Quotes about sin (1859 quotes, page 15)

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.”

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

Attributed to Bonhoeffer on the internet, but this is from a remark about him, not by him, in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy http://books.google.com/books?id=aG0q3X8TVpsC&pg=PA486#v=onepage (2010), p. 486.
Misattributed

God , Courage

“Bring tea for the Tillerman,
Steak for the sun,
Wine for the women who made the rain come,
Seagulls sing your hearts away
‘Cause while the sinners sin, the children play”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Tea For The Tillerman
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Women , Children , Wine , Singing

“What then? For all my sins, His pardoning grace; For all my wants and woes, His loving-kindness; For darkest shades, the shining of God's face; And Christ's own hand to lead me in my blindness. When Caesar gave one a great reward, "This," said he, "is too great a gift for me to receive;" but said Caesar, "It is not too great a gift for me to give." So, though the least gift that Christ gives, in one sense, is too much for us to receive, yet the greatest gifts are not too great for Christ to give.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 95.

Love , God , Sense , Christ

“I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Till our brutal tusks were gone.”

Langdon Smith Evolution

Evolution (1895; 1909)

Men , Age , Law , Understanding

“They see the mortal maiden ride
In honour by the chieftan's side,
So beautiful, so free from sin,
Worthy was she such boon to win :
The spirit race that floated round
Were not more pure, more stainless found”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
The Golden Violet (1827)

Beauty

“There is nothing that can hurt the soul but sin; it is not affliction that hurts it, it often makes it better, as the furnace makes gold the purer; but it is sin that damnifies.”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

"Christ The Redeemer" in A Body of Divinity http://www.fivesolas.com/watson/redeemer.htm (1692).

Soul , Affliction , Hurt

“Another great change happened nearly two thousand years after the earth was made. It was baptized by water. A great flow of water come, the great deep was broken up, the windows of heaven were opened from on high, and the waters prevailed upon the face of the earth, sweeping away all wickedness and transgression-a similitude of baptism for the remission of sins. God requires the children of men to be baptized. What for? For the remission of sins. So he required our globe to be baptized by a flow of waters, and all of its sins were washed away, not one sin remaining.”

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

Journal of Discourses 21:323 (August 1, 1880).
Baptism of the Earth

Men , God , Children , Water

“The father, the Name-of-the-father, sustains the structure of desire with the structure of the law- but the inheritance of the father is that which Kierkegaard designates for us, namely, his sin.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Of the Network of Signifiers
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978)

Law

“Really to sin you have to be serious about it.”

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet

Button-Moulder, Act V, Scene VII
Peer Gynt (1867)

“Past sins, if you repent of them, whiten you. They made a great psalmist out of David, a faithful believer out of the prostitute Rahab, a zealous apostle out of the persecutor Saul. I have been a loved preacher and writer with a particular vocation. My sermons and books would not have had the same quality without my past of anarchy, vice, and violent atheism.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)

Love , Books , Faith , Past

“The greatest human evils are not those that individuals perform in private, the tiny transgressions against some arbitrary social standard we call sins. The ultimate evils are the mass murders that occur in revolution and war, the large-scale savageries that arise when one agglomeration of humans tries to dominate another: the deeds of the social group. …only group efforts can save us from the sporadic insanities of the group.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

The Clint Eastwood Conundrum
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)

War , Effort , Evil

“Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. – In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? – Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Misattributed to Tryon Edwards by a number of websites, thinkexist.com and quoteland.com among others. This quote does appear on p. 23 of Edwards' compilation, A Dictionary of Thoughts; however, it is clearly identified there as a quote by Hugh Blair, the Scottish author and preacher.
A genuine Tryon Edwards quote on the subject of anxiety appears above in the Sourced section ( from p. 22 of A Dictionary of Thoughts. )
Misattributed

Life , World , Disappointment , Parent

“You praise a man for having killed his enemy by means of an advantage; and by praising him for boldness you praise him for a sin against nature, because boldness leads to destruction.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Nature

“I am a firm believer in living as if there were no such thing as a secret. If we hide our sins and live in darkness, we will never get the healing we so desperately need; in fact, if it is hidden so well that we don't even recognize it, we may never even find forgiveness.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

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

Secret , Forgiveness

“From education by the Church to education by Germanic value is a step of several generations. We are the transition from one education to the other. We are the conquerors of one era and the founders of a new - also religious - epoch. We bear a heavy and therefore a great destiny. To destroy images is something every revolution has been able to do. But to establish its cause upon nothing and yet not to burn all bridges behind it: that is the nobility of character of the National Socialist era. The German people is not marked by original sin, but by original nobility. The place of Christian love has been taken by the National Socialist, Germanic idea of comradeship…which has already been symbolically expressed through the replacement of the rosary by the spade of labour.”

Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) German architect and politician

Quoted in Chapter 13, Part 3 of "The Face Of The Third Reich" by Joachim C. Fest.

Love , People , Education , Idea

“God willeth that we endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loveth it.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 40

Love , God , Hate , Soul

“The Present Age, according to my view of it, stands in that Epoch which in my former lecture I named the THIRD, and which I characterized as the Epoch of Liberation—directly from the external ruling Authority, indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form; the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:–the state of completed sinfulness.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 16

Truth , Age , Indifference

“"If the trade is at present carried on to the same extent and nearly in the same manner, while we are delaying from year to year to put a stop to our part in it, the blood of many thousands of our helpless, much injured fellow creatures is crying against us. The pitiable state of the survivors who are torn from their relatives, connections, and their native land must be taken into account. I fear the African trade is a national sin, for the enormities which accompany it are now generally known; and though, perhaps, the greater part of the nation would be pleased if it were suppressed, yet, as it does not immediately affect their own interest, they are passive. {… ] Can we wonder that the calamities of the present war begin to be felt at home, when we ourselves wilfully and deliberately inflict much greater calamities upon the native Africans, who never offended us?. "Woe unto thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled"”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

Alluding to the biblical verse in Isaiah 33:1. As quoted in The Works of the Rev. John Newton... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life (1839), Vol. 2, U. Hunt., page 438.

War , Fear , Home , Parting

“All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

Pastor John Hagee on Christian Zionism
Radio
"Fresh Air" with Terry Gross
NPR
2006-09-18
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6097362
2011-08-06

God

“Would you be free from the condemnation of the sins that are past, from the power of the temptations that are to come? Then take your stand on the Rock of Ages. Let death, let the grave, let the judgment come, the victory is Christ's and yours through Him.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 101.

Death , Age , Past , Victory

“In the "Alexandrian" explanation described above, the multiple from which evolution emerges is both secondary and sinful from its origin: it represents in fact (an idea that smacks of Manicheanism and the Hindu metaphysical systems) broken and pulverized unity. Starting from a very much more modern and completely different point of view, let us assert, as our original postulate, that, the multiple (that is, non-being, if taken in the pure state) being the only rational form of a creatable (creabile) nothingness, the creative act is comprehensible only as a gradual process of arrangement and unification, which amounts to accepting that to create is to unite. And, indeed, there is nothing to prevent our holding that union creates. To the objection that union presupposes already existing elements, I shall answer that physics has just shown us (in the case of mass) that experientially (and for all the protests of "common sense") the moving object exists only as the product of its motion.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

pp. 193–195 https://archive.org/stream/ChristianityAndEvolution/Christianity_and_Evolution#page/n191/mode/2up
Christianity and Evolution (1969)

Idea , Sense

“Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Knowledge , Tree , Evil

“Barring drink and the girls, I ne'er heard of a sin –
Many worse, better few, than bright, broken Maginn.”

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) Scottish writer and editor

"Here, early to bed, lies kind William Maginn" (1842), line 19; cited from R. Shelton Mackenzie (ed.) The Fraserian Papers of the Late William Maginn (New York: Redfield, 1857) p. cviii.

