c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The authority of the Church was thrown over by the authority of the state. Twenty years only have passed, and the authority of the state is already thrown over by the authority of conscience. ... I fear for those yet unborn, that they are already betrayed. Robbed of the truth we can inherit, they will know their sins as only misery, and their forgiveness they will not know at all because they do not know God. Then at last men will be free of God. Then they will be slaves indeed.
— Lucy Beckett, The Time Before You Die: A Novel of the Reformation
What's all this about sin, eh?''That,' I said, very sick. 'Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music.' And then I was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney.'Music,' said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. 'So you're keen on music. I know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional heightener, that's all I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom?''It can't be helped,' said Dr. Branom. 'Each man kills the thing he loves...
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
She liked the idea so well that she felt there must be something bordering on sin involved in it.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Each confrontation between Jesus and another person or group reveals what we do to each other, personally and on a public level. Each is an indictment against Christians, followers of the man crucified, the suffering servant, the Lamb of God.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
We are not only contingent beings, dependent on the love and will of a Creator whom we cannot know experientially except in so far as he reveals to us our personal relationship with him as his sons - we are also sinners who have FREELY REPUDIATED this relationship. We have rebelled against him. The spirit of rebellious refusal persists in our heart even when we try to return to him. Much could be said, at this point, about all the subtlety and ingenuity of religious egoism which is one of the worst and most ineradicable forms of self-deception. Sometimes one feels that a well-intentioned and inculpable atheist is in many ways better off - and gives more glory to God - than some people whose bigoted complacency and inhumanity to others are signs of the most obvious selfishness! Hence we not only need to recover an awareness of our creaturehood; we also must repair the injury done to truth and to love by this repudiation, this infidelity. But how? Humanly speaking, there is no way in which we can do this.
— Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer
Man does not ask for nightmares, he does not ask to be bad. He does not will his own willfulness.
— Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
I ain't never done nothin' that wasn't part sin.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
I was taught growing up not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, to withdraw myself from the sinful 'others'. But we are all others. We are all sinners in someone's eyes.
— Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith
Expiating a sin does not mean doing something opposite to wallow in guilt, but to use that same guilt to achieve full knowledge of the sin. The fault lies more not in having committed certain acts, rather in having carried them out without reaching their intimate knowledge. And this leads to committing a wrong again and again.
— Massimo Marino, Daimones
Excuses will become self-refuting. No man who does not believe that Jesus is the perfect, sinless Son of God can, in his desperation and love for sin, reasonably use and misconstrue Jesus' words that unless a Christian is perfect, then that Christian cannot judge sin. Otherwise this non-believer is unconsciously entertaining a belief that Jesus, unlike any other man to ever live, was indeed perfect and sinless in His judgments and therefore that Christian is supposed to be like Him.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Maybe the one had to be lost for the others to be found?
— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
She understood the nature of sin and knew that its most volatile form was the kind that did not recognize itself.
— Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
When I'm brave and strong, and care for children and the sick and the poor, I become a better person. And when I'm cruel, cowardly, or tell lies, or get drunk, I turn into someone less worthy, and I can't respect myself. That's the divine retribution I believe in
— Ken Follett, World Without End
No one should be able to tail me unnoticed, no matter how good they are.I'm supposed to be better.
— Santino Hassell, Evenfall
It is hardily credible of how great consequences before God the smallest things are
—  and what great inconveniences some times follow those which appear to be light faults.
I don't think anybody'd remember and certainly do know everybody'd lie. The reason I'm so bitter and, as I said, 'in anguish,' nowadays, or one of the reasons, is that everybody's begun to lie and because they lie they assume that I lie too: they overlook the fact that I remember very well many things (of course I've forgotten some...)I do believe that lying is a sin, unless it's innocent lie based on lack of memory, certainly the giving of false evidence and being a false witness is a mortal sin, but what I mean is, insofar as lying has become so prevalent in the world today (thanks to Marxian Dialectical propaganda and Comitern techniques among other causes) that, when a man tells the truth, everybody, looking in the mirror and seeing a liar......like those LSD heads in newspaper photographs who sit in parks gazing rapturously at the sky to show how high they are when they're only victims momentarily of a contraction of the blood vessels and nerves in the brain that causes the illusion...
— Jack Kerouac, Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46
If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment—thereby, incidentally, condemning remote future generations of Jews to pogroms and persecution as 'Christ-killers': did that hereditary sin pass down in the semen too?
