"Martyrdom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... goddess, until she, bursting with impatience, suddenly cried, in a tone of the most agonized Titanic pain, "Silence! Silence! I hear the voice of the beloved Prometheus. Mocking cunning and brute force are chaining the Innocent One to the rock of martyrdom, and all your prattling and quarreling will not allay his wounds or break his fetters!" So cried the goddess, and rivulets of tears sprang from her eyes; the entire assembly howled as if in the agonies of death, the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was a slender lad of nineteen, so slight and frail, in fact, that, like Fra Lippo Lippi, a puff of wind might double him up and turn him over. He was a burning young socialist, in the first throes of enthusiasm and ripe for martyrdom. As platform speaker or chairman he had taken an active and dangerous part in the many indoor and outdoor pro-Boer meetings which have vexed the serenity of Merry England these several years back. Little items he had been imparting ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Pius the Fourth, ordered all the protestants to be severely persecuted throughout the Italian states, when great numbers of every age, sex, and condition, suffered martyrdom. Concerning the cruelties practised upon this occasion, a learned and humane Roman catholic thus spoke of them, in a letter ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... a martyrdom! to live useless to all, what a disgrace! What! does no one need me? What! are generosity, devotion, even pity, all those noble instincts by which the soul reveals itself, for ever interdicted to me? This is death, death premature and shameful! ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... idolater; atheist, because it rejects God; idolater, because it is its own idol." Even when this lowest expression of the preservative instinct rises but to the height of sex-love, it renounces self, and rejoices in martyrdom. "All for love, or the world well lost," has been the motto of too many tragedies to be doubted now. By the side of the ancient Roman or the soldier of the French revolution, who through mere love of country marched joyously to certain death from which he expected no waking, does not ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... spoke; and, though his words were seemingly irrelevant, they were to the point. His voice had a note of martyrdom running through its ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... by my faith," he wrote to Mrs. Bowes, "but what lacketh now, God shall perform in His own time." {37b} We do not know what peril threatened the Reformer now (probably in March 1553), but he frequently, later, seems to have doubted his own "ripeness" for martyrdom. His reluctance to suffer did not prevent him from constant attendance to the tedious self-tormentings of Mrs. Bowes, and of "three ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... dangerous; he's sincere—the most dangerous type of politician in the world—the honest visionary, in love with an abstract theory, capable of offering himself for martyrdom. ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... see, myne own good daughter, what a great difference there is between such as have spent all their days in a religious, hard, and penitential life, and such as have (as thy poore father hath done) consumed all their time in pleasure and ease;'" and so he proceeded to enlarge on their merits and martyrdom. His grandson, Cresacre More, referring to this scene, says, "By which most humble and heavenly meditation, we may easily guess what a spirit of charity he had gotten by often meditation, that every sight brought him new matter to practice most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... thee, stampt with a seal, Far, far more ennobling than monarch e'er set; With the blood of thy race, offered up for the weal Of a nation that swears by that martyrdom yet! ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... It was martyrdom; but anything was better than the incapacity which threatened, and certainly, by the end of five minutes, his head was something better. In this satisfactory condition—Jerome being in the back garden brushing his regimentals, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... The Salem Farms in Longfellow's New England Tragedies. I know not whether he had the compensating merits of his father, but our author speaks of him, in the continuation of the passage I have just quoted, as having made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may be said to have left a stain upon him. "So deep a stain, indeed," Hawthorne adds, characteristically, "that his old dry bones in the Charter Street burial-ground must ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... populace continued to torture the confessors; and I was led back to Alexandria by an ardent thirst for martyrdom. I found on my arrival that the persecution had ceased three days before. Just as I was returning, my path was blocked by a great crowd in front of the Temple of Serapis. I was told that the Governor was ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... Andromache stone-dead upon the Stage, as your ingenious Correspondent phrases it, Mrs. Oldfield might still have spoke a merry Epilogue. We have an Instance of this in a Tragedy [2] where there is not only a Death but a Martyrdom. St. Catherine was there personated by Nell Gwin; she lies stone dead upon the Stage, but upon those Gentlemen's offering to remove her Body, whose Business it is to carry off the Slain in our English Tragedies, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabled knights In battles feigned (the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung), or to describe races and games Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshalled ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... A wish from place to place to roam, A very troublesome disease, In some a willing martyrdom. Abandoned he his country seat, Of woods and fields the calm retreat, Where every day before his eyes A blood-bespattered shade would rise, And aimless journeys did commence— But still remembrance to him clings, His travels like all other things Inspired but ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... back there, where life is so sweetly certain, fear still strides unabashed. They had thought that fear was dead—stifled by heroism. They had believed that personal littleness had given way before the magnanimity of martyrdom. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... of Gilbert, Malfilatre, Chatterton, and Moreau have been too often, too imprudently, and, above all, too uselessly uttered. The tomb of these unfortunates has been converted into a pulpit, from whence has been preached the martyrdom of art ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... martyrdom went on, the summer was growing old, with the work of planting and cultivating almost done and the harvest soon to follow, and whatever his feelings may have been he had never flinched a single time. Nourished ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race, Who would not injure us, and cannot serve; Who, from their short and measured slumber risen, In the faint sunshine of their balconies, With a half-legend of a martyrdom And some weak wine and withered graces before them, Note by their foot the wheel of melody That catches and rolls on the sabbath dance. To drag the steady prop from failing age, Break the young stem that fondness twines around, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... with the record of merely natural decease, and sometimes even at these children's graves, were the signs of violent death or "martyrdom,"—proofs that some "had loved not their lives unto the death"—in the little red phial of blood, the palm-branch, the red flowers for their heavenly "birthday." About one sepulchre in particular, distinguished ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... regarded him as a man who had been compelled, by the insidious influence of what he called scientific thought, to write a shocking book; but one that he certainly believed was destined to effect a great reform in the world. Her eyes had filled with tears as he stood before her with the gleam of martyrdom in his eyes, and for an instant she felt a woman's impulse—that was a factor which George Holland had taken into consideration before he had spoken—to give both her hands to him and to promise to stand by his side in his hour of trial. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... he said, 'and learned, doubtless; but the time had gone by. Printed on small-pica it would run to eight hundred pages, and could never pay. Begged therefore to be excused. Loved and honoured the true church from his soul, and, had it been a sermon on the martyrdom, or any twelve-penny touch—why, I would venture something for the honour of the cloth. But come, let's see the other. "Right Hereditary righted!"—Ah! there's some sense in this. Hum—hum—hum—pages so many, paper ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the Latin quotations such as concedunt for comedunt) is very accurate, and the frontispiece, a view of Hermitage Castle in the rain, has the interest of presenting what is said to have been a very faithful view of the actual state of Lord Soulis' stronghold and the place of the martyrdom of Ramsay, attained by the curious stages of (1) a drawing by Scott, who could not draw at all; (2) a rifacimento by Clerk, who had never seen the place; and (3) an engraving by an artist who was equally innocent ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... with fierce incursions of a spirit of unrest and revolt, reactions, momentary returns of the blind, undirected energy that at one time had prompted him to a vast desire to acquit himself of some terrible deed of readjustment, just what, he could not say, some terrifying martyrdom, some awe-inspiring immolation, consummate, incisive, conclusive. He fancied himself to be fired with the purblind, mistaken heroism of the anarchist, hurling his victim to destruction with full knowledge that ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... should a shoe be so tight as to lame its wearer for life. Beauty, it has been said, should learn to suffer; and there are, I am aware, resources in vanity, that will reconcile man, and woman too, to martyrdom; but these resources should not be exhausted wantonly; and in pleasure, as in economy, there is no benefit in lighting the candle at both ends. The true philosopher extracts the greatest good out of every thing; and fools only, as Horace has ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... himself—a bland man with a rugged head, a Roman nose and a sharp eye—sat on a hard-bottomed chair in front of a square desk. Why should business men, by the way, subject themselves to voluntary martyrdom by using polished seats of hard-wood? Is it with a view to doing penance, for the sins of the class to which ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... drawings of an execution scene at the Tower of London. Many of the robes were black—these would be the priests—and the few scarlet ones would be the cardinals who might have assembled for some royal martyrdom. There was a bright May sunlight over it all, one of those still, cool brightnesses which served to heighten the weird effect. I am sure that others felt it besides myself, for everybody seemed wordless and awed, even at times when there was no occasion ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... convinced of the falsehood of their own superstition, which they forsook. We had forty communicants from among the most wretchedly ignorant and bigoted of the Irish Romanists, before Mr. Beamish left his post; and one of them had even endured a cruel martyrdom for the truth's sake. A bread-shop in deed it was: and the old Christian, whose fervent appeal had given rise to its establishment, himself preached there in Irish to a delighted congregation, before the Lord took him to himself. * ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... city. In this dire dilemma the Archbishop of Rouen offered himself as an ambassador to the pagans, in the hope that perhaps he might become an instrument in the hand of God to avert the impending doom. But if, as seemed more probable, martyrdom was in store for him, he was ready to face death without flinching. Rollo, however, who could honor courage even in an enemy, received him courteously, and after a brief negotiation pledged himself, in case the city surrendered, to take peaceful possession of it and to molest no one. This pledge ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... said, "A husband is more trying than any problem in Euclid," no doubt had good cause for the remark. Married or single, woman both physically and mentally is the greatest sufferer in the world—her time of youth and unthinking joy is brief, her