“One of the temptations of upper-middle class life is to create sharp edges of our moral sensitivities and allows a comfortable confusions about sin and virtue. The difference between rich and poor is not that the rich sin is more than the poor, that the rich find it easier to call sin a virtue. When the poor sin, they call it sin; when they see holiness, they identify it as such. The intuitive clarity is often absent from the wealthy, and that absence easily leads to the atrophy of the moral sense.”
Encounters with Merton
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Henri Nouwen 23
Dutch priest and writer 1932–1996Related quotes

Definitions

Source: Voyage of the Beagle

“It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.”
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism
Context: The real sin — perhaps it is a sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no remission — is the sin of heresy, the sin of thinking for oneself. The saying has been heard before now, here in Spain, that to be a liberal — that is, a heretic — is worse than being an assassin, a thief, or an adulterer. The gravest sin is not to obey the Church, whose infallibility protects us from reason.