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Profanity is the name given to the defilement of the sanctity of human life.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Buck Barrow, brother of Clyde Barrow (Bonnie & Clyde) was once asked "Where are you wanted by the law?" Barrow replied, "Wherever I've been." What a picture of our own guilt. We cannot escape our sinfulness because it follows us everywhere. Neither can we escape the mercy of God that is always there.
— William Branks
Pride becomes the blanket transgression that conceals the rest of our sins, allowing us to remain blind to them.
— Alisa Hope Wagner, Eve of Awakening
Pick a sin we can both live with, is what I ask.
— Joe Hill, Horns
We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire.
— N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
In life I would much prefer to be sinned upon than the sinner. It is easier, vous comprenez? With the clear conscience one sleeps very well. The sinner may deny it… but in his heart he knows. He does not deserve to be happy.
— Nikki Sex, Karma
The real difference in the believer who follows Christ and has mortified his will and died after the old man in Christ, is that he is more clearly aware than other men of the rebelliousness and perennial pride of the flesh, he is conscious of his sloth and self-indulgence and knows that his arrogance must be eradicated. Hence there is a need for daily self-discipline.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Do not be irritated either with those who sin or those who offend; do not have a passion for noticing every sin in your neighbour, and for judging him, as we are in the habit of doing. Everyone shall give an answer to God for himself. Everyone has a conscience; everyone hears God's Word, and knows God's Will either from books or from conversation with other people. Especially do not look with evil intention upon the sins of your elders, which do not regard you; "to his own master he standeth or falleth." Correct your own sins, amend your own life.
— John of Kronstadt
The more grievous the sin, the greater the repentance, God was bidding His time.
— Émile Zola, Nana
And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
—Pascal, if I remember rightly, would not suffer his mother to kiss him as he feared the contact of her sex.
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
That's the greatest sin a director can commit
—  to make a film simply because he wants to make a film.
Hesitating, I stood in the doorway to the room holding the proof of my sin.
— A.B. Shepherd, The Beacon
We're a divided country on sexual issues. That's why every news cycle brings more controversy.
— Russell D. Moore
Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal. ‘For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, so that we should not be condemned with the world.’ (1 Cor. 11:31-32).
— Gregory of Nazianzus
Sin is wrong, not because of what it does to me, or my spouse, or child, or neighbor, but because it is an act of rebellion against the infinitely holy and majestic God.
— Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say "I Do": Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage
The last Bible I looked at contained over 2000 pages, and you humans managed to get yourself kicked out Paradise by page 5. That has to be some kind of record.
— Dennis Garvin, Case Files of an Angel
If Anthony Weaver knew anything, it was this: That life and love and country and duty…that all of these things faded in time. They came and went with the impartial cruelty of the Indian sun. But sin and sin alone is eternal.
— Kim   Wright, City of Bells
Sin can be forgiven, but stupid is forever.
— Coco Chanel
Certainly we struggle as victims of other people’s unkindness. We have been sinned against. But we cannot excuse our sinful responses to others on the grounds of their mistreatment of us. We are responsible for what we do. We are both strugglers and sinners, victims and agents, people who hurt and people who harm.
— Larry Crabb, Inside Out: Real Change Is Possible If You're Willing to Start from The...
He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols
All weather is sin-related. Lust causes thunder, anger causes fog, and you don't want to know what causes dew.
— Stephen Colbert, I Am America
One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all!THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though.
— Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
Repentance is a result of God's kindness, not a prerequisite to it.
— D.R. Silva
The more you free your heart from sin, the more your heart is free to serve.
— Orrin Woodward
Your behavior doesn't show you who you are, it shows you who you believe yourself to be.
— D.R. Silva
The author says people are guilty of "wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck.
— T.H. White, The Ill-Made Knight
Satan fell by the force of gravity.
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
In the irresistible logic of guilt, one evil leads to another, one sin is developed out of another. There is nothing abrupt, nothing casual in the process. The road to sin is smooth, because an army of transgressions has passed over it. When such a development takes place, the community is filled with consternation. Men meet each other and say, "Have you heard what has happened? Mr. A. has turned out a defaulter. Mr. B. has been robbing his bank. How could he have done it?" Alas! he did it long ago, when he took the first step, when he diverged a very little way from the path of right. After that, every other step was easy, natural, and logical.
