{"quotes":[{"text":"I know you not quite wellYet I foolishly surrender my mind to you. Slowly and carefully you have cast a spellNow my virgin heart only longs for you. There is no need to push, I am already falling. Once proudly tall, I’m no longer standing. Knowing well that I am doomed to misery,I will roll the dice and take delight in my suffering.","author":"Kamand Kojouri","tags":["beguile","bewitch","break-up","cast","delight","dice","doom","ex","fall","falling","foolish","game-over","heart","in-love","know","lose","love-martyr","love-poem","martyr","martyrdom","masochism","masochist","mind","misery","on-purpose","push","relationship","seduce","seduced","self-imposed","spell","standing","suffer","suffering","surrender","virgin"],"id":1098,"author_id":"Kamand+Kojouri"},{"text":"I never wanted to be a martyr—even for love. I don’t want to die for love. I want to live for it.","author":"Kamand Kojouri","tags":["all-you-need-is-love","choose-life","choose-love","death","die","harmony","inspirational","kamand","kamand-kojouri","kojouri","life","life","live-for-love","living","love","love-is-all-you-need","love-is-love","love","lover","loving","martyr","martyrdom","motto","myth","one-love","peace","philosophy","relationship","soulmate","truth","union","unity"],"id":5047,"author_id":"Kamand+Kojouri"},{"text":"If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.","author":"Antonin Artaud","tags":["art","culture","flames","form","formalism","martyrdom","passion"],"id":5478,"author_id":"Antonin+Artaud"},{"text":"Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.","author":"Dietrich Bonhoeffer","tags":["christ","christianity","death","discipleship","martyrdom"],"id":11102,"author_id":"Dietrich+Bonhoeffer"},{"text":"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 whol.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["boyhood","causes","childhood","christian-martyrs","christianity","comrades","conscription","death","fanaticism","friends","kamikaze","martyrdom","martyrs","masochism","memorials","november","orwell","patriotism","poppies","principles","religion","sacrifice","self-abnegation","self-importance","soldiers","suicide","suicide-attack","theocracy","torture","ugliness","war"],"id":11922,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"If we seek spiritual heroism ourselves, the old ego is just back in control under a new name. There would not really be any change at all, but only disguise, just bogus self-improvement on our own terms.","author":"Richard Rohr","tags":["ego","initiative","martyrdom","self-improvement","self-sacrifice"],"id":16071,"author_id":"Richard+Rohr"},{"text":"But its exclusive character and irreconcileable hostility to the religious cults and ceremonies with which the whole social life of the city-state and the empire were inseparably connected at every turn, brought the Christians into inevitable conflict with the government and with public opinion. To the man in the street, the Christian was an anti-social atheist who would take no part in the public feasts and the games, which played such a large part in city life. To the authorities he was a passive rebel, who would neither take his share of municipal offices nor pay loyal homage to the Emperor. Hence the rise of persecution, and the driving of the Christians into an underground existence, as a proscribed sect. The Church grew under the shadow of the executioner's rods and axes, and every Christian lived in the peril of physical torture and death. The thought of martyrdom coloured the whole outlook of early Christianity. But it was not only a fear, it was also an ideal and a hope. For the martyr was the complete Christian, he was the champion and hero of the new society and its conflict with the old, and even the Christians who failed in the moment of the trial - the lapsi - looked on the martyrs as their saviours and protectors.","author":"Christopher Henry Dawson","tags":["christianity","martyrdom","roman-empire"],"id":34712,"author_id":"Christopher+Henry+Dawson"},{"text":"But the old man would not so, but slew his son,And half the seed of Europe, one by one.","author":"Wilfred Owen","tags":["martyrdom","war","wwi"],"id":44980,"author_id":"Wilfred+Owen"},{"text":"Is not the true respect and worship of God the exercising of our power in such a way that we are also respected?","author":"Shannon L. Alder","tags":["actions","activism","attitude","caring","compassion","confidence","control","courage","dignity","doormats","empowerment","emulation","evolution","fearless","flattery","god","growth","love","loving","martyr","martyrdom","passion","philosophy","power","resemblance","respect","self-love","self-respect","similiarity","spiritual-growth","value","world-views","worship"],"id":77176,"author_id":"Shannon+L.+Alder"},{"text":"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. Your life?","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["boyhood","causes","childhood","christian-martyrs","christianity","comrades","conscription","death","fanaticism","friends","kamikaze","martyrdom","martyrs","masochism","memorials","november","orwell","patriotism","poppies","principles","religion","sacrifice","self-abnegation","self-importance","soldiers","suicide","suicide-attack","theocracy","torture","ugliness","war"],"id":95133,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":45,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}