Girl , Drink

“What is to be seen in this fallen world, which is false and filled with vices, is full of disputes and is governed by the sins of deceitful and wicked humans? Only Rama is worth seeing, whose flocks of hair cover his lotus-like face, who is completely blissful, who has the form of a child, and who is the giver of liberation.”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

kiṃ dṛṣṭavyaṃ patitajagati vyāptadoṣe'pyasatye
māyācārāvratatanubhṛtāṃ pāparājadvicāre ।
dṛṣṭavyo'sau cikuranikuraiḥ pūrṇavaktrāravindaḥ
pūrṇānando dhṛtaśiśutanuḥ rāmacandro mukundaḥ ॥
[Aneja, Mukta, J. K., Kaul, Abraham, George, 2005, Abilities Redefined – Forty Life Stories Of Courage And Accomplishment, All India Confederation of the Blind, Delhi, India, Shri Ram Bhadracharyaji – A Religious Head With A Vision, http://www.aicb.in/images/success_story.pdf, 25 April 2011, 66–68]
[Nagar, Shanti Lal, The Holy Journey of a Divine Saint: Being the English Rendering of Swarnayatra Abhinandan Granth, Acharya Divakar, Sharma, Siva Kumar, Goyal, Surendra Sharma, Susila, B. R. Publishing Corporation, First, Hardback, New Delhi, India, 2002, 8176462888]

World , Falseness

“Sin blurs man's face. Now Christ came not only to save mankind but also to repair what sin had broken, to snatch man away from everything that disfigures him, so as to restore to human destiny all its breadth and fulfillment.”

Robert Sarah (1945) Roman Catholic bishop

God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith (2015)

Christ

“Look, Nelson. Maybe I haven't done everything right in my life. I know I haven't. But I haven't committed the greatest sin. I haven't laid down and died."
"Who says that's the greatest sin?”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

"Everybody says it. The church, the government. It's against Nature, to give up, you've got to keep moving. That's the thing about you. You're not moving. You don't want to be here, selling old man Springer's jalopies. You want to be out there, learning something." He gestures toward the west. "How to hang glide, or run a computer, or whatever."
Rabbit is Rich (1981)

Life

“O thou who art the sparrow's friend," he said, "have mercy on this world that knows not even when it sins. O holy dove, descend and roost on Godric here so that a heart may hatch in him at last. Amen.”

Frederick Buechner book Godric

Godric (1980)

World , Art , Heart

“I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.”

Christopher Marlowe The Jew of Malta

Machiavel, Prologue
The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)

Religion

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Books , Color , Communication , Idea

“A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.”

Raymond Chandler book The High Window

Source: The High Window (1942), chapter 17

Girl , Clothes

“The countryside meant grain and herds, and a river meant fish. And if the sky meant anything, it meant a cruel God who took no notice of their pains and chastised them if they sinned.”

Tanith Lee book The Castle of Dark

Source: The Castle of Dark (1978), Chapter 12 “Lir: The Walled Town” (p. 102)

God , Pain , Fish

“There can be no question of selecting in any direction, but of a penetrating the whole cosmic law of rhythms, forces and material that are the real world, from the ugliest to the most beautiful, everything that has character and expression, from the crudest and most brutal to the gentlest and most delicate; everything that speaks to us in its capacity as life. From this it follows that one must know all in order to be able to express all. It is the abolition of the aesthetic principle. We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life; our interest in life, in all its amoral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art. We do not even know the laws of aesthetics. That old idea of selection according to the beauty-principle Beautiful — Ugly, like to ethical Noble — Sinful, is dead for us, for whom the beautiful is also ugly and everything ugly is endowed with beauty. Behind the comedy and the tragedy we find only life's dramas uniting both; not in noble heroes and false villains, but people.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Variant translations:
What we possess and what gives us strength is our joy in life, our interest in life in all its amoral facets. This is also the foundation for today's art. We do not even know the aesthetic laws.
We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have, and what constitutes our strength, is our joy in life, in all of its moral and amoral manifestations.
1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Life , People , World , Law

“The whole doctrine of original sin, the Fall, the vicarious Atonement, the placation of the Almighty by blood—all this is abhorrent to me. The spirit-guides do not insist upon these aspects of religion.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Quoted in The Life of Faith by Dr. A. T. Schofield, which was quoted in Heresies Exposed by William C. Irvine (Loizeaux Brothers, Neptune, New Jersey, 1921, p. 179)
Attributed

Religion

“The Holy Spirit would lead us to think much upon our own sins. It is a dangerous thing for us to dwell upon the imperfections of others.”

Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 357.

Thinking

“There are many whose religion consists in criticising habits of dress and manners. They want to bring every one to their own measure. They desire to lengthen out those who seem too short for their standard, and to cut down others who seem too long. They have lost the love of God out of their hearts; but they think they have a spirit of discernment. They think it is their prerogative to criticise, and pronounce judgment; but they should repent of their error, and turn away from their sins… Let us love one another. Let us have harmony and union throughout our ranks. Let us have our hearts sanctified to God. Let us look upon the light that abides for us in Jesus. Let us remember how forbearing and patient He was with the erring children of men. We should be in a wretched state if the God of heaven were like one of us, and treated us as we are inclined to treat one another.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

The Review and Herald (27 August 1889), p. 530.

Love , Men , God , Children

“The free-infinite of the intelligence will go on in the conflict of transforming the finitude of the natural life; will go on to victory ever more and more. It may be, as was said before, by paths never so dark and devious, or now and again even retrograde; it may be by descent with the natural into the nether pit of sin and its self-operating punishment; but onward still the undying free spirit goes, and will go, secure in its own indestructible vision of its eternal Ideal, secure in the changeless light shed on it by the changeless God.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.373-4

Life , God , Intelligence , Nature

“Even though homosexuality is considered a sin in all the Semitic holy books, it does not require any punishment in this world. It is a sin that will accompany its committee in the life after death.”

Salman al-Ouda (1956) journalist

2016

Life , Death , Books , World

“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

Source: Towards Evening (1889), p. 34

God , Truth , Spring , Personality

“Indeed, faithful is the one who - when pleased and glad, his pleasure does not make him enter into sin and falsehood; and when unhappy and angry, his anger does not oust him from the world of righteousness; and when he gains power, his power does not make him commit excess, nor opression, nor make him go for a thing upon which he does not have any right.”

Muhammad al-Baqir (677–733) fifth of the Twelve Shia Imams

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.2, p. 234

Pleasure , World , Faith , Anger

“I am inclined to believe that the sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Source: Diary (8 June 1881)

“Sin is never in action, it is always in reaction.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 261
Variant translations:
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
As translated by T. Bailey Saunders
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Books , Way , Nature , Thinking

“Yonder in the unknown vastness"—his long finger stabbed at the black silent jungle which brooded beyond the firelight—"yonder lies mystery and adventure and nameless terror. Once I dared the jungle—once she nearly claimed my bones. Something entered into my blood, something stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed sin. The jungle! Dark and brooding—over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall find curious adventure—mayhap my doom awaits me. But better death than the ceaseless and everlasting urge, the fire that has burned my veins with bitter longing.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Hills of the Dead" (1930)

Death , Soul , Heart , Sea

“The Revenue Program for 2015 includes incremental revenues of P50.63 billion from R. A. No. 10351 or the Sin Tax Reform Law of 2012.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Law

“Oh, I'm staying in today. And watch the others play. Oh, wash my sins away. Like all good children I mean what I say.”

Ed Harcourt (1977) British musician

Visit From The Dead Dog

Children

“There is no power in holy men,
Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form
Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,
Nor agony—nor, greater than all these,
The innate tortures of that deep despair,
Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
But all in all sufficient to itself
Would make a hell of heaven,—can exorcise
From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense
Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
Upon itself; there is no future pang
Can deal that justice on the self—condemn'd
He deals on his own soul.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act III, scene i.
Manfred (1817)

Men , Fear , Justice , Soul

“We forget that weakness is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cowardice may call for our most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate infirmity.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

Spring , Forgetting

“When the sins and errors of an age have made the world impossible to live in, the next generation, seeking to make life tolerable again, may be able to find no way save by surrender of cherished ideals, and so may find themselves compelled to cast about for new dreams and purposes. An important aspect of the historical process is the work of the new generation… being driven to something like a creative act for the very reason that life on the old terms has become impossible.”

