Quotes about Sacrifice
By its birth, and for all time, Christianity is pledged to the Cross and dominated by the sign of the Cross. It cannot remain its own self except by identifying itself ever more intensely with the essence of the Cross.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life's preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime.
— Steven Pressfield
His was not, I could see now, the heroism of an Achilles. He was not a superman who waded invulnerably into the slaughter, single-handedly slaying the foe by myriads. He was just a man doing a job. A job whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure, not for his own sake, but for those whom he led by his example.
— Steven Pressfield
The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood. The artist wears combat boots.
— Steven Pressfield
Then there's the third way proffered by the Lord of Discipline, which is beyond both hierarchy and territory. That is to do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God. Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego
— Steven Pressfield
In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity.
— Steven Pressfield
Never forget, Alexandros, that this flesh, this body, does not belong to us. Thank God it doesn't. If I thought this stuff was mine, I could not advance a pace into the face of the enemy. But it is not ours, my friend. It belongs to the gods and to our children, our fathers and mothers and those of Lakedaemon a hundred, a thousand years yet unborn. It belongs to the city which gives us all we have and demands no less in requital.
— Steven Pressfield
will tell His Majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field.
— Steven Pressfield
I will tell His Majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field.
— Steven Pressfield
When you move your material ass to the geographic site of your dream, your peers and potential mentors think at once, This person is serious. She has committed. She has burned the boats. She is one of us.
— Steven Pressfield
Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.
— Steven Pressfield
On realising that he is not a born warrior, as the rest of his troop are): A cherished self-conception must be given up, and one feels diminished by it. This is mistaken, however. A person discovers that he has been made stronger by the jettisoning of this sham and disadvantageous bag-gage. In fact, he has become more "himself," by aligning his self-concept more closely with fact.
— Steven Pressfield