Hath the L as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the L? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquityand idolatry.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDORD1 Samuel15:22^3.

But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them,They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.But go ye and learnwhat that meaneth,Iwill have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 9:12^13.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Romans12:1.

   A full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.

-Book of Common Prayer
Holy Communion, Prayer of Consecration.

   When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

-Burke, Edmund
  Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.

Julia: how Irishly you sacrifice Love to pity, pity to ill-humour, Yourself to love, still haggling at the price.

-Graves, Robert von Ranke
'Reproach to  Julia', collected in Collected Poems (1959).

Conservation of one resource may entail the sacrifice of another resource which others want to conserve.

-Herfindahl, Orris C
  Resource Economics: Selected Writings, p.6.

   We stand today on the edge of a new frontier. But the new frontierof which I speak isnot a set of promises.It is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not their pocketbooköit holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
  On accepting the Democratic Convention's presidential nomination,15  Jul.

An ethic is not an ethic, and a value not a value without somesacrifice for it. Something given up, something not gained. 477

-Kohlberg,Jerome,Jr
Quoted in Sarah Bartlett  The Money Machine (1991).

   By thetest of our faith thehighest standard ofcivilization is the readiness to sacrifice for others.

-Lloyd George (of Dwyfor), David, 1st Earl
  Speech in Queen's Hall, London, 21 Sep.

We have been too comfortable and too indulgentömany, perhaps, too selfishöand the stern hand of fatehasscoured ustoan elevationwhere we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks we had forgotten, of honour, duty, patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.We shall descend into the valleys again, but as long as men and women of thisgeneration last, they will carry in their hearts the image of those great mountain peaks, whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war.

-Lloyd George (of Dwyfor), David, 1st Earl
  Speech, London,19 Sep.

   We dislike the IRA, most of us, and fear it.We are a peaceful and democratic people.But our history, our idealistic pretensions and our fatal ambivalence have stuck us with an ideology that is warlike and anti- democratic, and calls increasingly for further human sacrifice.

-Oates,Joyce Carol
  In the NewYork Review of Books, 29  Apr.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

-Pope, Alexander
  Miscellanies,'Thoughts onVarious Subjects', vol.2.

In every case, agricultural as well as manufacturing profits are lowered bya rise in the price of raw produce, if it be accompanied bya rise of wages_ The natural tendency of profits istofall; for inthe progress of society and wealth, the additional quantity of food required is obtained by the sacrifice of more and more labour.

-Ricardo, David
  Principles of Political Economy andTaxation.

The rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind, and†only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

-Rockefeller,John D(avison),Jr
Credo engraved in Rockefeller Center Plaza, NewYork.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

-Stevens,Wallace
  Harmonium,'Sunday Morning', pt.1.

Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well onpaper, suchasnational budgets or industrial balance sheets.

-Weil, Simone
La condition ouvrie'  re,'La rationalisation' (published1951).

Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart.

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
  'Easter1916', l.57^8. Collected in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921).