martyrdom long—and it is hardly wonderful that she goes so often "to the bad" when there is so little offered to attract her ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... their numerous representatives, flocked around him. No earthly prince was ever so sustained by the sympathies of mankind. The time had now arrived, all research and investigation having come to a close, when those heroes of the Christian faith who, in the year 1597, had suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Japanese, should be solemnly canonized. They were twenty-six in number. One of these was an American, and suffered at Nagasaki in the year just mentioned. Another process of canonization had also been concluded—that of the blessed ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... not so much matter how many members one may have in his church, for under the banner of a popular Christianity soldiers march. What if there should be a struggle ahead when to be a Christian would mean to suffer martyrdom, or dying at the stake, or contending with the beasts of Ephesus like Paul, how then do you think it would be?" And yet all the time to-day the struggle is going on; both from within and from without the foe is assailing us, the Bible is being attacked, Christ is being ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... stole through the air toward the sleeper's pillow, there was a sharp rap at the door, and Strand entered. His knapsack was strapped over his shoulders, his long staff was in his hand, and there was an expression of conscious martyrdom in his features. Arnfinn raised himself on his elbows, and rubbed his eyes with a desperate determination to get awake, but only succeeded in gaining a very dim impression of a beard, a blue woolen shirt, and a disproportionately ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... inscription; it was probably done by a Moslem sculptor, without the knowledge of the monks. A few years after the completion of the convent, one of the monks is said to have been informed in his sleep, that the corpse of St. Catherine, who suffered martyrdom at Alexandria, had been transported by angels to the summit of the highest peak of the surrounding mountains. The monks ascended the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... gods are but fables. To us who are brave nothing can be forbidden; it is the weak who are unfortunate, and no god is able either to assist or to destroy us. As to the Christians, they are a despised people, a race of madmen, who, pretending to love poverty and martyrdom, are followed by the rude and ignorant. As for us, we are gods, both to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... each parish gathered closer round their minister, who looked calmly upward and assumed a more apostolic dignity, as well befitted a candidate for the highest honour of his profession, the crown of martyrdom. It was actually fancied, at that period, that New England might have a John Rogers of her own to take the place of that worthy in ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Abigail? You won't find a better, nicer, tenderer, and more juicier piece of shoulder this side of New York. Take it back, did you say? All right, ma'am, all right!" His face assumed a look of resignation: these old ladies made his life a martyrdom. He used to tell the "fellers" that he spent one half his time carrying orders back and forth from the Old Ladies' Home. But now, in spite of his meekness of manner, he did not intend to take this cut back. So with Machiavellian skill he ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... love and roses, hopes and fears. He piloted the 'potent, grave, and reverend seigniors' safely down to Plumfield at last, and landed them before his uncle and aunt Bhaer, who were receiving in state, the one full of genuine delight in all men and things, the other suffering martyrdom with a smile, as she stood shaking hand after hand, and affecting utter unconsciousness of the sad fact that ponderous Professor Plock had camped upon the train of her state ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... willing and ignorant populace. The growth of a legend in connection with relics is fitly illustrated by the history of the eleven thousand Virgins of Koln. Martyrologies of the ninth century celebrate the martyrdom of eleven virgins in the city of Koln. Perhaps these were described as XI. M. Virgines, and the letter which denoted martyrs was mistaken for the Roman numeral for one thousand, and so the number of virgins was ultimately swollen to eleven thousand. A legend, possibly working on an old one, was ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... whether they were good or bad, while she still maintained that they were real. She had expected release, and, for the first time, had been disappointed. At the stake she understood her Voices: they had foretold her martyrdom, 'great victory' over herself, and her entry into rest. But the document of the judges is not signed by the clerks, as all such documents must be. One of them, Manchon, who had not been present, was asked to sign it; he refused. Another, Taquel, is said to have been present, but he did ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... popular liberty in the pulpit. Feeling that in the people alone lay any hope of regeneration for Italy, he made it the work of his whole life to give the strength and sanction of religion to republican freedom. This work he sealed with martyrdom. The spirit of the creed which he bequeathed to his partisans in Florence was political no less than pious. Whether Savonarola was right to embark upon the perilous sea of statecraft cannot now be questioned. What prophet of Israel from Samuel to Isaiah was not the maker and destroyer of kings ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... not in vain. The horrid massacres, at which not only men but women gazed in demoniac pleasure and excitement, had been condemned centuries before by the genius of Christianity. It was monstrous that an emperor calling himself a Christian should preside at such a spectacle. But the martyrdom of Telemachus at last touched the callous and torpid consciences of nominal Christians. Thenceforth the games of the amphitheatre were abolished. But it was too late for repentance. Alike "the incomparable wickedness and the incomparable splendor" of the Imperial ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... insisted on telling me, for the twentieth time, how