“(…) Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or virtuous person what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative.”

“Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.”

Bruce Chatwin (1940–1989) English novelist

“The social group which the city represents is so strong that it draws men into sin which is hardly personal to them, but from which they cannot dissociate themselves even if they so desire. Individual virtues are engulfed by the sin of the city.”

Jacques Ellul book The Meaning of the City

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtues fall.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

“Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. The sense of virtue helps us to cherish our sins in secret.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

“This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“Whatever you do against your better knowledge is sin. (…) Remembering your self is virtue, forgetting your self is sin. (…)”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

“No ignorance of truth is a personal sin before God, except that ignorance which springs from personal sin.”

Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892) English Roman Catholic archbishop and cardinal

“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

“A virtuous person is better than virtue and a vicious person is worse than vice.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha