Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
Source: Discipleship (1937), The Disciple and Unbelievers, p. 184.
Related quotes
“Hate the sin and love the sinner.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India
This is variant of a traditional Christian proverb; ie: "Hate the sin, but love the sinner" in Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses (1828) Edward Irving http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VwUeH-wTxZ8C&pg=PA132, and similar expressions date to those of Augustine of Hippo: "Love the sinner and hate the sin." Gandhi did express approval of such sentiments in his An Autobiography (1927): "Hate the sin and not the sinner" is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. <br class="br">Misattributed
“Love the sinner and hate the sin.”
Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.
Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher
Opera Omnia, Vol II. Col. 962, letter 211
Alternate translation: With love for mankind and hatred of sins (vices).
“If I hate the sins, I love the sinner, and would do much for his salvation.”
Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XVII : Further Warnings; Helen to Mrs. Maxwell
“A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.”
Magna pars hominum est quae non peccatis irascitur, sed peccantibus.
Seneca the Younger Moral Essays
De Ira (On Anger): Book 2, cap. 28, line 8
Moral Essays
“One leak will sink a ship, and one sin will destroy a sinner.”
John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher
George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist
From ‘’Justice’’ in Unspoken Sermons Series III (1889)
Context: If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to deserve such punishment. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus.