Streets but won't make the small sacrifices in terms of time, cost, and footpower necessary to sustain them. The sad fact is that we have created a culture in which most people will happily-indeed, unthinkingly-drive an extra couple of miles to walk thirty less feet. — Bill Bryson

I couldn't stand by and watch you put yourselves in harm's way. No way. And fuck those SAVAK bastards, and their Western masters, and the grand servant of the West. Fuck anyone who wants to put me in jail because I stood by my friends to mourn the death of a hero, screw them all. I don't care if I have to spend the rest of my life behind bars, I don't, I really don't. I learned today that friendship is worth making sacrifices for. Doctor proved that life is a small price to pay for your beliefs. — Mahbod Seraji

Basketball, more than any other sport, is a team game ... about the thousands of small, unselfish acts, the sacrifices on the part of the players that result in team building. — Dean Smith

Abortion is one of the most shocking, yet entirely logical, extensions of this obsession with comfort, convenience and luxury. Less dramatic, but just as deadly to millions of lost souls in our world, is our unwillingness to make even small sacrifices to reach them with the Gospel. — K.P. Yohannan

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. — James Baldwin

A sound intruded. It was barely discernable, the rub of fur against a leaf,but it was enough to elicit a frustrated groan from Julian. He leaned his forhead against her crown. "This family unit you have is driving me over the edge.We have no privacy,piccola, none whatsoever."
She laughed softly with the same frustration. "I know,Julian. But it is one of the small sacrifices we all pay for caring for one another. We help each other through any crisis."
"Who is going to help me through this one? Believe me,cara, I am definitely having a crisis. I need you before I start to go insane."
"I know.It is the same for me," she whispered, her lips against the corner of his mouth, teasing, tempting. There was an ache in her voice, an answer to the ache in his. "We will have our time."
"It had better be soon," he growled, meaning it. — Christine Feehan

The happiness of married life depends upon making small sacrifices with readiness and cheerfulness. — John Selden

Just the minute another person is drawn into some one's life, there begin to arise undreamed-of complexities, and from such a simple beginning as sexual desire we find built up such alarming yet familiar phenomena as fetes, divertissements, telephone conversations, arrangements, plans, sacrifices, train arrivals, meetings, appointments, tardiness, delays, marriages, dinners, small pets and animals, calumny, children, music lessons, yellow shades for the windows, evasions, lethargy, cigarettes, candies, repetition of stories and anecdotes, infidelity, ineptitude, incompatibility, bronchial trouble, and many others, all of which are entirely foreign to the original urge and way off the subject. — E.B. White

But when it comes to integrating career and family, planning too far in advance can close doors rather than open them. I have seen this happen over and over. Women rarely make one big decision to leave the workforce. Instead, they make a lot of small decisions along the way, making accommodations and sacrifices that they believe will be required to have a family. Of all the ways women hold themselves back, perhaps the most pervasive is that they leave before they leave. The — Sheryl Sandberg

The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD [K-Fucked] is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer
please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you
an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, small-animal sacrifices, especially now that the Supreme Court has legalized them. — Anne Lamott

The incomprehensible suffering of Jesus Christ ended sacrifice by the shedding of blood, but it did not end the importance of sacrifice in the gospel plan. Our Savior requires us to continue to offer sacrifices, but the sacrifices He now commands are that we 'offer for a sacrifice unto [Him] a broken heart and a contrite spirit' (3 Nephi 9:20). He also commands each of us to love and serve one another - in effect, to offer a small imitation of His own sacrifice by making sacrifices of our own time and selfish priorities. — Dallin H. Oaks