Quotes about sin
page 10

Isaac Watts photo

“My faith would lay her hand
On that dear head of Thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And there confess my sin.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Source: Attributed from postum publications, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 72.

Fred Phelps photo
Thomas Brooks photo

“The giving way to a less sin makes way for the committing of a greater.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Marie of Edinburgh, Queen of Romania photo
Roger Scruton photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Carole Morin photo
Siddharth Katragadda photo

“The case for meat-eaters - if eating meat is a sin, then why are some plants carnivorous?”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 4
Dark Rooms (2002)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Ambrose photo

“Formerly a lamb was offered, a calf was offered. Christ is offered today…and he offers himself as priest in order that he may remit our sins: here in image, there in truth where, as our advocate, he intercedes for us before the Father.”
Ante agnus offerebatur, offerebatur et vitulus, nunc Christus offertur...et offert se ipse quasi sacerdos, ut peccata nostra dimittat. Hic in imagine, ibi in veritate, ubi apud Patrem pro nobis quasi advocatus intervenit.

Ambrose (339–397) bishop of Milan; one of the four original doctors of the Church

De officiis ministrorum ("On the Offices of Ministers" or, "On the Duties of the Clergy"), Book I, ch. 48. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZIwXAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA114&dq=%22ante+agnus+offerebatur%22&hl=en&ei=pTDSTcflDsrZ0QHjxKHYCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAzgy#v=onepage&q=%22ante%20agnus%20offerebatur%22&f=false
In, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology, Edward J. Kilmartin, SJ, Robert J. Daly, SJ, Editor, 1998, The Liturgical Press, ISBN 0814662048 ISBN 9780814662045, p. 19 http://books.google.com/books?id=WI2gC7lFmC4C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22Christ+is+offered+today%22&source=bl&ots=MoKJXo6d2u&sig=8k0xytaJpidX3wg5RpQQKHwDxzw&hl=en&ei=hi_STbuzOYq_0AHwxKXKCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Christ%20is%20offered%20today%22&f=false
Alternate translation: In old times a lamb, a Calf was offered; now Christ is offered. But He is offered as man and as enduring suffering. And He offers Himself as a priest to take away our sins, here in an image, there in truth, where with the Father He intercedes for us as our Advocate. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/34011.htm

Anthony Burgess photo
Muhammad photo

“It has been reported from Sulaiman b. Buraid through his father that when the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him to fear Allah and to be good to the Muslims who were with him. He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war, do not embezzle the spoils; do not break your pledge; and do not mutilate (the dead) bodies; do not kill the children. When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. Then invite them to migrate from their lands to the land of Muhajirs and inform them that, if they do so, they shall have all the privileges and obligations of the Muhajirs. If they refuse to migrate, tell them that they will have the status of Bedouin Muslims and will be subjected to the Commands of Allah like other Muslims, but they will not get any share from the spoils of war or Fai' except when they actually fight with the Muslims (against the disbelievers). If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them. When you lay siege to a fort and the besieged appeal to you for protection in the name of Allah and His Prophet, do not accord to them the guarantee of Allah and His Prophet, but accord to them your own guarantee and the guarantee of your companions for it is a lesser sin that the security given by you or your companions be disregarded than that the security granted in the name of Allah and His Prophet be violated When you besiege a fort and the besieged want you to let them out in accordance with Allah's Command, do not let them come out in accordance with His Command, but do so at your (own) command, for you do not know whether or not you will be able to carry out Allah's behest with regard to them.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sahih Muslim, Book 019, Number 4294
Sunni Hadith

“Sin is the insurrection and rebellion of the heart against God; it turns from Him, and turns against Him; it takes up arms against God.”

Richard Alleine (1611–1681) English clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 546.

“The Lord Jesus Christ would have the whole world to know, that though He pardons sin, He will not protect it.”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 86.

Joseph H. Hertz photo

“Though man comes from the dust, sin is not a part of his nature. Man can overcome sin, and through repentance attain to at-one-ment with his Maker.”

Joseph H. Hertz (1872–1946) British rabbi

Genesis II, 7 (p. 7)
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (one-volume edition, 1937, ISBN 0-900689-21-8

Julian of Norwich photo
Sugar Ray Leonard photo

“Inactivity is the biggest sin in boxing.”

Sugar Ray Leonard (1956) American boxer

Sugar Ray Leonardhttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19970303/ai_n14091404

Stevie Wonder photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Richard Fuller (minister) photo
William James photo
Robert Graves photo
John Bartholomew Gough photo
Ernest Gellner photo
Ray Comfort photo
Joshua Casteel photo
George S. Patton photo
Joseph Priestley photo
Otto Weininger photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Saint Patrick photo
Frank Chodorov photo
Victor Davis Hanson photo
Elinor Glyn photo

“Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err
With her
On some other fur?”

Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) British novelist and scriptwriter

Anonymous rhyme satirising Three Weeks, quoted in J. Lee Thompson Forgotten Patriot (Madison, N.J.:Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 2007) p. 259
Criticism

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives whom we call dead.”

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Resignation

Warren Farrell photo

“In the past we believed both sexes were born with original sin. Today, we have come to unconsciously believe in the original sin of boys, but the original innocence of girls.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

page 103.
Father and Child Reunion (2001)

Gregory of Nyssa photo
Doug Stanhope photo

“Jesus died for your sins. I'm doing it for your mere entertainment dollar.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

No Refunds (2007)

Steve Sailer photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo
Richard Wurmbrand photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Philip K. Dick photo

“Sin, without strong restraints, would pull God from His throne, make the world the minion of its lusts, and all beings bow down and worship.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 549.