Herbert Butterfield book The Whig Interpretation of History

The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

Life , Age , World , Dreams

“My greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King and Country and I am envious only of glory; for if it be a sin to covet glory I am the most offending soul alive.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

Letter to his mistress, Lady Hamilton (1800) [citation needed]; derived from "But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive." by William Shakespeare, in Henry V
1800s

Soul , Country , Happiness

“An awareness of our smallness may help to redeem us from the arrogance which is the besetting sin of the scientists.”

Freeman Dyson book Infinite in All Directions

Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 1 : In Praise of Diversity

Help

“"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should be answered. "It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand, standing erect with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims!”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

God , Question , Sense

“The source of totalitarianism is a dogmatic attachment to the official word: the lack of laughter, of ironic detachment. An excessive commitment to Good may in itself become the greatest Evil: real Evil is any kind of fanatical dogmatism, especially exerted in the name of supreme Good… Consider only Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of the opera, when he is confronted with the following choice: if he confesses his sins, he can still achieve salvation; if he persists, he will be damned forever. From this viewpoint of the pleasure principle, the proper thing to do would be to renounce his past, but he does not, he persists in his Evil, although he knows that by persisting he will be damned forever. Paradoxically, with his final choice of Evil, he acquires the status of an ethical hero - that is, of someone who is guided by fundamental principles beyond the pleasure principle and not just by the search for pleasure or material gain.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

23
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Pleasure , Search , Laughter , Evil

“His [Christ’s] point of view, of the literal divine-son ship of every lowliest and most sinful and sinning spirit, committed him logically to the assertion of the implicit equality of all spirits with each other, far as concerns their moral powers and destination no matter what their actual and contingent state; and also of their potential equality with God. His doctrine may well be summarised in the consecrated phrase, usually applied only to himself, "The son of man is the son of God."”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.251

God , Christ

“For fifteen centuries the religion of the Western world has been Christianity, Western Christianity, and there is no other religion now known or even imaginable that could take its place. But it is simply an historical fact, which we must deplore but cannot change, that only a small part of our population today, 12 or 15 per cent., really believes that Christ was the son of God, that the soul is immortal, and that our sins will be punished in a future life. That means that the religious instinct, which is a part of our nature, finds in the majority of our people no satisfaction in an unquestioning faith; so that those frustrated instincts are available for exploitation by any halfway clever scoundrel, as the shysters and punks who now occupy the majority of our pulpits well know. When faith is lost, what Pareto calls the religious residue in a people becomes its most vulnerable point, its Achilles heel. It is the unsatisfied need for an unquestioning faith in a superior power.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1990s

Life , God , People , World

“To devote oneself to vigilance when the enemy is an imaginary one is idle, and to congratulate oneself for looking long and well for a foe that is not coming is foolish and sinful. My life has been a waste.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Section 5
Short fiction, Nightwings (1968)

Life

“Our moral ideas are not transcendent, our moral ideas are historical and History obeys to changing Aions, we feel that ours is fading and no authority can enforce confidence rooted in what no power includes : in Sensibility itself. To every Aion a new Sensibility adheres and to each Sensibility another Aion is related, sin is nowhere, we only see abuse and worst among abuses, the delusion of sin as such.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Ma confession, Lausanne: L'Âge d'Homme, p. 92
Ma confession (1975)

Feeling , Confidence , History , Idea

“To condemn your sin in another is hypocrisy. Not to condemn is to reserve your right to sin.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#196
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“It doesn't pay to say there's no Devil and no demons and no such thing as evil, sin, or sickness, and just try to ignore the facts. It would be like trying to ignore that you have a disease when you've really got it, because as long as you have it and try to hide it, you can't very well find the remedy.”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Attack!

Disease , Evil

“A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise.”

Hillel the Younger

2:5
Pirkei Avot

Fear , Business , Learning , Personality

“The fault of many of our artists and intellectuals lies in their original sin: they are not true revolutionaries. We can try to graft the elm tree so that it will bear pears, but at the same time we must plant pear trees. New generations will come that will be free of original sin.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Tree , Time

“Dogmatics must be designed in this way. Above all, every science must vigorously lay hold of its own beginning and not live in complicated relations with other sciences. If dogmatics begins by wanting to explain sinfulness or by wanting to prove its actuality, no dogmatics will come out of it, but the entire existence of dogmatics will become problematic and vague.”

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

Note, p. 58
1840s, The Concept of Anxiety (1844)

Way , Science

“We should fully understand our religion. Fighting is a part of our religion and our Shari'a. Those who love God and his Prophet and this religion cannot deny that. Whoever denies even a minor tenet of our religion commits the gravest sin in Islam. Those who sympathize with the infidels-such as the PLO in Palestine or the so-called Palestinian Authority--have been trying for tens of years to get back some of their rights. They laid down arms and abandoned what is called violence and tried peaceful bargaining. What did the Jews give them? They did not give them even 1% of their rights.”

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

In response to the interviewer stating: 'But there are many Muslims who do not agree with your kind of violence.'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

Love , God , Peace , Religion

“The government of the Israelites was a Federation, held together by no political authority, but by the unity of… faith and founded not on physical force but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120 families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before the law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community that it was resisted by Samuel… The throne was erected on a compact; and the king was deprived of the right of legislation among a people that recognised no lawgiver but God, whose highest aim in politics was to… make its government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the sanctions of heaven. The inspired men who rose in unfailing succession to prophesy against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the laws, which were divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed… to the healing forces that slept in the uncorrupted consciences of the masses. Thus the… Hebrew nation laid down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won—the doctrine of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development… and the principle that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code which was not made by man. The operation of these principles… occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Source: The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Men , God , People , Family

“It is a sign of non love that is to say a sin, to form a finished image of ones neighbors.”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

I'm not Stiller (1955)

Love

“On this planet there are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn’t bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it’s hard to see, it’s important to understand that these people exist. I’m talking to you now because they can’t and I hope to be a voice for them. They need support.”

Mia Farrow (1945) American actress, singer, humanitarian and former fashion model

On human rights, quoted in MSNBC piece http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3080861/ns/community-msnbc_com_chat/t/mia-farrow/#.WPW1AlKZPu0 (August 28, 2013)

People , Hope , Understanding , Support

“The idea of sin and retribution is just an attempt to hide behind the shield of superstition. You are trying to find rational causes where there aren’t any.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 11 (p. 166).

Idea

“So you know how it all works. How first you confess and then are given absolution. You have to admit your sins before you can be forgiven." Jason nodded, wondering what being a Catholic and going to confession had to do with his situation here, his sudden predicament. "Well, there is something you have to do before we can take steps to protect you." A dim warning sounded somewhere in Jason's mind, his body, his spirit- he wasn't sure which or where but he was suddenly jolted thoroughly. Confession. A different word from confess. He suddenly saw where this man was going. He wanted Jason to confess. To confess to killing Alicia Bartlett. Jason almost giggled his disbelief, a reaction that was as unpremeditated and unexpected as a belch. "You want me to say I killed Alicia Bartlett?”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

Horror, disbelief in his voice.
Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 137-138

“I always say beauty is only sin deep.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald's Choir Treat"
Reginald (1904)

Beauty

“The sin of thousands always goes unpunished.”
Quidquid multis peccatur inultum est.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book V, line 260 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

“By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book Young Goodman Brown

"Young Goodman Brown" (1835) from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

Heart

“Now let us gather into one bouquet, from the King's garden, these seven fragrant flowers: Jesus the Son of God; Jesus our sin-bearer; Jesus the giver of eternal life; Jesus the keeper of our undying souls; Jesus the hearer of our prayers; Jesus the chastener who can turn crosses into crowns; and Jesus the wonder-worker who changes us into eternal likeness unto Himself! These flowers will keep sweet till heaven dawns.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 102.

Life , God , Soul , Flowers

“How immense to us appear the sins we have not committed.”

Suzanne Curchod (1737–1794) French-Swiss salonist and writer

Reported in Louis Klopsch, ed., Many Thoughts of Many Minds: A Treasury of Quotations From the Literature of Every Land and Every Age (1896), p. 229.

Appearance

“People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

As quoted in Free as in Freedom : Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch08.html (2002) by Sam Williams; Ch. 8 : St. Ignucius
2000s

People , Happiness

“Pleasure, the outer edge of ecstasy, was in the dour days of Protestantism, considered sinful in itself, wherever gained; Rome held specifically that any or all sexual pleasure was sinful. And for all this capped volcano produced in terms of bridges and houses, factories and bombs, it gouted from its riven sides a frightful harvest of neurosis. And even where a nation officially discarded the church, the same repressive techniques remained, the same preoccupation with doctrine, filtered through the same mesh of guilt. So sex and religion, the real meaning of human existence, ceased to be meaning and became means; the unbridgeable hostility between the final combatants was the proof of the identity of their aim—the total domination, for the ultimate satisfaction of the will to superiority, of all human minds.”

Theodore Sturgeon book Venus Plus X

Section 41 (p. 130)
Venus Plus X (1960)

Hostility , Pleasure , Religion , Sex

“One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin. The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner’s part. That God’s wrath should be vented upon His beloved Son, is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made. … The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon ‘the accursed tree,’ than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father’s business. … His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while he was hidden in the sepulchre, whereas he was alive”

Mary Baker Eddy book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 23:3–6, 25:6–8, 44:28–29 (1867).

God , Business , Tree , Parting

“There is nothing in the world that renders a man more unlike to a saint, and more like to Satan - than to argue from God's mercy to sinful liberty; from divine goodness to licentiousness.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

God , World

“There are worse things than a lie… I have found… that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.”

Anthony Trollope book Doctor Wortle's School

Doctor Wortle's School (1881) Ch. 6

Lie

“It's the standard contract. Gives you seven wishes in accordance with the mystic rules of life. Seven Days of the Week, Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Seas, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers…”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

Bedazzled (1967)

Life , Sea

“Nice to meet you, where you been?
I could show you incredible things.
Magic, madness, heaven, sin.
Saw you there and I thought.
Oh my God, look at that face.
You look like my next mistake.
Love's a game, wanna play?.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Blank Space, written by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback
Song lyrics, 1989 (2014)

Love , God , Game , Madness

“I have learned by experience that there is but one God that pertains to this people, and He is the God that pertains to this earth-the first man. That first man sent his own Son to redeem the world, to redeem his brethren; his life was taken, his blood shed, that our sins might be remitted. That Son called twelve men and ordained them to be Apostles, and when he departed the keys of the kingdom were deposited with three of those twelve, viz.: Peter, James, and John. Peter held the keys pertaining to that Presidency, and he was the head.”

Heber C. Kimball (1801–1868) American Mormon leader

Journal of Discourses 4:1 (June 29, 1856)

Life , Men , God , People

“In the Jewish Quarter [Judengasse] was I born and educated; until my fifteenth year, they tried to beat the Talmud into me. My teachers were inhuman beings [Unmenschen], my colleagues were bad company, inducing me to secret sin; my body was frail, my spirit raw.”

Moses Hess (1812–1875) German philosopher

Hess' Diary, September 16, 1836

Secret , Education , Teachers

“When I lump all my sins together and confess them en masse, I neglect to feel the pain or embarrassment or shame that should be elicited in me.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Pain , Feeling

“A person who circumambulates this House (the Ka’bah) seven times and performs the two Rak’at Salat (of Tawaaf) in the best form possible will have his sins forgiven.”