— James Clarke, Every-Day Religion
The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
. . . Most falls aren't free -- there is always the tension, it seems to me, between what you are falling from and what you are falling to.
— Peter R. Pouncey, Rules for Old Men Waiting
Religion imprisons God. By its own accord, if we are made in the image and likeness of God, then His condemnation of the sinner is an act of hypocrisy. I believe God to be greater than that.
— Steve Maraboli
I thought speakers didn't believe in sin," said a sullen boy.Andrew smiled. "You believe in sin, Styrka, and you do things because of that belief. So sin is real in you, and knowing you, this speaker must believe in sin.
— Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
I can never endorse sin any more than when I tell people it's their nature to do it.
— D.R. Silva
I did not intend making a philippic against covetousness, a sin to which I believe no one here is addicted. Let us not, however, plume ourselves in not being guilty of a vice to which, as we have no natural bias so in not committing it, we resist no temptation. What I meant to insist on was, that exchanging a turbulent for a quiet sin, or a scandalous for an orderly one, is not reformation.
— Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife
Telling people they don't have a sin nature doesn't promote sin anymore than telling a slave they are free promotes slavery.
— D.R. Silva
Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
It is not the absence of sin but the grieving over it which distinguishes the child of God from empty professors
— Arthur W. Pink
I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
Strange, though I am saved from sin, I am not saved from sinning.
— Martin Luther
When I was a young man and very well thought of,I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins,And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied. But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know The secret I shelter and savor and save I wait for the one who will see through my seeming, And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens;The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned. But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them see There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave. My lady is late but she'll find I've been faithful, And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'At last came a lady both knowing and tender,Saying, 'you're not at all what they take you to be.'I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea. And I say to myself when there's time for a word, As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved, 'Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.
— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offence which they have so fiercely censured.
— Sri Aurobindo
Sin is what is new, strong, surprising, strange. The theatre must take an interest in sin if the young are to be able to go there.
— Bertolt Brecht
We sometimes fear to bring our troubles to God, because they must seem small to Him who sitteth on the circle of the earth. But if they are large enough to vex and endanger our welfare, they are large enough to touch His heart of love.
— R.A. Torrey
We become so accustomed to our sins we sometimes lapse into a state of peaceful coexistence with them, but God never ceases to hate them.
— Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness
We are to come to the Word in a spirit of humility and contrition because we recognize that we are sinful, that we are often blind to our sinfulness, and that we need the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
— Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness
Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience and his judgement are the same thing, and as the judgement, so also the conscience may be erroneous.
— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
The Holy Spirit opens the inner recesses of our hearts and enables us to see the moral cesspools hidden there.
— Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness
[It] could be argued that the favorite sin of Satan would not be vanity, as described in 'Devil's Advocate', or even unbelief in the existence of the devil, as described in 'The Usual Suspects,' but the imagining of a generic, Christless God. The very essence of the Christian faith centers on the identity of Jesus Christ as God's only begotten Son, who alone is the source of salvation and author of faith (Acts 4:12). So it stands to reason that Satan's favorite sin is the belief in a God without Jesus, because that is a god without atonement or redemption and that is what populates hell in the name of heaven.
— Brian Godawa, Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment
How often do we hear from the local diocesan people—the bishop, the communications director, the victim assistance coordinator, and others—that this abuse is not restricted to clergy, but, rather, it is a societal problem? It does occur outside in the public realm. When was the last time you heard of a sex offender not being held accountable for his actions once caught? The Church treated the abuse as a sin only and nothing more. Out in society, sex offenders are not moved to another community quietly. “But protest that priests are 'no worse' than other groups or than men in general is a dire indictment of the profession. It is surprising that this attitude is championed by the Church authorities. Although the extent of the problem will continue to be debated, sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a fact. The reason why priests, publicly dedicated to celibate service, abuse is a question that cries out for explanation. Sexual activity of any adult with a minor is a criminal offense. By virtue of the requirement of celibacy, sexual activity with anyone is proscribed for priests. These factors have been constant and well-known by all Church authorities” (Sipe 227−228).
— Charles L. Bailey Jr., In the Shadow of the Cross
No use wishing now for any other sin.
— Elvis Costello
At first are moving tombs on the surface of the surface of the earth
—  then we become static tombs in the brims of the cemetary soil
NO one can say 'NO' to sin and 'Yes' to rightousness without the help of Holy Spirit.
— I. A. Chosen
The Pelagianizing Romanist says, Lust, or concupiscence, brings forth sin, therefore it cannot be sin, because the mother cannot be the child. We reply, Concupiscence brings forth sin, therefore it must be sin, because child and mother must have the same nature. The grand sophism of Pelagianism is the assumption that sin is confined to acts, that guilty acts can be the product of innocent condition, that the effect can be sinful, yet the cause free from sin--that the unclean can be brought forth from the clean.
— Charles Porterfield Krauth, Conservative Reformation & Its Theology
The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
Men are punished by their sins, not for them.
— Elbert Hubbard, Love, Life and Work
There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.
— Richard Sibbes
Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.
— J.I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God
I fell away from you, my God, and I went astray, too far astray from you, the support of my youth, and I became to myself a land of want.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
Beginning with sin instead of creation is like trying to read a book by opening it in the middle: You don’t know the characters and can’t make sense of the plot.
— Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity
The law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin, doth revive it, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it doth not give power to subdue.
— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress
He [Muffat] experienced a sense of pleasure mingled with remorse, the sort of pleasure peculiar to those Catholics whom the fear of hell spurs on to commit sin.
— Émile Zola, Nana
...sin is separation.
— Paul Tillich, The Essential Tillich
Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them: by participating directly and voluntarily in them; by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them; by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so; by protecting evil-doers. [1868]
— The Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church
To be a saint is to be an exception; to be a true man is the rule. Err, fail, sin if you must, but be upright. To sin as little as possible is the law for men; to sin not at all is a dream for angels. All earthly things are subject to sin; if is like the force of gravity.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
There is no little sin, because no little God to sin against.
— Thomas Brooks
As we see the beauty of God and feel His weightiness in our hearts, our hearts begin to desire Him more than we desire sin. Before the Bible says, "Stop sinning," it says, "Behold your God.
— J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary
The goal of all learning is to repair the ruin of our first parents.
— John Milton
And then, every time I didn't see her, there was a fall involved. I thought about dancing on the fifth-floor ledge outside out apartment. Every train she wasn't on felt something like hitting the pavement from five floors up. So maybe my father was right about that. Maybe happiness and excitement really are dangerous things.
— Catherine Ryan Hyde, Chasing Windmills
there is both fear and comfort to be drawn from devils--the fear speaks for itself, the comfort comes from being able to absolve oneself of responsibility for one's actions.
— Iain Banks, Whit
We tend to believe that God's commands are given to us merely for our own sake. But this is not true. As those created in the image of God, our very nature as image bearers explains the reasons behind God's commands.
— Gerald Hiestand, Sex, Dating, And Relationships: A Fresh Approach
From my perspective I believe that most Christians do not dread judgment day because it is the end, but because they will no longer be able to embrace the façade of a sinless mirrored reflection.
— Carl Henegan
loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The strange thing about adulthood, when you're single, is that it's possible to go for fairly extended periods without facing blatant sin against. Sure there was plenty of sin against God but with such infrequent consequence - it was easy to self-congratulate on how much our relationship owed to my 'righteousness,' generosity, and enlightened theological views. Though for the past twenty months or so I'd been hearing a pastor who's constant theme was grace, it didn't hit home until I faced this proof of what the Bible says God considers depravity.
— Anna Broadway, Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity
Just because one is born in sin is no reason to brag about it.
— Anthony Marais, Delusionism
The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.
— Malcolm Muggeridge
If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. ... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
I thought I was over him! So why did my heart still rip? Why did I still feel this sorrow? I got this strange sensation that God was with me. And he was angry. He was very angry--not at me and not at Jack. God was angry at the pain I was going through. I wondered if that was why God hated sin, because of the destruction it caused. For a moment I felt awe for a God who loved me enough to hate the things that hurt me without hating me for causing them.
— Susan E. Isaacs, Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir
All that mattered was that Boyd was there. He was there for Sin, and when Sin opened his eyes to look at Boyd once more, Sin ignored all the self-doubt and paranoia. Because at that moment he somehow knew that Boyd always would be.
— Santino Hassell, Afterimage
Generally ‘training’ went something akin to this:“So what you have to do is
— Santino Hassell, Evenfall
The guy was a piece of sin. If he were the devil holding a contract, this would be the moment I might just give in to temptation and sign over my soul.
