“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome.
The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?”
Source: Hitch 22: A Memoir
“In those early days,
I gave you a motto -
My world, my responsibility.
I say to you further today,
Burn my books to cinders,
and go light up humanity.”
Source: Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn
“I don't write for popularity, I write for posterity.”
Source: Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch
“So you've decided to sacrifice me?' he asked.
'I would never do that!'
'I know.' His eyes turned teasing, sparking with tiny flecks of silver. 'I've seen what a mess you become when I'm not around.'
(Waterstones Exclusive Edition Alternate Ending).”
Source: A Curse for True Love
“They ask me,
why do you speak for so many cultures,
when you are not born in those cultures?
So I asked the sun,
why do you share your light with earth,
when you are not born of earth?
The sun told me,
o ye of little mind, don't you know,
light is not mine to give!
Light is the intrinsic right of life,
I am merely accessory to the motive.”
Source: Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One
“The gifts are intensifiers of desire for Christ himself in much the same way that fasting is. When you give a gift to Christ like this, it's a way of saying something like this: The joy that I pursue is not the hope of getting rich with things from you. I have not come to you for your things but for yourself. And this desire I now intensify and demonstrate by giving up things in the hope of enjoying you more, not the things. By giving to you what you do not need and what I might enjoy, I am saying more earnestly and more authentically, "You are my treasure, not these things." I think that's what it means to worship God with gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.”
Source: The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
“Try me good king, but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and judges… My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, whom (as I understand) are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight; if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears, let me obtain this request. (A letter to King Henry VIII from the Tower, attributed to Anne Boleyn)”
Source: The Final Year of Anne Boleyn
“I am only the first fire, the best are yet to come!”
Source: Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets
“A man becomes more than a hero when he keeps on giving for someone else, with complete determination, in the face of any obstacle put out to stop him.”
Source: The Stalwart Supinator: Servant of the Streets!
“Crazy men fly to the moon and make great inventions. They win battles and cure diseases. If someone can leave earth and come back again, or discover DNA, why can’t I fight crime? What’s stopping me from trying to make the world a better place? And if I fall, well…at least I tried.”
Source: The Stalwart Supinator: Servant of the Streets!