villanously the Advocate General had deceived her. Escape was impossible; I groaned and sweated with anguish, but listen I must, and had to suffer martyrdom for an hour, when the Governor's door opened, and he himself looked out. On seeing the Gorgon he tried to withdraw, but she pounded like a tigress through the door-way, and slamming the door after her, secured an audience with ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... the same scene began over again. Clotilde had taken no step yet, and Pascal was now angry. He suffered martyrdom; he had crises of anguish and rebelliousness when she was not present to calm him by her smiling freshness. And he insisted, in emphatic language, that she should behave seriously and not trifle any longer with an honorable man ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... English, and who would have me see the sights through their mean, greedy eyes. Better see Rubens any where than in a church. At the Academy, for example, where you may study him at your leisure. But at church?—I would as soon ask Alexandre Dumas for a sermon. Either would paint you a martyrdom very fiercely and picturesquely—writhing muscles, flaming coals, scowling captains and executioners, swarming groups, and light, shade, color most dexterously brilliant or dark; but in Rubens I am admiring the performer rather than the piece. With what astonishing rapidity he travels ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of furnishing sugar or vinegar to orthodox families that found themselves unexpectedly 'out of' those indispensable commodities. In this persuasive power of convenience lay Mr. Dunn's ultimate security from martyrdom. His drapery was the best in Milby; the comfortable use and wont of procuring satisfactory articles at a moment's notice proved too strong for Anti-Tryanite zeal; and the draper could soon look forward to his next stock-taking without the support of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... me at home, too, and at last became a real martyrdom to me. All sin, said the Explanation, could be forgiven, except sin against ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... occupied with his sister, and began to undress. He lingered for some time over one stocking, and finally cautiously removed from it a small piece of flake gold which he had kept concealed all day under his big toe, to the great discomfort of that member. But this was only a small, ordinary self-martyrdom of boyhood. He scratched a boyish hieroglyphic on the metal, and when his mother's back was turned scraped a small hole in the adobe wall, inserted the gold in it, and covered it up with a plaster made of the moistened debris. It was safe—so was his ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... it. He had no fear in his composition; terror and awe did not blend with his respect of anything. In no scene or epoch could he have been a Church Saint, a fanatic enthusiast, or have worn out his life in passive martyrdom, sitting patient in his grim coal-mine, looking at the "three ells" of Heaven high overhead there. In sorrow he would not dwell; all sorrow he swiftly subdued, and shook away from him. How could you have made an Indian ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... martyrdom a pain affords Too keen to bear at once; thy deeds, thy words, Work on my wasting heart ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... erect altars to the personification of their own corrupted and bloody republic;—when schools and seminaries are founded at the public expense to poison mankind, from generation to generation, with the horrible maxims of this impiety;—when wearied out with incessant martyrdom, and the cries of a people hungering and thirsting for religion, they permit it only as a tolerated evil—I call ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of spiritual power emphasized. It had the effect that a physical miracle may have had on the early disciples in giving them a feeling of confidence in the Lord that helped them to face loss and martyrdom with ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... his head, and put aside this apology with a gesture. The queen of France had knelt and kissed his mutilated hands, and the courtiers of Louis had praised his martyrdom. But such ordeals of compliment were harder for him to endure than the teeth and ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... figure, and fixes itself on some two or three of the minor actors, to whom he gives the importance he should have concentrated on the Christ. The painter con amore of arrogant strength, he seems to have little in common with meekness and humility that bows the head to scourging and martyrdom. Thus in nearly all his "Crucifixions" the central figure is ignoble in type and expression, and in the "Flagellations" of the Brera and of Morra, is entirely without dignity, even ignominious. This is curious when we consider that even more than ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... soldiers. They seized him, and took him before the magistrates, when the trick was discovered. He was given the alternative of dying or sacrificing to the gods of Rome, but, preferring the crown of martyrdom, after cruel torments he was led to his doom. He was to be taken across the Ver to be beheaded, but miracles appeared. The stream, which had been a-flood, quickly dried up, so that the multitude could pass, and this so touched the executioner that he refused to strike the blow and declared ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... notice of her intention, and after a season of martyrdom set forward to find Captain Moore's quarters. She had no difficulty, for Polly was looking out for her, with her pipe in her mouth. "Come in, child," said she, "and warm yourself; how is your cough? I stewed some ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... down the barrier of religious superstition which had kept the red races from this El Dorado it would be a fitting memorial to the immortal virtues of my Princess—I should have again served Barsoom and Dejah Thoris' martyrdom would ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... intolerably uncomfortable and ugly, and he went to the billiard-room to smoke a cigar. It was not clear to him that he would be able to spend two months in Thornby Place. If every evening passed like the present, it were a modern martyrdom.... But had they removed the feather-bed? He went upstairs. The feather-bed had been