Salman al-Ouda photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Horace Bushnell photo
Léon Bloy photo

“The worst thing is not to commit crimes but, rather, not to accomplish the good that one could have done. It is the sin of omission, which is nothing other than to be unloving, and no one accuses himself of it.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Youcat English: Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ignatius Press, 2011 https://books.google.com/books?id=soVf9Q1h-esC&pg=PT26&dq=%22The+worst+thing+is+not+to+commit+crimes+but,+rather,+not+to+accomplish+the+good+that+one+could+have+done.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI3_bSqOH6yAIVwvI-Ch3kOAGF#v=onepage&q=%22The%20worst%20thing%20is%20not%20to%20commit%20crimes%20but%2C%20rather%2C%20not%20to%20accomplish%20the%20good%20that%20one%20could%20have%20done.%22&f=false

Hermann Adler photo

“No amount of money given in charity, nothing but the abandonment of this hateful trade, can atone for this great sin against God, Israel and Humanity.”

Hermann Adler (1839–1911) Chief Rabbi of the British Empire from 1891 to 1911

Condemning usury. p. 849
Quoted in Joseph H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (One-volume edition)

Ambrose photo

“Neither angel, nor archangel, nor yet even the Lord Himself (who alone can say "I am with you"), can, when we have sinned, release us, unless we bring repentance with us.”

Ambrose (339–397) bishop of Milan; one of the four original doctors of the Church

As quoted in Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1896) edited by Louis Klopsch

John Calvin photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Theda Bara photo

“I will continue doing vampires as long as people sin.”

Theda Bara (1885–1955) Silent film actress

As quoted in Sexy Origins and Intimate Things : The Rites and Rituals of Straights, Gays, Bi's, Drags, Trans, Virgins, and Others (1998) Charles Panati, p. 295

George Holmes Howison photo
Ramakrishna photo

“Once someone gave me a book of the Christians. I asked him to read it to me. It talked about nothing but sin. Sin is the only thing one hears at your Brahmo Samaj too… He who says day and night, ‘I am a sinner, I am a sinner’, verily becomes a sinner… Why should one only talk about sin and hell, and such things?”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

October 27, 1882, to Keshub Chunder Sen. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Volume 1, Madras, 1985, p. 138. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters Ch.13
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942)

George William Curtis photo

“That is to say, within less than twenty years after the Constitution was formed, and in obedience to that general opinion of the time which condemned slavery as a sin in morals and a blunder in economy, eight of the States had abolished it by law — four of them having already done so when the instrument was framed; and Mr. Douglas might as justly quote the fact that there were slaves in New York up to 1827 as proof that the public opinion of the State sanctioned slavery, as to try to make an argument of the fact that there were slave laws upon the statute-books of the original States. He forgets that there was not in all the colonial legislation of America one single law which recognized the rightfulness of slavery in the abstract; that in 1774 Virginia stigmatized the slave-trade as 'wicked, cruel, and unnatural'; that in the same year Congress protested against it 'under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of country'; that in 1775 the same Congress denied that God intended one man to own another as a slave; that the new Discipline of the Methodist Church, in 1784, and the Pastoral Letter of the Presbyterian Church, in 1788, denounced slavery; that abolition societies existed in slave States, and that it was hardly the interest even of the cotton-growing States, where it took a slave a day to clean a pound of cotton, to uphold the system. Mr. Douglas incessantly forgets to tell us that Jefferson, in his address to the Virginia Legislature of 1774, says that 'the abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state'; and while he constantly remembers to remind us that the Jeffersonian prohibition of slavery in the territories was lost in 1784, he forgets to add that it was lost, not by a majority of votes — for there were sixteen in its favor to seven against it — but because the sixteen votes did not represent two thirds of the States; and he also incessantly forgets to tell us that this Jeffersonian prohibition was restored by the Congress of 1785, and erected into the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was re-enacted by the first Congress of the United States and approved by the first President.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Sinclair Lewis photo
Pat Condell photo
Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
C. Rajagopalachari photo
Báb photo

“I beg of Thee, O my Best Beloved, to pardon me and those who earnestly seek to promote Thy Cause; Thou art indeed the One Who forgiveth the sins of all mankind.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to ‘Him Who Will Be Made Manifest’

Robert Silverberg photo

“As we zoomed along on the Chaos Express, I was sometimes tempted toward godliness the way the godly are tempted toward sin. But my love of divine reason left me no way to opt for the irrational.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, Thomas the Proclaimer (1972), Chapter 3, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” (p. 77)

Frederick Buechner photo
William Penn photo

“Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument; zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

143
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

John of St. Samson photo

“Every soul, touched by God, feels and believes in the depths of its being that it is more sinful than all men together.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Max Heindel photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? Was there any hope? Was there any way out?… time has healed the wounds -- and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting -- ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's men fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham -- that city which some call "Bombingham" -- which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. My brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing its hope and faith.
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s

Bill Hybels photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“Love the sinner; like the sin.”

Bart Bull American journalist

Vogue, 1990

Sarada Devi photo
Ingmar Bergman photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Väinö Linna photo
Ron White photo
Bertolt Brecht photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“The slave is a man, "the image of God," but "a little lower than the angels;" possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and sense, and grasps, with undying tenacity, the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of a God. It is such a being that is smitten and blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims which distinguish men from things, and persons from property. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark, under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder must strike down the conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over his victim.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

The Nature of Slavery. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester, December 1, 1850
1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

Charles Henry Fowler photo
Arthur Machen photo
David Hare photo

“To those whose god is honour, disgrace alone is sin.”

David Hare (1947) British writer

Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 7.
Misattributed

Ben Jonson photo

“Thus, in his belly, can he change a sin,
Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

CXVIII, On Gut, lines 5-6
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

Peter Akinola photo

“The very name of Jesus means, "He shall save his people from their sins." He came to seek and save the lost, those who are enslaved by sin.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 87

Joseph Heller photo