Pastoral Resources

It is not the punishment but the cause that makes the martyr.

It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.

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

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

These martyrs of patriotism gave their lives for an idea.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr, the man who will not act until he knows all will never act at all.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs.

All religions have periods in their history which are looked back to with retrospective fear and trembling as eras of persecution, and each religion has its own book of martyrs.

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

Acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, so overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies to work and not imagine himself a martyr to art.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.