removed. But the room was draped with many curtains—pale curtains covered with walking birds and falling petals, a ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... through the living treasure, seemed a charming and poetic episode of convent life, and in his imagination, this woman with the sumptuous hair became vaguely illumined like the heroine of some Christian legend of the childhood of a saint destined for martyrdom and future canonisation. At the same time, it struck him what rich and varied lines might be afforded to the design of a female figure by the undulating ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... white sand that checkered the ground, displaying their emblematic forms on their low repent vines, and reminding the wanderer in these almost trackless solitudes of that Faith which was founded on humility and crowned with martyrdom. Here, too, the Spiderwort of our gardens, in a meeker form of beauty and with a paler radiance, luxuriated under the protection of the wood. Already I observed the predominance of luxuriant vines, indicating our nearness to the tropic, wreathed gayly over the tall and branchless trunks of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... imprisoned priests was a missionary lately returned from China; and when they met at the hours allowed for fresh air in the courtyard, Paul was eager to hear his accounts of the martyrdom and steadfastness of Chinese converts. "M. Paul," said an old soldier who was one of the hostages, "seemed to look on martyrdom as a privilege, regretting only the pain ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... martyr of the Catholic Church. The legend of St Agnes is that she was a Roman maid, by birth a Christian, who suffered martyrdom when but thirteen during the reign of the emperor Diocletian, on the 21st of January 304. The prefect Sempronius wished her to marry his son, and on her refusal condemned her to be outraged before her execution, but her honour was miraculously preserved. When led out to die she ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... missionaries of early days, peasants and apprentices who had forsaken the fields and workshops for the higher sphere of devoteeism and freedom from manual labor. These clerics, though often self-sacrificing and yearning for martyrdom, attributed all differences from their standards or preachments to inherent ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... nations which are separated from the Roman communion, both Protestant and Pantheistic governments, coming audaciously into contest for privileges, which, by the rights of old possession, by the rights of martyrdom and chivalry, belong to the Holy Catholic Church, the Apostolic Church, the Roman Church, and after her to France, ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... saint—as a motive for complying with your fickle and selfish wish to withdraw your hand from the plough. You know not to whom you address such a threat. True, Becket, from a saint militant on earth, arrived, by the bloody path of martyrdom, to the dignity of a saint in Heaven; and no less true is it, that, to attain a seat a thousand degrees beneath that of his blessed predecessor, the unworthy Baldwin were willing to submit, under Our Lady's protection, to whatever the worst of wicked men can ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the centre of an immense pile of wood. Then the bishop Pagnanoli told the condemned men that he cut them off from the Church. "Ay, from the Church militant," said Savonarola, who from that very hour, thanks to his martyrdom, was entering into the Church triumphant. No other words were spoken by the condemned men, for at this moment one of the Arrabbiati, a personal enemy of Savonarola, breaking through the hedge of guards around the scaffold, snatched the torch from the ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... impenetrable marshes; vampire bats perched by night with lulling endearments upon their toes. When Stedman describes himself as killing thirty-eight mosquitoes at one stroke, we must perhaps pardon something to the spirit of martyrdom. But when we add to these the other woes of his catalogue,—prickly-heat, ring-worm, putrid-fever, "the growling of Colonel Fougeaud, dry, sandy savannas, unfordable marshes, burning hot days, cold and damp nights, heavy rains, and short allowance,"—we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... Minor, and was by birth both a Jew and a citizen of Rome. St. Paul is not mentioned in the Gospels, nor is it known whether he ever heard our Saviour preach. His name is first noticed in the account of St. Stephen's Martyrdom, which was followed by a severe persecution of the Church at Jerusalem, in which St. Paul, (who was then called Saul) distinguished himself among its enemies, by his activity and violence. He was going to Damascus, to bring back bound any Christians whom ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... tears unshed in the fervor of prayer, her eyelashes were like leaves after a summer shower, for the last time they shone with the sunshine of pure love. Her lips seemed to preserve an expression as of her last appeal to the angels, whose palm of martyrdom she had no doubt borrowed while placing in their hands her past unspotted life. And she had the majesty which Mary Stuart must have shown at the moment when she bid adieu to her crown, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... to being tried in Carthage? 9. On what occasion did Joseph deliver his last speech? 10. Why did not Joseph go west to the mountains? 11. What did Governor Ford promise? 12. Give some expressions of the prophet on going to Carthage. 13. Who were with Joseph in jail? 14. Tell about the martyrdom. 15. When did it take place? 16. How old was Joseph ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... Majesty, and so forth;—also, whereas, he has unjustly slandered the noble and sublime College of William and Mary, so called from their gracious majesties, deceased;—and whereas, the said opinions have caused great personal inconvenience to the undersigned, and whereas he is tired of martyrdom and exile: Therefore, be it hereby promulgated, that the undersigned doth here and now publicly declare himself ashamed of the said opinions, and doth abjure them: And doth declare his Majesty George III. the greatest of kings since Dionysius of Syracuse and Nero; and his great measure, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Gravier, and hundreds of others equally illustrious, who lived and died among the dangers and privations of the wilderness; who opened the way for civilization and Christianity among the savages, and won, many of them, crowns of martyrdom. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... was a martyrdom: noble the part Of self-abnegation thou playd'st for the Poor; Whose gratitude fixes thy name in each heart, Where in Memory's shrine 'twill for ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... and steadily that the child does not perceive the effort that the performance costs and, therefore, as far as his consciousness is concerned, is deprived of the force of his mother's example, or (b) they groan aloud over their burdens and make their daily martyrdom vocal. Either way is wrong, for it is a mistake not to let a child see that your steady performance of tasks, which cannot be always delightful, is a result of self-discipline; and it is equally a mistake to let him think that this discipline is one against which ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... young men in preparation for the ministry are going through this martyrdom. The strongest mind in our theological class perished, the doctors said afterward from lack of food. The only time he could afford a doctor was for ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... though worldly wise folk scoff at love as a myth, I question whether they could name any other passion of the heart which has occupied so important a place in the world's history, which has given life to all that is great and divine in art, or inspired such deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom. Before its patient strength men have stood mute and wondering, and proud heads have bent in reverence, and stern eyes grown dim. For Love is beautiful, despite faults, and wise, despite follies. It alone of all human emotions can lift our souls heavenwards, and ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... tell them that they are but slaves, Strike those whose native kinghood all can see: Martyrdom ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... believing, distracted with desire to believe again; and it was necessary that the lighted lamp should be brought in, that he should see clearly around him and within him, before he could recover the energy and calmness of reason, the strength of martyrdom, the determination to sacrifice everything to the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... mistaking the Hall of Science for a chapel, she sat at the feet of Charles Bradlaugh for many years, entranced by his eloquence, without questioning his orthodoxy or moulting a feather of her faith. I fear I small be defrauded of my just martyrdom in the same way. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... or rather of her timely release from martyrdom, is simple and touching. The present story will revive ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... endeavour at any rate to act fairly," said the poor man, feeling that he had to fall back for support on the spirit of martyrdom within him. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... tried, but without success. I then begged him to postpone our interview. He replied that it was impossible, that what he had to say admitted of no delay; that, during three days he had hesitated about confiding in me, and had suffered martyrdom, and that he could endure it no longer. We were speaking, you must understand, through the door. At last, he declared that he would climb over the wall. I begged him not to do so, fearing an accident. The wall is very high, as you know; the top is covered with pieces of broken ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... begun to paint the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina in October 1542. They were carried on with interruptions during the next seven years. These pictures, the last on which his talents were employed, are two large subjects: the Conversion of S. Paul, and the Martyrdom of S. Peter. They have suffered from smoke and other injuries of time even more than the frescoes of the Sistine, and can now be scarcely appreciated owing to discoloration. Nevertheless, at no period, even when fresh from the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to bid for what he wanted, he offered his price. The Eppington family was poor and numerous. The girl, bred up to the false notions of duty inculcated by a narrow conventionality, and, feminine like, half in love with martyrdom for its own sake, let her father bargain for a higher ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... answer, and lifting up his chin, displayed a circle round the neck brighter in colour than the ruby. "The marks of martyrdom," he continued, "are our insignia of honour. Fisher and I have the purple collar, as Friar Forrest and Cranmer ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... conscientiously changed. As to my participating in the administration, if by that he meant the executive cabinet, both duty and inclination will shut that door to me. I cannot have a wish to see the scenes of 1793 revived as to myself, and to descend daily into the arena like a gladiator, to suffer martyrdom in every conflict. As to duty, the constitution will know me only as the member of a legislative body: and its principle is, that of a separation of legislative, executive, and judiciary functions, except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Put an angel in one. How would you like one popped on to you now? Think of going love-making, or addressing a public meeting, or dying gloriously, in a nose like mine! Angelina laughs in your face, the public laughs, the executioner at your martyrdom can hardly light the faggots for laughing. By heaven! it is no joke. Often and often I have rebelled, and said, 'I will not have ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... martyrdom. There are some who are "simply murdered." There is one who belongs to a Caste which more than any other is considered tolerant and safe. Men converts from this Caste can live at home, and if a husband and wife believe, they may continue ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... topsy- turvy. Not but what things are correct. They are almost too much so. But still things are sort of upside down. The most ultra-exclusive set there is the "Missionary Crowd." It comes with rather a shock to learn that in Hawaii the obscure martyrdom-seeking missionary