Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Sacrifice

"Happiness is a rebound from hard work. One of the follies of man is to assume that he can enjoy mere emotion. As well try to eat beauty. Happiness must be tricked. She loves to see men work. She loves sweat, weariness, self-sacrifice. She will not be found in the palaces, but lurking in cornfields and factories, and hovering over littered desks. She crowns the unconscious head of the busy child." -

"History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today." - Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton

"If it is a small sacrifice to discontinue the use of wine, do it for the sake of others; if it is a great sacrifice, do it for your own." - Samuel Joseph May

"Prepare the soul calmly to obey; such offering will be more acceptable to God than every other sacrifice." - Metastasio, aka Pietro Petastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi NULL

"Extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public the false impression that they are being asked to make a sacrifice - to show more responsibility, more concern, and a nicer moral standard. But all of that would flow naturally and easily if the self were widened and deepened so that the protection of nature was felt and perceived as protection of our very selves." - Arne Dekke Eide Naess

"The Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"No man’s spirits were ever hurt by doing his duty; on the contrary, one good action, one temptation resisted and overcome, one sacrifice of desire or interest, purely for conscience’ sake, will prove a cordial for weak and low spirits, far beyond what either indulgence or diversion or company can do for them." - William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa

"The platform of the altar of love may be analyzed and explained; it is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection. Such is the pyre, such is the offering; but the eternal spark must come from heaven, that lights the sacrifice." - Jane Porter

"Sacrifice life to truth." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Reverence for life does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful to the community in so doing. Reverence for life does not permit the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many by its means... Reverence for life demands for all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others." - Albert Schweitzer

"No man can hinder our private addresses to God; every man can build a chapel in his breast, himself the priest, his heart the sacrifice, and the earth he treads on, the alter." - Jeremy Taylor

"We talk about a space race. There is a space race down here on the ground. In this race every human being is superpower and the competition no longer stands a chance. Other species are bound to this or that patch of turf, and this planet. We feel bound to no patch of turn on Earth, bound only for the stars. We sacrifice a marsh, a bay, a park, a lake. We sacrifice a sparrow. We trade one countdown for another." - Jonathan Weiner

"Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a greater good to a less." - Richard Whately

"All action must be done in a more and more Godward and finally a God-possessed consciousness; our work must be a sacrifice to the Divine." -

"God has laid upon man the duty of being free, of safeguarding freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much sacrifice and suffering it may require." - Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev

"Parenting: Affection without sentiment, authority without cruelty, discipline without aggression, humor without ridicule, sacrifice without obligation, companionship without possessiveness." - William E. Blatz, fully William Emet Blatz

"Sacrifice is not something that comes from outside. It is something that comes from inside, being born in our hearts." - Li Chi

"The prime role of a leader is to offer an example of courage and sacrifice." - Régis Debray, fully Jules Régis Debray

"God is no dictator. He leaves us the freedom to master ourselves." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"Retreat is often a plan of resistance and may be a precursor of great bravery and sacrifice. Every retreat is not cowardice which implies fear to die." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"Self-sacrifice of one innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of a million men who die in the act of killing others." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"The willing sacrifice of the innocents is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet to be conceived by God or man." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"Paradoxically, then, the best life to live will be one that is constantly struggling to become a different sort of life, a life with more virtue and less enjoyment, with more to admire and less to envy. If that best of lives were to succeed in becoming what it strives to change itself into, however, it would not longer be the best of lives. It would then be a life purely of self-sacrifice, an unenviable life suitable only for admiration. So what life should we seek, then? If what we are asking is either what kind of life to seek in order to gain a purely enviable life, or what kind of life to seek in order to achieve a purely admirable life, for those questions, the answer is fairly easy. Only a life with both elements resonates with a full portion of good. And that life, I think we have to recognize, will also be a life in which the two types of good remain in tension; a life in which the enviable and the admirable are never quite reconciled." - Patrick Grim

"All of one’s life can be a “reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice” to deity, a sacrifice whose value depends on the quality of life, and this depends on the depth of the devotion to all good things, to all life’s possibilities, neither as mine nor as not mine but as belonging to God’s creatures and thus to God." - Charles Hartshorne

"Outside the sphere of individual responsibility there is neither goodness or badness… Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value." - F. A. Hayek, fully Friedrich August Hayek or von Hayek

"No individual or people can achieve anything without industry, suffering and sacrifice." - Fatima Jinna, also known as Madr-e-Millat, mother of the nation

"To renounce life in disgust is not sacrifice." - Thomas Merton

"Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one. War is a part of God’s world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man: courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice. Without war the world would sink into materialism." - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, fully Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Molke

"The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

"Not to go out and do your best is to sacrifice your gift." - Steve Prefontaine, fully Steve Roland "Pre" Prefontaine, aka World, Rube

"The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"The longer I live the more I am convinced that the one thing worth living for and dying for is the privilege of making someone more happy and more useful. No person who ever does anything to lift their fellows ever makes a sacrifice." -

"A sense of “belonging,” a sense of meaningful association with others, has never required that one sacrifice his individuality as part of the bargain. Why, then, do so many rush to embrace a philosophy which tells them it is necessary." - William H. Whyte, Jr., fully William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte

"I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice." -

"The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." - Charles Frédéric Dubois

"Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views." -

"There are seven things that will destroy us: Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Religion without sacrifice; Politics without principle; Science without humanity; Business without ethics." -

"There is no limit to the measure of sacrifice that one may make in order to realize oneness with all life, but certainly that ideal will set a limit to your wants. That is the antithesis of the position of modern civilization which says, "Increase your wants."" -

"There is but one rule of conduct for a man - to do the right thing. The cost may be dear in money, in friends, in influence, in labor, in a prolonged and painful sacrifice, but the cost not to do right is far more dear: You pay in the integrity of your manhood, in your honor, in strength of character; and, for a timely gain, you barter the infinite." - Archer G. Jones

"You should remember that though another may have more money, beauty, and brains than you, when it comes to the rarer spiritual values such as charity, self-sacrifice, honor and nobility of heart, you have an equal chance with everyone to be the most beloved and honored of all people." - Archibald Rutledge

"Self-preservation is the first law of nature; self-sacrifice the highest rule of grace." - Author Unknown NULL

"Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum

"If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man - a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites - that it permits no concept of a benevolent coexistence among men - that it permits no concept of justice." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum

"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum

"My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own purpose. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum

"Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may be talked of." - Blaise Pascal

"What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage." - Bruce Barton

"For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few." - Charles Caleb Colton