ELEVEN is the number of force; it is that of strife and martyrdom.
Every man who dies for an idea is a martyr, for in him the aspirations of the spirit have triumphed over the fears of the animal.
Every man who falls in war is a martyr, for he dies for others.
Every man who dies of starvation is a martyr, for he is like a soldier struck down in the battle of life.
Those who die in defence of right are as holy in their sacrifice as the victims of duty, and in the great struggles and revolutions against power, martyrs fell equally on both sides.
Right being the root of duty, our duty is to defend our rights.
What is a crime? The exaggeration of a right.
Murder and theft are negations of society; it is the isolated despotism of an individual who usurps royalty, and makes war at his own risk and peril.
Crime should doubtless be repressed, and society must defend itself; but who is so just, so great, so pure, as to pretend that he has the right to punish?
Peace then to all who fall in war, even in unlawful war! For they have staked their heads and they have lost them; they have paid, and what more can we ask of them?
Honour to all those who fight bravely and loyally! Shame only on the traitors and cowards!
Christ died between two thieves, and He took one of them with Him to heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
God bestows His almighty power on love. He loves to triumph over hate, but the lukewarm He spueth forth from His mouth.
Duty is to live, were it but for an instant!
It is fine to have reigned for a day, even for an hour! though it were beneath the sword of Damocles, or upon the pyre of Sardanapalus!
But it is finer to have seen at one’s feet all the crowns of the world, and to have said, “I will be the king of the poor, and my throne shall be on Calvary.”
There is one man stronger than the man that slays; it is he who dies to save others.
There are no isolated crimes and no solitary expiations.
There are no personal virtues, nor are there any wasted devotions.
Whoever is not without reproach is the accomplice of all evil; and whoever is not absolutely perverse, may participate in all good.
For this reason an agony is always an humanitarian expiation, and every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honoured and praised as the head of a martyr.
For this reason also, the noblest and the holiest of martyrs could inquire of his own conscience, find himself deserving of the penalty that he was about to undergo, and say, saluting the sword that was ready to strike him, “Let justice be done!”
Pure victims of the Roman Catacombs, Jews and Protestants massacred by unworthy Christians!
Priests of l’Abbaye and les Carmes , victims of the Reign of Terror, butchered royalists, revolutionaries sacrificed in your turn, soldiers of our great armies who have sown the world with your bones, all you who have suffered the penalty of death, workers, strivers, darers of every kind, brave children of Prometheus, who have feared neither the lightning nor the vulture, all honour to your scattered ashes! Peace and veneration to your memories! You are the heroes of progress, martyrs of humanity!
Eliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant, (February 8, 1810 – May 31, 1875).
La Clef des Grands Mystères.
Dr. STONE is a Catholic.
It would be a fair assesmemt with exaggeration of a right but are we ever be able to escape the spin?
Did you watch Dubya 2 the movie? George Dubya Bush is very entertaining there :-)