Quotes about sin (1859 quotes, page 14)

“There are many fair professors that are foul sinners, and that have much of God, and Christ, and heaven, and holiness in their lips, when they have nothing but sin and hell in their hearts and lives. These men’s conversations shame their profession, and therefore they cry against sanctification as a sure and blessed evidence of a man’s justification.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A Cabinet of Jewels

Men , God , Hell , Heart

“The Christian insistence on freedom — the monastic vows are voluntary sacrifices of a select few — derives from the Christian concept that man must be free in order to act morally. (A sleeping, a chained and clubbed, a drugged person can neither be sinful nor virtuous.) Yet, the free world which is practically synonymous with the world of free enterprise alone provides a climate, a way of life compatible with the dignity of man who makes free decisions, enjoys privileges, assumes responsiblilties, and develops his talents as he sees fit. He is truly the steward of his family. He can buy, sell, save, invest, gamble, plan the future, build, retrench, acquire capital, make donations, take risks. In other words, he can be the master of his economic fate and act as a man instead of a sheep in a herd under a shepherd and his dogs. No doubt, free enterprise is a harsh system; it demands real men. But socialism, which appeals to envious people craving for security and afraid to decide for themselves, impairs human dignity and crushes man utterly.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

The Roots of Anticapitalism

Life , Men , Fate , People

“Nothing like other folks' sin for distraction.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Paradise (1997)

“They sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
.....
Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
.....
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Canto X, st. 10.
The Curse of Kehama (1810)

Love , Life , Passion , Time

“Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it.
The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

Life , Pain , Fear , Disease

“I am convinced: people with pure hearts live better lives! Actually, one of the things I look for in a staff member is innocence. I love it when a person is not full of malice or unforgiveness or is not wrestling with secret sin. You can just tell by their countenance-they are wonderful people to be around.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Simple Prayers for a Powerful Life, Regal Books, September 2002, p. 109, ISBN 0830730559]

Love , People , Secret , Heart

“There rise her timeless capitals of Empires daily born,
Whose plinths are laid at midnight, and whose streets are packed at morn;
And here come hired youths and maids that feign to love or sin
In tones like rusty razor-blades to tunes like smitten tin.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Naaman's Song http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/LimitsRenewals/naamansong.html, Stanza 2.
Other works

Love , Youth

“The golden chain of affection is binding together all who compose the goodly fellowship of the saints. Calvary rather than Sinai is the typical source of the church's inspiration; and bonds of law are being supplanted by bonds of love Indeed, the whole host of the redeemed is marching in solid phalanx against the combined forces of ignorance and error, of depravity and sin; while, high above all the regimental standards, floats the banner of the cross, blazoned with this suggestive inscription, "Everyone that loveth is born of God."”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 111.

Love , God , Law , Error

“God wants us to worship Him. He doesn't need us, for He couldn't be a self-sufficient God and need anything or anybody, but He wants us. When Adam sinned it was not he who cried, 'God, where art Thou?' It was God who cried, 'Adam, where art thou?”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Worship: The Missing Jewel as quoted in Vernon K. McLellan (2000), Twentieth century thoughts that shaped the church p. 265.

God , Art

“A person is said to be justified, when he is approved of God as free from the guilt of sin and its deserved punishment, and as having that righteousness belonging to him that entitles to the reward of life. That we should take the word in such a sense, and understand it as the judge’s accepting a person as having both a negative and positive righteousness belonging to him, and looking on him therefore as not only free from any obligation to punishment, but also as just and righteous, and so entitled to a positive reward, is not only most agreeable to the etymology and natural import of the word, which signifies to pass one for righteousness in judgment, but also manifestly agreeable to the force of the word as used in Scripture.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Justification By Faith Alone (1738)

Life , God , Understanding , Nature

“These words were said full tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any that shall be saved. Then were it a great unkindness to blame or wonder on God for my sin, since He blameth not me for sin.
And in these words I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven: in which knowing we shall verily see the cause why He suffered sin to come. In which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 27
Context: And for the tender love that our good Lord hath to all that shall be saved, He comforteth readily and sweetly, signifying thus: It is sooth that sin is cause of all this pain; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
These words were said full tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any that shall be saved. Then were it a great unkindness to blame or wonder on God for my sin, since He blameth not me for sin.
And in these words I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven: in which knowing we shall verily see the cause why He suffered sin to come. In which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God.

