Sacrifice

Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals or people to the gods as an act of propitiation or worship.

Sourced

• [...] it is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way – otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contray the Christian danger.
  • E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book, p. 243 (1963).

• In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life.
  The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.
  • Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 1940-02-09

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 689.

• What millions died—that Cæsar might be great!
  • Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, Part II.

• Sacrifice to the Graces.
  • Diogenes Laertius, Book IV, 6. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, letter (March 9, 1748).

• He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.
  • Isaiah, LIII, 7.

• Sacrifice to the Muses.
  • Plutarch, Banquet of the Seven Wise Men.

• Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces."
  • Plutarch, Life of Marius.

• The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.
  • Voltaire, Of Milton's Genius.