— J.C. Reed, Surrender Your Love
...I committed a sin the day I refused you - I discovered metal inside me where my heart should be - forgive me, Love, for acting on principles...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
...such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
When seeing the simple truth means recognizing that we're in sin, we would rather see things as being complicated.
— Anna Sofia Botkin, It’s (Not That) Complicated: How to Relate to Guys in a Healthy, Sane, and Biblical Way
There's a very simple reason why quality relationships are scarce: we live in a fallen world, and it sucks.
— Susan E. Isaacs, Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir
Since it is likely that, being men, they would sin every day, St. Paul consoles his hearers by saying ‘renew yourselves’ from day to day. This is what we do with houses: we keep constantly repairing them as they wear old. You should do the same thing to yourself. Have you sinned today? Have you made your soul old? Do not despair, do not despond, but renew your soul by repentance, and tears, and Confession, and by doing good things. And never cease doing this.
— John Chrysostom
Virtue, should there be anyone who still ignores the fact, always finds pitfalls on the extremely difficult path of perfection, but sin and vice are so favoured by fortune...
— José Saramago, Blindness
The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted...Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.
— Abraham Joshua Heschel
Pride measures prosperity not by her own advantages but by the disadvantages of others. She would not even wish to be a goddess unless there were some wretches left whom she could order about and lord it over, whose misery would make her happiness seem all the more extraordinary, whose poverty can be tormented and exacerbated by a display of her wealth. This infernal serpent, pervading the human heart, keeps men from reforming their lives, holding them back like a suckfish.
— Thomas More, Utopia
Weight causes things on earth to fall--to remain grounded. What if the weight of sin holds the same purpose as physical weight? When I curl up on my sofa with God and his Word, that feeling that makes me want to bold should be the feeling that keeps me there with him. It's the weight of my sin pushing me down from the high and lofty places where my pride would rather keep me.
— Jennie Allen, Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul
Above all sins, guard against bold or arrogant ones. You are not beyond the danger of such. If caught in the web of presumptuous sin, call quickly to God for help. If you hesitate, you only give Satan time to entangle you more tightly. But if you cry out to God in true repentance, He will come at once to rescue you. The sooner you yield to the Spirit, the less damage is done to your soul.
— William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour: Daily Readings in Spiritual Warfare
Sin is too great an evil for man to meddle with. His attempts to remove it do but increase it, and his endeavours to approach God in spite of it aggravate his guilt.
— Horatius Bonar, Everlasting Righteousness
Starfall in the sky as a result of anybody’s Fall here below?
— Lara Biyuts
All of us to one degree or another disconnect from God’s story because we are fundamentally committed to being the author of our own stories.
— Bill Delvaux, Landmarks: Turning Points on Your Journey Toward God
Our Christian faith - and correlatively, our account of apologetics - is tainted by modernism when we fail to appreciate the effects of sin on reason. When this is ignored, we adopt an Enlightenment optimism about the role of a supposedly neutral reason in the recognition of truth.
— James K.A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church
His voice wavered and he looked down abruptly, at last making some vain effort to hide the shameful tears that tracked down his cheeks even as he continued to pin Boyd against the wall. 'I wish I could hate you. God, I wish I could fucking kill you for doing this to me. Why couldn't you just leave me alone if it was going to be this way?
— Santino Hassell, Evenfall
When they were partially up the stairs and mostly out of earshot, Sin looked at Boyd again. 'Don't get killed or I'll be very annoyed with you.
— Santino Hassell, Evenfall
When a man truly sees himself, he knows nobody can say anything about him that is too bad.
— D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
What am I, your wife?' Boyd asked him, highly amused.Sin seemed to consider that for a moment. 'You would need to exchange bodies with my new boss for that. You can be my slave instead.'Boyd could not help a startled laugh at that. 'I don't know if I like the idea of being your slave,' he informed him with one eyebrow arched in challenge. 'The very nature of that relationship would imply I get no compensation and I just can't agree to that.''You get to be in my presence. That should be sufficient compensation.
— Santino Hassell, Evenfall
Sin stared at him as he chewed, cream smeared across his mouth and smudged on the other side of it. It shouldn't have been possible to glare and eat like a child at the same time, but somehow Sin pulled it off.
— Santino Hassell, Evenfall
Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We cannot bear to reveal our failures and shortcomings to others. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore, we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy.But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God's love and to confess our needs openly before our brothers and sisters. We know we are not alone in our sin. The fear and pride that cling to us like barnacles cling to others also. We are sinners together. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied, but transformed.
— Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
If one evil thought, if one evil word, if one evil action, deserves eternal damnation, how many hells, my friends, do every one of us deserve, whose whole lives have been one continued rebellion against God!
— George Whitefield
Let the freedom to fail give you the hope to fight.
— John Piper, Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
It's so much more interesting to study a ... damaged world. I find it difficult to learn anything in a place that's too civilized.
— Brian Herbert, House Atreides
Delight is délice, délit is a misdemeanour''Well, it's bloody close...''Well, they often are....
— Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
He came to destroy sin because it is fatal.
— John Piper, Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
Interesting, Miles thought. Like himself, Father Mark, as a child, had been reassured by the imagined proximity of God, whereas adults, perhaps because they so often were up to no good, took more comfort from His remoteness.
— Richard Russo, Empire Falls
It was not the sorrow of the world that broke the heart of Christ, but its wickedness. He was equal to its sorrow ... He began by being the world's healer. But what broke him was its sin.
— P.T. Forsyth
The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
— Augustine of Hippo
The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than alien intrusion of sin, as the villain.
— Timothy J. Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Plan for the World
The Castus had become a myth to most, a shadow, but Thomas knew that every rumor was rooted in truth.
— Jessica Fortunato, The Sin Collector: Thomas
You see, sex for Jews is not such a terrible sin. It's just one more physical sport we're gonna stink at.
— Jaffe Cohen, The King of Kings and I: The Greatest Story Ever Kvetched
Very few people believe in the devil these days, which suits the devil very well. He is always helping to circulate the news of his own death. The essence of God is existence, and He defines Himself as: 'I am Who am.' The essence of the devil is the lie, and he defines himself as: 'I am who am not.' Satan has very little trouble with those who do not believe in him; they are already on his side.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
Evil things are easy things: for they are natural to our fallen nature. Right things are rare flowers that need cultivation.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
In confession occurs the breakthrough of the Cross. The root of all sin is pride, superbia. I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride...In the deep mental and physical pain of humiliation before a brother - which means, before God - we experience the Cross of Jesus as our rescue and salvation. The old man dies, but it is God who has conquered him. Now we share in the resurrection of Christ and eternal life.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
Repentance grows as faith grows. Do not make any mistake about it; repentance is not a thing of days and weeks, a temporary penance to be got over as fast as possible! No; it is the grace of a lifetime, like faith itself. God's little children repent, and so do the young men and the fathers. Repentance is the inseparable companion of faith.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, All of Grace
Now they are lovers. The first, wild courses are ended. They have founded their domain. A satanic happiness follows.
— James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime
Now yes, yes, creation sometimes screams a confusing message—fear, pain, grief. Fire burns, rivers flood, winds go hurricane, the earth shudders so hard it levels cities. But you must remember—this was not so in Eden. Mankind fell, surrendering this earth to the evil one. St. Paul says that creation groans for the day of its restoration (see Rom. 8:18–22), making it clear that everything is not as it was meant to be. People come to terrible conclusions when they assume this world is exactly as God intended. (An assumption that has wrought havoc in the sciences.) The earth is broken.Which only makes the beauty that does flow so generously that much more astounding. And reassuring.
— John Eldredge, Beautiful Outlaw: Experiencing the Playful, Disruptive, Extravagant Personality of Jesus
The irony of Christianity is that believers get so angry, and self righteous toward other Christians who sin differently than they do. Christianity is like one large fraternity where brother and sisterhood is tested by hazing.
— Shannon L. Alder
When you think of the condition the world is in now you sometimes wish that Noah had missed the boat.
— Fulton J. Sheen
It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.
— Leo Tolstoy
The nice people do not come to God, because they think they are good through their own merits or bad through inherited instincts. If they do good, they believe they are to receive the credit for it; if they do evil, they deny that it is their own fault. They are good through their own goodheartedness, they say; but they are bad because they are misfortunate, either in their economic life or through an inheritance of evil genes from their grandparents. The nice people rarely come to God; they take their moral tone from the society in which they live. Like the Pharisee in front of the temple, they believe themselves to be very respectable citizens. Elegance is their test of virtue; to them, the moral is the aesthetic, the evil is the ugly. Every move they make is dictated, not by a love of goodness, but by the influence of their age. Their intellects are cultivated—in knowledge of current events; they read only the bestsellers, but their hearts are undisciplined. They say that they would go to church if the Church were only better—but they never tell you how much better the Church must be before they will join it. They sometimes condemn the gross sins of society, such as murder; they are not tempted to these because they fear the opprobrium which comes to them who commit them. By avoiding the sins which society condemns, they escape reproach, they consider themselves good par excellence.