God , Suffering , Joy

““They say that they’re a punishment on godly people for allowing sin to walk the earth unanswered—”
“Who is this ‘they’ you’re always referring to?” Stanton glared at Rose, his eyes gleaming with unhidden malice. “Your mongoloid Aunt Kindy? Your drunken Uncle Sal? Or are you talking about the slack-jawed hacks who bang out those dime novels for a bottle of whiskey and the price of a flophouse?”
Rose stared at him, her mouth open in astonishment. But Stanton pressed on, his voice flat and awful.
“Or maybe you’re just using the word ‘they’ as so many pea-brained idiots use it, as a cowardly rhetorical device, an excuse to say the things you really believe without giving anyone the chance to judge you for the narrow-minded, stupid creature you are.””

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 15, “Ososolyeh” (pp. 211-212)

People , Stupidity , Chance

“And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a new strawberry has happened during the night.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald's Choir Treat"
Reginald (1904)

Life , People , Youth , Night

“I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.”

Judas Iscariot one of the twelve original apostles of Jesus Christ, known for betrayal of Jesus

Matthew 27:4 KJV

“A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world as a public indecency.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 22.

World

“Evolution swings open a door to do whatever the evolutionist pleases, as long as what he does is within the bounds of a civil law he is ever expanding to accommodate his sinful desires.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Law

“How divinely full of glory and pleasure shall that hour be when all the millions of mankind that have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God shall meet together and stand around Him, with every tongue and every heart full of joy and praise! How astonishing will be the glory and the joy of that day when all the saints shall join together in one common song of gratitude and love, and of everlasting thankfulness to this Redeemer! With what unknown delight, and inexpressible satisfaction, shall all that are saved from the ruins of sin and hell address the Lamb that was slain, and rejoice in His presence!”

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

Source: Attributed from postum publications, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 520.

Love , God , Pleasure , Hell

“Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Your Thought and Mine

Law

“Brethren, whatever the temptation is, our safety is not in habits of virtue. It is not in sturdy resolution and strength of character. It is not even in the timely thought of sin's consequences; but our safety is in the Saviour. Christ ever lives and ever intercedes; and it is our strength, our triumph, to rush into His arms of omnipotent protection.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 100.

Time , Christ

“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

World

“All true love to God is preceded in the heart by these two things — a sense of sin, and an assurance of pardon. There is no love possible — real, deep, genuine, worthy of being called love of God — which does not start with the belief of my own transgression, and with the thankful reception of forgiveness in Christ.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 397.

Love , God , Forgiveness , Sense

“The truthfulness which Jesus demands from his followers is the self-abnegation which does not hide sin. Nothing is then hidden, everything is brought forth to the light of day. In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this sort of truthfulness.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Truthfulness, p. 138.

Men , God , Truth , Question

“"Arise, take up thy bed and walk." You are on your bed now. You put yourself there by your own sin. You have kept yourself there by your own choice. Every sinner is a sinner because he chooses to be; and you are no exception. Jesus commands you to repent and trust Him and follow Him. The moment you are willing to obey, He gives you strength to obey.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 435.

“This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible. Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there - with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.”

David Vitter (1961) U.S. Senator from Louisiana

Douglass K. Daniel, "Senator's number on escort service list" http://web.archive.org/web/20070715094917/news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_go_co/vitter_dc_madam, Associated Press, July 10, 2007.

God , Marriage , Family , Disappointment

“Jesus lives! the same comforting, helping, instructing, loving Elder Brother, as when John leaned on His bosom, as when He lifted Peter up from the waves, as when He dried Mary's tears with His, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." Jesus lives! the same almighty Saviour, Guide, Intercessor, as when He ascended to glory with the broken fetters of sin and death in His pierced hands.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 94.

Love , Death , Tear , Help

“And I will pretend
That I don't know of your sins
Until you are ready to confess.
But all the time, all the time,
I'll know, I'll know.And you can use my skin
To bury secrets in,
And I will settle you down.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

I Know
Song lyrics, When the Pawn… (1999)

Secret , Time

“On the determinist hypothesis an omnipotent God could have prevented all sin by creating us with better natures and in more favourable surroundings. … Hence we should not be responsible for our sins to God.”

J. M. E. McTaggart (1866–1925) British philosopher

Some Dogmas of Religion (1906), p. 165.