sits at the head of the table of the moneyed aristocracy. But it is true. The humble New Englanders who came out in the third decade of the nineteenth century, came for the lofty purpose of teaching the ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... mother after his first meeting with the deliverer of France, 'seemed a thing all divine.' Yet even two of her own brothers certainly recognised another girl as the Maid, five years after her death by fire. It is equally certain that, eight years after the martyrdom of Jeanne, an impostor dwelt for several days in Orleans, and was there publicly regarded as the heroine who raised the siege in 1429. Her family accepted the impostor for sixteen years. These facts rest ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... power of baptism," says Cyprian, "be greater than confession, than martyrdom, that a man should confess Christ before men, and be baptized in his own blood, and yet," he says, "neither does this baptism profit the heretic, even though for confessing Christ he be put to death outside the Church." This is most true; for by being put to death outside ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Emmeline now. She saw her brothers, Michael and Nicholas. Michael's soul was the prey of its terror of the herd-soul. The shrill voices, fine as whipcord and sharp as needles, tortured him. Michael looked beautiful in his martyrdom. His fair, handsome face was set clear and hard. His yellow hair, with its hard edges, fitted his head like a cap of solid, polished metal. Weariness and disgust made a sort of cloud over his light green eyes. When Nicky looked at him Nicky's face ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... persecutors, you had remained in the country; if you had taken refuge in forests and caverns; if you had gone from place to place, risking your lives to instruct and rally the people, until the first shock of the enemy was past; and had you even courageously exposed yourselves to martyrdom—as in fact those have done who have endeavoured to perform your duties in your absence—perhaps the examples of constancy, or zeal, or of piety you had discovered, might have animated your flocks, revived their courage, and arrested the fury of your enemies." He accordingly exhorted ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... myself. I must go after her; follow her by the same road. But my nature and my promise hold me back. It is a terrible difficulty, indeed, to imitate the inimitable. I feel clearly, my dear friend, that genius is required for everything; for martyrdom as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and convincing was the Apostle's argument that the Jews who had participated in having the Lord put to death "were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?" Some of them suffered death and martyrdom because they preached Christ and his resurrection. (Acts 7:59) The apostles and early Christians received much persecution because they testified boldly that Jesus was raised from the dead. They would ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... of green (top), white, and red; the national emblem (a stylized representation of the word Allah in the shape of a tulip, a symbol of martyrdom) in red is centered in the white band; ALLAH AKBAR (God is Great) in white Arabic script is repeated 11 times along the bottom edge of the green band and 11 times along the top edge ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... three rooms which open into each other, and are furnished with a bed or two, a few chairs and tables, a looking-glass, a crucifix of some material or other, and small daubs of paintings enclosed in glass, and representing some miracle or martyrdom. They have no chimneys or fire-places in the houses, the climate being such as to make a fire unnecessary; and all their cooking is done in a small cook-house, separated from the house. The Indians, as I have said before, do all the hard work, two or three being ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... good thing when she saw it. Tyburn had the title and the property, and was better-looking and more amusing, and had stationary ears. But had he the character of a child martyr? He had not. Now Luke was great at martyrdom; also at childishness. ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... memorial church in Rome, St. Paul's, which stands outside the walls. On the way thither we pass a small chapel where, it is said, Peter and Paul took leave of each other before they went to suffer martyrdom. On the facade the final words are inscribed. Paul said: "Peace be with you, thou foundation of the church and shepherd of Christ's lambs." And Peter: "Go forth in peace, thou preacher of the gospel, righteous guide to salvation." Paul's tomb is under the high altar of St. Paul's ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... disappointments to this new sister. The tall footmen came but seldom now with notes to the sweet Laura; the pony-carriage was but rarely despatched to Fairoaks to be at the orders of the ladies there. Blanche adopted a sweet look of suffering martyrdom when Laura came to see her. The other laughed at her friend's sentimental mood, and treated it with a good-humour that was by no ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... breathe, Stirr'd by the Breeze that loiters there; And all that stretch their limbs beneath, Forget the coil of mortal care. Strange mists along the margins rise, 45 To heal the guests who thither come, And fit the soul to re-endure Its earthly martyrdom. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in his critical work upon Schiller, gives a curious defence of this departure from history:—"The martyrdom," he says, "of the forlorn maiden could hardly satisfy us on the stage. In history it is different; we see these events in their connexion with the past and the future, and we do not abstract some single fact, and judge of it apart from all others. The history ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... a very opportune moment to trouble her ladyship's mind with his own doubts. She was always nervous on the eve of an entertainment at Brentwood, and this fresh anxiety agitated her to such a degree that Miss Burleigh suffered a martyrdom before her duty of superintendence over the preparations in ball-room and supper-room was accomplished. Her aunt found time to tell her Mr. Fairfax's opinions respecting his granddaughter, and she again found time to communicate them to her brother. To her prodigious relief, he was not moved ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... glory; In the white you may discover The paleness of a fainting lover; In the red the flames still feeding On my heart with fresh wounds bleeding. The white will tell you how I languish, And the red express my anguish. The white my innocence displaying, The red my martyrdom betraying; The frowns that on your brow resided, Have those roses thus divided. Oh! let your smiles but clear the weather, And then they ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... she sprang up: Yes, she was a bad wife! A wife who had reached the end of her tether. A wife who hated instead of loving. A wife in prison! Bad wife! Martyrdom, then, for the sake of a faith in her that was lost already, could be but folly. If she seemed bad and false to him, there was no longer reason to pretend to be otherwise. No longer would she, in the words of the old song:—'sit and sigh—pulling ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... me already good grounds for his belief,[Footnote: He wrote thus to me on 11th November last: "The three preachers are certainly different. The first is Dominic; the second, Peter Martyr, whom I have identified from his martyrdom on the other wall; and the third, Aquinas."] that the preaching monks represented are in each scene intended for a different person. I am informed also of several careless mistakes which have got into my description of the fresco of the ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... fate to be the victim of deception then with the mightiest strength of a womans will will she would cast his image out of her heart forever. She would live for the man she loathed, a life of voluntary martyrdom. The struggle would benefit her in any case. If it were too violent an exertion for her moral nature, it would, in its pitiless mercy relieve her of her burden of life, and fold her weak hands over her broken heart forever. If, on the contrary, her moral and physical strength held bravely out to ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... man.—He spoke of the vicisstudes of empires with much eloquence and learning, but his audience were not observed to be much affected.—He cited various passages from the lives of the saints, descriptive of the glories of martyrdom, and the heroism of those who had bled and blazed for Christ and his blessed mother, but they appeared still waiting for something to touch them more deeply. When he inveighed against the tyrants under whose bloody persecution those holy men suffered, his hearers were roused ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... that darkness surpass what is possible,' he cries on each page. Here I lose foothold. I can imagine, though I have not experienced them, the moral and terrible pangs, of the deaths of friends and relations, love betrayed, hopes which failed, spiritual sorrows of all kinds, but such a martyrdom as he proclaims as superior to all others, is beyond me, for it is outside our human interests, beyond our affections; he moves in an inaccessible sphere, in an unknown ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... age has held a different truth, has put forth different fragments of the truth. In early ages for example, by martyrdom was proclaimed the eternal sanctity of truth, rather than give up which a man must lose his life.... In our own age it is quite plain those are not the themes which engage us, or the truths which we put in force now. This age, by its revolutions, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... kill that man,' he says. 'I'll kill him.' Mr. Fielding he went abroad as soon as the husband turned up, and he didn't know what goings-on there were. There's some as says she made him go, and I shouldn't wonder but what there was something in it. For if ever any poor soul suffered martyrdom, it was that woman. I'll never forget the change in her, never as long as I live. She kept up for a long time, but she looked awful, and then at last when her time drew near she broke down and used to cry and cry when ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... England, for he ventures to subscribe his publication with his name as well as Dr. Priestley does his Letters, to which this publication is an answer. Perhaps he may have cause to repent of his hardiness, but if he has, he is equally resolved to glory in his martyrdom, as to suffer it. Whatever advantage religion has had in the enumeration of it's martyrs, the cause of atheism may boast the same. As to the instances of the professors of any particular form of religion, or modification of that form, such as Christians or sects of Christians, suffering ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... Maskull. "Here perhaps we are going to martyrdom, but elsewhere we should resemble men ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... crown of a little martyrdom is yours. Will you wear it until this old man ends his days, and then come to Kaskaskia as your reward? Or will you come trampling down your duty, and perhaps shortening the life of your father's father? I will not lay any penance on you for ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... years of the eighth century, one of the greatest and noblest of men—St. Boniface. His learning was of the best then known. In labours he was a worthy successor of the apostles; his genius for Christian work made him unwillingly primate of Germany; his devotion to duty led him willingly to martyrdom. There sat, too, at that time, on the papal throne a great Christian statesman—Pope Zachary. Boniface immediately declared against the revival of such a heresy as the doctrine of the antipodes; he stigmatized ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... is ceasing to love him," he thought. "She never could have respected him, and now be has forfeited whatever affection she may have had. Still she feels that she is chained to him, and must endure the life-long martyrdom of an ill-mated marriage"; and his heart overflowed with ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... reproach; the women wept very quietly. In their hearts that strange mysticism of the race predominated—the hopeless acceptance of a destiny which has, for centuries, left its imprint in the sad eyes of the Breton. Generations of martyrdom leave a cowed and spiritually fatigued race which ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers |
