dots-menu
×

Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.

Martyrdom

For a tear is an intellectual thing;
And a sigh is the sword of an angel-king;
And the bitter groan of a martyr’s woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.
William Blake—The Grey Monk.

The noble army of martyrs.
Book of Common Prayer. Te Deum Laudamus.

Strangulatus pro republica.
Tortured for the Republic.
James A. Garfield—Last Words. Written as he was dying, July 17, 1882.

Who falls for love of God, shall rise a star.
Ben Jonson—Underwoods. An Epistle to a Friend.

He strove among God’s suffering poor
One gleam of brotherhood to send;
The dungeon oped its hungry door
To give the truth one martyr more,
Then shut,—and here behold the end!
Lowell—On the Death of C. T. Torrey.

Martyrs! who left for our reaping
Truths you had sown in your blood—
Sinners! whom long years of weeping
Chasten’d from evil to good.
Moore—Where is Your Dwelling, Ye Sainted?

It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr.
Napoleon I.

His wife and children, being eleven in number, ten able to walk, and one sucking on her breast, met him by the way as he went towards Smithfield: this sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood, dear as they were to him, could yet nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience, in the defence and support of Christ’s Gospel.
Martyrdom of John Rogers. See Richmond’s Selection from the Writings of the Reformers and Early Protestant Divines of the Church of England.

Like a pale martyr in his shirt of fire.
Alex. Smith—A Life Drama. Sc. 2. L. 225.