God , Nature

“His work is full of the signs of those two cardinal sins from which (as Kafka pointed out) all the others spring: impatience and laziness. The work of every artist is conditioned by the way in which he resists or yields to these temptations.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Some Notes on Caravaggio (1956)

Way , Spring

“Where lives the man that has not tried
How mirth can into folly glide,
And folly into sin!”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Bridal of Triermain, canto i. Stanza 21.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“If thy hope be any thing worth, it will purify thee from thy sins.”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 327.

Hope

“And at times I'm tempted to think that our way and the Kirk's way is not God's way, for we're apt to treat the natural man as altogether corrupt, and put him under over-strict pains and penalties, whereas there's matter in him that might be shaped to the purposes of grace. If there's original sin, there's likewise original innocemce.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. IX "Before Lammas"

God , Pain , Penalty , Way

“People of Substance may Sin without being expos'd for their stolen Pleasure; but Servants and the Poorer sort of Women have seldom an Opportunity of concealing a Big Belly, or at least the Consequences of it.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark C, p. 66
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Women , People , Pleasure

“But the present life should never be hated, except insofar as it subjects us to sin, although even that hatred should not properly be applied to life itself.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 75.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Life , Hate

“Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science…I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

Interview with The Guardian (29 March 2010)

Way , Feeling , Science

“The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little — or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 10

World , Spring , Nature

“Rushdie had written a book of nonfiction which offered critical but decided support to the Nicaraguan revolution. He had also been eloquent about the rights of the ever-relegated Palestinians. What more natural, when he was threatened with assassination by contract, than to jubilate about a terrorist-symp who had been caught in his own logic? I counted some ten newspaper and magazine columns from the Podhoretz school, all making this same point in the same words — demonstrating the impressive Zhdanovite discipline that is the special mark of the faction. All of them seemed to regard the affair as some sort of heavenly revenge for the sin of radical promiscuity; much as they have represented the AIDS crisis as a vengeance as on sixties morality. The ethical nullity of these positions never got beyond mere gloating, and will one day help to illustrate the essential distinction between irony and brutish sarcasm.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Siding with Rushdie" (1989).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

Books , School , Support , Revenge

“I am alone with my sin. This is why they rule. The Peerless Scarred know that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They must be worn if one is to rule. This is their first lesson. Or was it that the weak do not deserve life?”

Pierce Brown book Red Rising

Source: Red Rising (2014), Ch. 20: The House Mars

Life

“Because of the effects of sin, mistakes have added up in the genes of humans so that today, deformities could result from close relatives marrying. Adam and Eve's children would have had relatively few mistakes in the genes compared to today. So, provided it was one man for one woman for life - there would not have been a problem at all for Cain to marry his sister!”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Did Adam have a Bellybutton?: And other tough questions about the Bible (2000)

Life , Children , Problem , Sister

“Do you know,” said Maclaren, “there is one sin which is punished with unfailing certainty, and must therefore be the deadliest sin in all time. Stupidity.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 8 (pp. 62-63)

Stupidity , Time

“The third big idea is that we confess our sins to someone close to us--a friend or our spouse. I don't mean a public declaration of our shortcomings; I mean confession in the security of a trusted and living friend.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Simple Prayers for a Powerful Life, Regal Books, September 2002, p. 110, ISBN 0830730559]

Idea

“That any should suffer forever, lingering on in hopeless despair, and rolling amidst infinite torments without the possibility of alleviation and without end; that since God can save men and will save a part, he has not proposed to save all — these are real, not imaginary, difficulties… My whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me why sin came into the world; why the earth is strewn with the dying and the dead; and why man must suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind… I confess, when I look on a world of sinners and sufferers — upon death-beds and grave-yards — upon the world of woe filled with hosts to suffer for ever: when I see my friends, my family, my people, my fellow citizens when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger — and when I see the great mass of them wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he does not do so, I am stuck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Practical Sermons Designed for Vacant Congregations and Families (1841), Sermon VIII : God Is Worthy of Confidence, p. 123.

Death , Men , God , People

“There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Rudyard Kipling: A Pre-Raphaelite's Son", p. 36
The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980)

“Success in the sociologists' aim might lead, in T. S. Eliot's phrase, to "systems so perfect that no one would need to be good." This view forgets that men long ago committed themselves to the endeavor to control their own collective behavior, not only in the ways sanctioned by the churches but in others, by making it to men's interest to do good. And they have increasingly based the endeavor on an understanding of natural laws of human behavior, those of economics, for example. So that the question is not: Shall this kind of control be undertaken? but: Where shall it stop? A sociologist might also argue that his religious critics have more faith in him than in their own doctrine, the doctrine that man is infinitely tough and resourceful and is not easily cheated of his freedom to sin. What God has given no man can take away, certainly no sociologist. More seriously, he might argue that the social sciences are not in train to eliminate morality but to make greater demands of it. A sociology that shows us unsuspected or not hitherto understood ways in which men are bound up with one another invites more refined answers to the question: "Am I my brother's keeper?"”

George C. Homans (1910–1989) American sociologist

George C. Homans (1956), "Giving a dog a bad name." in: The Listener, Vol. 56. p. 233; Reprinted in: George C. Homans (1962), Sentiments & activities; essays in social science https://archive.org/details/sentimentsactivi00homa, p. 117-8

Men , God , Faith , Law

“You read in the revelations given to John on the Isle of Patmos, concerning the latter days, that a voice was heard crying to the Saints in Babylon-"Come out of her, O my people, be not partakers of her sins, lest ye receive of her plagues, for her sins have reached unto heaven," etc. Has this voice been heard? Yes, the Latter-day Saints have heard it. Has the angel flown through the midst of heaven and delivered the Gospel to the children of men? Yes, we believe all this. Do we believe that the Lord sent his messengers to Joseph Smith, and commanded him to refrain from joining any Christian church, and to refrain from the wickedness he saw in the churches, and finally delivered to him a message informing him that the Lord was about to establish his kingdom on the earth, and led him on step by step until he gave him the revelation concerning the plates? Yes, this is all correct. Did Joseph receive these revelations? He did. Did the heavenly messengers come to Joseph, and commit to him the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood? Yes, we believe all this. Did they commit to him the keys of the Melchizedek Priesthood? Yes. This is all correct, we believe all this.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 18:239 (June 23, 1874)
1870s

Men , Children , People , Angels

“Methinks God has punish'd the Avaritious as he often punishes sinners, in their own way, in the ver sin itself: the thrist of gain was their crime, that thrist continued became their punishment and ruin. As for the few who have the good fortune to remain with half of what they imagined they had (among whom is your humble servantl, I would have them sensible of their felicity, and convinced of the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, who, after half his estate was swallowed by the Directors of those days, resolv'd, that half to be more than the whole.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

In his letter to Atterbury Bishop of Rochester. Sept. 23. 1720.

God , Truth , Way , Imagination

“We are so far identical with our ancestors and our contemporaries that it is very rarely we can see anything that they do not see. It is not unjust that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children, for the children committed the sins when in the persons of their fathers.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Personal Identity
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IV - Memory and Design

Children , Personality

“I’ve done a prideful thing, a thing more sinful than she ever done to me. I took the bottom out of her life.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Great Wide World Over There (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

Life

“Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so. And if I seek to acquire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty. It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

In response to the interviewer stating: 'The U.S. says you are trying to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons.'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

God

“Beneath the smiling mask, we can see the injury that results from a deficiency of rebellion. The nice ones are never quite real. They lack self-definition, self-confidence, because they have never created boundaries and limits for themselves by making decisions. Having never dared to break the taboos they suffer from shame. Their sins are ones of omission rather than commission. They “have left undone those things they ought to have done,” most especially deciding for themselves what is good and evil.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), pp. 82-83

Smile , Confidence , Decision , Suffering

“Moved by a generous eagerness to turn men's attention to the power which dwelt in circumstances, Mr. Owen devised the instructive phrase, that "man's character was formed for him and not by him." He used the unforgettable inference that "man is the creature of circumstances." The school of material improvers believed they could put in permanent force right circumstances. The great dogma was their charter of encouragement. To those who hated without thought It seemed a restrictive doctrine to be asked to admit that there were extenuating circumstances in the career of every rascal. To the clergy with whom censure was a profession, and who held that all sin was wilful, man being represented as the "creature of circumstances," appeared a denial of moral responsibility. When they were asked to direct hatred against error, and pity the erring — who had inherited so base a fortune of incapacity and condition — they were wroth exceedingly, and said it would be making a compromise with sin. The idea of the philosopher of circumstances was that the very murderer in his last cell had been born with a staple in his soul, to which the villainous conditions of his life had attached an unseen chain, which had drawn him to the gallows, and that the rope which was to hang him was but the visible part. Legislators since that day have come to admit that punishment is justifiable only as far as it has preventive influence. To use the great words of Hobbes, "Punishment regardeth not the past, only the future."”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

George Jacob Holyoake in The History of Co-operation in England (1875; 1902).

Life , Men , Hate , School

“Even if mankind had any desire to rid itself of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed had been assured of a place in our hearts by virtue of time. By writing it down on a piece of paper and parading it as law and belief, Greed could be resurrected at a moment's notice.
That was the beauty of the written word. It was invariably taken at face value and granted permit to be spoken as the truth. It lived longer than the man.
And wreaked havoc in the process.”

Stel Pavlou book Decipher

Decipher, The First Time, p. 7 (2001).

Truth , Law , Beauty , Time

“Feminists had an astoundingly naive view of the mutual exclusiveness of sex and aggression, which, Freud demonstrates, are fused in the amoral unconscious, as revealed to us through dreams. That rape is simply what used to be called “unbridled lust,” like gluttony a sin of insufficient self-restraint, seems to be beyond the feminist ken.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 41

Dreams , Sex

“O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited (1945)

God , Forgiveness

“The absolute justice of the system of things is as clear to me as any scientific fact. The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth to the sun, and more so–for experimental proof of the fact is within reach of us all–nay, is before us all in our own lives, if we had but the eyes to see it.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, Reply to Charles Kingsley (1860)

Justice , Sun

“The abominable effort to take one’s sins with one to paradise.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Detached Pages, entry for 1913
Journals 1889-1949

Effort

“The Divine Christ has died on the cross a. victim for the sins of the world; what is He doing now? Did His redemptive love exhaust itself in the days of His flesh? The past has been forgiven; but has any provision been made for the future? Have we been reconciled to God by the death of His Son, but is there no salvation through His risen life?”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 92.

Love , Life , Death , God

“Prayer busters (causes of unanswered prayer) are prayerlessness, unconfessed sin, unresolved relational conflict, selfishness, uncaring attitudes, and inadequate faith.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Faith , Selfishness

“The pastorate was formed against a sort of intoxication of religious behavior, examples of which are found throughout the Middle East in the second, third, and fourth centuries, and to which certain Gnostic sects in particular bear striking and indisputable testimony. In at least some of these Gnostic sects, in fact, the identification of matter with evil, and as absolute evil, obviously entailed certain consequences. This might be, for example, a kind of vertigo or enchantment provoked by a sort of unlimited asceticism that could lead to suicide: freeing oneself from matter as quickly as possible. There is also the idea, the theme, of destroying matter through the exhaustion of the evils it contains, of committing every possible sin, going to the very end of the domain of evil opened up by matter, and thus destroying matter. Let us sin, then, and sin to infinity. There is also the theme of the nullification of the world of the law, to destroy which one must first destroy the law, that is to say, break every law. One must respond to every law established by the world, or by the powers of the world, by violating it, systematically breaking the law and in effect, overthrowing the reign of the one who created the world.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Lecture 8 (1 March 1978), p. 195
Security, Population, Territory (1978)

World , Law , Behavior , Idea

“I am increasingly convinced that one of humankind's most grievous sins is our anthropocentrism. By cutting ourselves off from the rest of creation, we are left bereft of awe and wonder and therefore of reverence and gratitude. We violate our very beings, and we have nothing but trivia to teach our young.”

Matthew Fox (priest) (1940) priest and theologian

The Reinvention of Work (New York: Harper, 1994), p. 128.

Gratitude

“My sins, my wild loves, and Fate herself
have all conspired against me.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Erros meus, má fortuna, amor ardente
Em minha perdição se conjuraram.
Selected Sonnets: A Bilingual Edition (2008), ed. William Baer, p. 99
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Erros meus, má fortuna, amor ardente

Love , Fate

“Of the seven deadly sins, lust is definitely the pick of the litter.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Skinny Legs and All (1990)

“The Mosaic dispensation was better adapted to prevent the commission of sin than the Christian system. Under that dispensation, if you committed a sin, you had to bring a sacrifice—dove, sheep, or bullock, now, when a sin is committed, the Christian says, “Charge it,” “Put it on the slate, If I don’t pay it the Savior will.” In this way, rascality is sold on a credit, and the credit system of religion breeds extravagance in sin. The Mosaic dispensation was based upon far better business principles. The debt had to be paid, and by the man who owed it. We are told that the sinner is in debt to God, and that the obligation is discharged by the Savior. The best that can be said of such a transaction is that the debt is transferred, not paid. As a matter of fact, the sinner is in debt to the person he has injured. If you injure a man, it is not enough to get the forgiveness of God—you must get the man’s forgiveness, you must get your own. If a man puts his hand in the fire and God forgives him, his hand will smart just as badly.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Some Reasons Why (1881)

God , Religion , Way , Forgiveness

“Good nature and kindness towards those with whom they come in personal contact, at the expense of public interests, that is of those whom they never see, is the besetting sin of public men.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 23. p. 176

Men , Nature , Personality

“The single sin is less of a problem than the good reasons for it.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#84
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Problem

“Julian read the Bible as if it were a work of contemporary fiction, open to criticism or even revision. Once, when I queried him about the purpose of his unusual reinterpretations, he said to me, “I want a better Bible, Adam. I want a Bible in which the Fruit of Knowledge contains the Seeds of Wisdom, and makes life more pleasurable for mankind, not worse. I want a Bible in which Isaac leaps up from the sacrificial stone and chokes the life out of Abraham, to punish him for the abject and bloody sin of Obedience. I want a Bible in which Lazarus is dead and stubborn about it, rather than standing to attention at the beck and call of every passing Messiah.””

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), pp. 126-127

Life , Wisdom , Pleasure , Knowledge

“The Republican Party is for positive intervention. They propose, as our fathers did, to erect a wall of intervention, of prohibition, and station an angel of liberty at the gates in that wall, who shall keep watch and ward there day and night, and guard the territories against the entrance of slavery, as the cherubim of God kept sin out of Eden.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://web.archive.org/web/20160319082926/https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA233#v=onepage&q&f=false (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 233
1860s, Speech (October 1860)

God , Angels , Night

“I have committed the worst sin that can be committed. I have not been happy.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

He cometido el peor pecado que uno puede cometer. No he sido feliz.
"El Remordimiento" [Remorse] in La moneda de hierro [The Iron Coin], as quoted in Borges at Eighty : Conversations (1982) edited by Willis Barnstone, also in Hispanic Literature Criticism : Allende to Jiménez (1994), p. 298

Happiness

“In combination with other infernal contraptions, like rockets to deliver bombs at large distances, chemical, biological and radioactive poisons, such a war must mean a degree of human suffering and degradation which is beyond the power of imagination. No country would be immune, but those with highly developed industry would suffer most. It is very doubtful whether our technological civilization would survive such a catastrophe.
One may be inclined to regard this as no great loss, but as a just punishment for its shortcomings and sins: the lack of productive genius in art and literature, the neglect of the moral teachings of religion and philosophy, the slowness to abandon outdated political conceptions, like national sovereignty. Yet we are all involved in this tragedy, and the instinct of self-preservation, the love of our children, makes us think about a way of salvation.”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

Physics in my generation (1956)

Love , War , Children , Religion

““Scripture and the Fathers recognize only two principles of all human actions,” says Bishop Colbert, “charity, the principle of all good actions; cupidity, the principle of all bad ones. The Jesuits, on the contrary, introduce a host of principles of human actions.” There would thus be actions which were neither good nor evil, “an innumerable multitude of indifferent actions, of no consequence either for good or for ill.”… Thus man would have constituted for himself a sphere where there was no longer any question between himself and God either of sin or of virtue…. God, at the last judgment, would not ask him to account for actions which were unrelated to his salvation and which did not concern the divinity. In that area, the Christian would enjoy a legitimate freedom, without fear of constantly sinning; he would be a sinner only when the occasion of sin arose, in specific cases. The rest of the time he would live between heaven and hell, between charity and concupiscence.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), pp. 119-120

God , Fear , Hell , Question

“Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Source: Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 214

Time

“On September 16, 1978, there was an eclipse of the moon in Riyadh. Late one afternoon it became visible: a dark shadow moving slowly across the face of the pale moon in the darkening blue sky. There was a frantic knocking on the door. When I opened it, our neighbor asked if we were safe. He said it was the Day of Judgement, when the Quran says the sun will rise from the west and the seas will flood, when all the dead will rise and Allah's angels will weigh our sins and virtue, expediting the good to Paradise and the bad to Hell. Though it was barely twilight, the muezzin suddenly called for prayer--not one mosque calling carefully after another, as they usually did, but all the mosques clamoring all at once, all over the city. There was shouting across the neighborhood. When I looked outside I saw people praying in the street.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

People , Angels , Hell , Sun

“Such was the man who was sent on an embassy to Ajmir, in order that the Rai (Pithaura) of that country might see the right way without the intervention of the sword, and that he might incline from the track of opposition into the path of propriety, leaving his airy follies for the institutes of the knowledge of Allah, and acknowledging the expediency of uttering the words of martyrdom and repeating the precepts of the law, and might abstain from infidelity and darkness, which entails the loss of this world and that to come, and might place in his ear the ring of slavery to the sublime Court (may Allah exalt it!) which is the centre of justice and mercy, and the pivot of the Sultans of the worldand by these means and modes might cleanse the fords of good life from the sins of impurity'…'The army of Islam was completely victorious, and 'an hundred thousand grovelling Hindus swiftly departed to the fire of hell'… After this great victory, the army of Islam marched forward to Ajmir, where it arrived at a fortunate moment and under an auspicious bird, and obtained so much booty and wealth, that you might have said that the secret depositories of the seas and hills had been revealed….'While the Sultan remained at Ajmir, he destroyed the pillars and foundations of the idol temples, and built in their stead mosques and colleges, and the precepts of Islam, and the customs of the law were divulged and established”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the conquest of Ajmer (Rajasthan) Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 213-216. Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Life , Secret , World , Justice

“When, where, and how were you, Joseph Smith, first called? How old were you? and what were you qualifications? I was between fourteen and fifteen years of age. Had you been to college? No. Had you studied in any seminary of learning? No. Did you know how to read? Yes. How to write? Yes. Did you understand much about arithmetic? No. About grammar? No. Did you understand all the branches of education which are generally taught in our common schools? No. But yet you say the Lord called you when you were but fourteen or fifteen years of age? How did he call you? I will give you a brief history as it came from his own mouth. I have often heard him relate it. He was wrought upon by the Spirit of God, and felt the necessity of repenting of his sins and serving God. He retired from his father's house a little way, and bowed himself down in the wilderness, and called upon the name of the Lord. He was inexperienced, and in great anxiety and trouble of mind in regard to what church he should join. He had been solicited by many churches to join with them, and he was in great anxiety to know which was right. He pleaded with the Lord to give him wisdom on the subject; and while he was thus praying, he beheld a vision, and saw a light approaching him from the heavens; and as it came down and rested on the tops of the trees, it became more glorious; and as it surrounded him, his mind was immediately caught away from beholding surrounding objects. In this cloud of light he saw two glorious personages; and one, pointing to the other, said, "Behold my beloved son! hear ye him."”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 7:220 (August 14, 1859).
Joseph Smith Jr.'s First Vision

Wisdom , God , Age , Education

“And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their squalid lease of sin
With earlier title than his own.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Low Barometer, st. 3.
Poetry

Housing

“It's a big mistake to think that your own cause, or your own country, or your own side has God in its corner. For one thing, it commits the sin of pride.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=14m12s
2010s, 2010

God , Thinking , Country

“And they walk into these great big places, and there's excitement, and there's hope, and there's a sense of sin. 'Mother wouldn't want me to be here. What if Louise knew that I was here?' A lot of men, you know, would write home and talk about what was going on as if they hadn't seen it. I've been told what goes on in these gambling halls.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

The West (1996)

Men , Hope , Home , Sense

“The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Phrixus, Frag. 970

God , Children

“I came to claim my kingdom and you refused me because I was not one of you. Now I am one of you, my subjects, we are bound by blood, and I deserve to be your king. Your sins and your remorse, your mighty anguish, I take all upon myself. Fear your dead no more, they are my dead.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Orestes, Act 3
The Flies (1943)

Fear , Dead

“It is the very nature of grace to make a man strive to be most eminent in that particular grace which is most opposed to his bosom sin.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 294.

Nature

“"It is more sinful to conceal the power of the atom than it is to reveal it." Statement, 9 March 1954. Quoted in Peter G Boyle's The Churchill-Eisenhower Correspondence 1953-55”

W. Sterling Cole (1904–1987) American politician

Quotes

“Sometimes it seems Christians confuse their human nature with their sinful nature. The former we were created with, the latter we chose. It does us no good to try and escape our humanness and in so doing think we are escaping our sin. -Fingerprint.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Liner Notes

Nature , Thinking

“I've killed priests before, and another priest sold me an indulgence for the killings, so don't think I fear you or your Church. There's no sin that can't be bought off, no pardon that can't be purchased.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

Sir William Douglas, to Bernard de Taillebourg of the Inquisition, p. 17
The Grail Quest, Vagabond (2002)

Fear , Thinking

“Sin and Contrition — Retribution owed,
And cancell'd — Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, and Road,
Was but Myself toward Myself: and Your
Arrival but Myself at my own Door…”

Attar of Nishapur book The Conference of the Birds

The Conference of the Birds (1177)

“Success, n. The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Success

“I want to assure the people that Gujarat shall not tolerate any such accident. The culprits will get full punishment for their sins. Not only this, we will set an example, that nobody not even in his dream, thinks of committing a heinous crime like this.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Cited in: Caroline Sweetman (2005) Gender, Peacebuilding, and Reconstruction. p. 94
2002, "When select phrases are lifted and distorted out of context", 2002

People , Dreams , Thinking

“Do you feel that you have lost your way in life? Then God Himself will show you your way. Are you utterly helpless, worn out, body and soul? Then God's eternal love is ready and willing to help you up, and revive you. Are you wearied with doubts and terrors? Then God's eternal light is ready to show you your way; God's eternal peace ready to give you peace. Do you feel yourself full of sins and faults? Then take heart; for God's unchangeable will is, to take away those sins, and purge you from those faults.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Source: Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 265.

Love , Life , God , Peace

“Hal: Bury her naked? My own mum? It's a Freudian nightmare.
Dennis: I won't disagree.
Hal: Aren't we committing some kind of unforgivable sin?
Dennis: Only if you're a Catholic.
Hal: I am a Catholic. I can't undress her. She's a relative. I can go to Hell for it.
Dennis: I'll undress her then. I don't believe in Hell.
Hal: That's typical of your upbringing, baby. Every luxury was lavished on you - atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision. I had to make my own way.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act I

Way , Hell , Baby

“It belongeth to us to have three manner of knowings: the first is that we know our Lord God; the second is that we know our self: what we are by Him, in Nature and Grace; the third is that we know meekly what our self is anent our sin and feebleness. And for these three was all the Shewing made, as to mine understanding.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 72

God , Understanding , Nature

“You should've loved me baby
When redemption's too blind
Nature took my soul
And sin left a scar so wide
Time ravaged my body
And now I live in the house
Where the red light's always on”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

"Life Despite God"
Song lyrics, America's Sweetheart (2004)

Love , Soul , Nature , Light

“Let it be observed, that slovenliness is no part of religion; that neither this, nor any text of Scripture, condemns neatness of apparel. Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Sermon 93 On Dress. Compare: "Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God", Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book ii (1605)
General sources

Religion , Parting

“And of course, in my writing, there is the constant theme of music, love of, preoccupation with, music. Music is the single thread making my life into a coherency. … It's my job and my vice mixed together. You can't hope for better than that: having your job and your sin commingled.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

Love , Life , Hope , Music

“I do not know, my listener, what your crime, your guilt, your sins are, but surely we are all more or less of the guilt of loving only little. Take comfort, then, in these words just as I take comfort in them. P. 173-174”

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

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

Love

“Sin is like a mountain with two aspects according to whether it is viewed before or after it has been reached: yet both aspects are real.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Sin
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Mountain

“The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical".””

Herbert Butterfield book The Whig Interpretation of History

The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

History , Study , Past

“I am speaking of the religion whose earliest dogmas contain a condemnation of the flesh, and which not merely grants the spirit superiority over the flesh but also deliberately mortifies the flesh in order to glorify the spirit. I am speaking of the religion whose unnatural mission actually introduced sin and hypocrisy into the world, since just because of the condemnation of the flesh the most innocent pleasures of the senses became a sin and just because of the impossibility of our being wholly spirit hypocrisy inevitably developed.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Ich spreche von jener Religion, in deren ersten Dogmen eine Verdammnis alles Fleisches enthalten ist, und die dem Geiste nicht bloß eine Obermacht über das Fleisch zugesteht, sondern auch dieses abtöten will, um den Geist zu verherrlichen; ich spreche von jener Religion, durch deren unnatürliche Aufgabe ganz eigentlich die Sünde und die Hypokrisie in die Welt gekommen, indem eben durch die Verdammnis des Fleisches die unschuldigsten Sinnenfreuden eine Sünde geworden und durch die Unmöglichkeit, ganz Geist zu sein, die Hypokrisie sich ausbilden mußte.
Source: The Romantic School (1836), p. 3

Pleasure , World , Religion , Sense