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

Biharul Anwar, Volume 96, Page 49
Shi'ite Hadith

Time , Housing , Personality

“The Prologue of the Messenger.
For as much as man is naturally prone
To evil from his youth, as Scripture doth recite,
It is necessary that he be speedily withdrawn
From concupiscence of sin, his natural appetite:
An order to bring up youth Ecclesiasticus doth write,
An untamed horse will be hard, saith he,
And a wanton child wilful will be.”

Robert Wever (1500) English poet

Lusty Juventus http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/drama/juventus.txt (1557)

Youth , Nature , Evil , Horse

“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

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

God , Secret , Game , Sense

“Sin is plenty strong enough to create an ever-widening gap in one's relationship with God. The wider the gap, the less likely we are to pray. And the less we pray, the wider the gap becomes.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God , Strong

“I'm gonna baptize you in fire so you can sin no more.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Bye and Bye

“Remember that every guilty compliance with the humors of the world, every sinful indulgence of our own passions, is laying up cares and fears for the hour of darkness; and that the remembrance of ill-spent time will strew our sick-bed with thorns, and rack our sinking spirits with despair.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 547.

World , Fear , Passion , Time

“In my creed, waste of public money is like the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Vol. II, bk. 5, ch. 3.
Recollections (1917)

Money

“Fay: The priest at St Kilda's has asked me to speak to you. He's very worried. He says you spend your time thieving from slot machines and deflowering the daughters of better men than yourself. Is this a fact?
Hal: Yes.
Fay: And even the sex you were born into isn't safe from your marauding. Father Mac is popular for the remission of sins, as you know. But clearing up after you is a full-time job. He simply cannot be in the confessional twenty-four hours a day. That's reasonable, isn't it? You do see his point?”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act I

Men , Sex , Time , Daughters

“Anglican chaplains were remarkably out of touch with their troops. The Second Battalion chaplain, just before the Loos fighting, had preached a violent sermon on the Battle against Sin, at which one old soldier behind me had grumbled: "Christ, as if one bloody push wasn't enough to worry about at a time!"”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 17.

Time , Christ , Fight

“And this dread we take sometime for a meekness, but it is a foul blindness and a weakness. And we cannot despise it as we do another sin, that we know: for it cometh of Enmity, and it is against truth. For it is God’s will that of all the properties of the blissful Trinity, we should have most sureness and comfort in Love: for Love maketh Might and Wisdom full meek to us. For right as by the courtesy of God He forgiveth our sin after the time that we repent us, right so willeth He that we forgive our sin, as anent our unskilful heaviness and our doubtful dreads.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 73
Context: When we begin to hate sin, and amend us by the ordinance of Holy Church, yet there dwelleth a dread that letteth us, because of the beholding of our self and of our sins afore done. And some of us because of our every-daily sins: for we hold not our Covenants, nor keep we our cleanness that our Lord setteth us in, but fall oftentimes into so much wretchedness that shame it is to see it. And the beholding of this maketh us so sorry and so heavy, that scarsely we can find any comfort.
And this dread we take sometime for a meekness, but it is a foul blindness and a weakness. And we cannot despise it as we do another sin, that we know: for it cometh of Enmity, and it is against truth. For it is God’s will that of all the properties of the blissful Trinity, we should have most sureness and comfort in Love: for Love maketh Might and Wisdom full meek to us. For right as by the courtesy of God He forgiveth our sin after the time that we repent us, right so willeth He that we forgive our sin, as anent our unskilful heaviness and our doubtful dreads.

Love , Wisdom , God , Truth

“For I must write to The Times tonight, and save the world from sin.”

A. P. Herbert (1890–1971) British politician

"The Saviours", Laughing Ann (1925).

World , Time

“I think unless the people are given information about what is happening to them, they will die in ignorance. And i think that's the big sin. I mean if there is such a thing as a sin, that's it, to destroy people and not have them have a clue about how this is happening.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Poet, Author Alice Walker Meets the Inner Journey with Global Activism in "The Cushion in the Road" http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/28/poet_author_alice_walker_meets_the (May 28, 2013).

People , Thinking