— Fulton J. Sheen
People only tell lies when the truth is disagreeable to them, or frightens them, or to cover sin.
— Anne Perry, Tathea
Flirting is the sin of the virtuous and the virtue of thesinful.
— Paul Bourget, was it love
Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. 'Odd, isn't it,' he said, 'that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?
— G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown
Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals that have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, “I am too great a sinner to change,” or “God would not want me.” God will take anyone who is willing to love, not with an occasional gesture, but with a “passionless passion,” a “wild tranquility.” A sinner, unrepentant, cannot love God, any more that a man on dry land can swim; but as soon as he takes his errant energies to God and asks for their redirection, he will become happy, as he was never happy before. It is not the wrong things one has already done which keep one from God; it is the present persistence in that wrong.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop
The priest invents and encourages every kind of suffering and distress so that man may not have the opportunity to become scientific, which requires a considerable degree of free time, health, and an outlook of confident positivism. Thus, the religious authorities work hard to make and keep people feeling sinful, unworthy, and unhappy.
— Robert Sheaffer, The Making of the Messiah
Very harmful effects can follow accepting the philosophy which denies personal guilt or sin and thereby makes everyone nice. By denying sin, the nice people make a cure impossible. Sin is most serious, and the tragedy is deepened by the denial that we are sinners…The really unforgiveable sin is the denial of sin, because, by its nature, there is now nothing to be forgiven. By refusing to admit to personal guilt, the nice people are made into scandalmongers, gossips, talebearers, and supercritics, for they must project their real if unrecognized guilt to others. This, again, gives them a new illusion of goodness: the increase of faultfinding is in direct ratio and proportion to the denial of sin.
— Fulton J. Sheen
O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?—such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Sin has sprung from a royal though evil stock, and if it be in the heart, it will struggle for the throne.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Sin is man's, last attempt to perfection.
— Anthony Liccione
The established church of the town of Mansoul has the Devil for its archbishop. Sin has enclasped our nature as a boa constrictor encircles its victim, and when it has maintained its hold for twenty, forty, or sixty years, I hope you are not so foolish as to think that holy things will easily get the mastery.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.
— William Wilberforce, Real Christianity
He [Jesus] knew no sin. Do you realize this? There has never been one moment in your life— not one moment in your life that wasn’t tainted by sin. And yet, there never was a moment in His life that was tainted by sin! Someone asked me a long time ago, "What is the greatest sin you can commit?" And all of a sudden it just popped in my head so I said it— I said, “Well, I suppose the greatest sin you could commit is to break the greatest commandment that’s ever been given: to love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Do you realize there’s never been one moment in your life that you have loved God as God ought to be loved? To even suggest that you have is paramount to blasphemy. You have never loved God in a way that God deserves to be loved. But there was never one moment in the life of the man Jesus Christ that He did not love God as God deserves to be loved! You think Jesus is great? He’s greater than you know...
— Paul David Washer
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.
— Victor Hugo
You're dressed for dancing," she said in her throaty stage voice. "Being undressed for dancing occured to me, but I didn't think Merris would like it.
— Sarah Rees Brennan, The Demon's Lexicon
Only the man who follows the command of Jesus single-mindedly, and unresistingly lets his yoke rest upon him, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard, unutterably hard, for those who try to resist it. But for those who willingly submit, the yoke is easy, and the burden is light.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin with the will, that sin destroys and dissolves your willpower and your self-control. Sin is the suicidal action of the self against itself. Sin destroys freedom because sin is an enslaving power.
— Timothy J. Keller
He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity.
— J.I. Packer, Faithfulness and Holiness: The Witness of J.C. Ryle
Smugness is the Great Catholic Sin.
— Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
Self-pity is the hens' besetting sin," remarked Mr. Payton. "Foolish fowl. How they came to achieve anything as perfect as the egg I do not know! I cannot fathom.
— Elizabeth Enright, Gone-Away Lake
Liberation from the tyranny of the body contributes to greatness, but just as much to greatness in sin as to greatness in virtue.
— Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
My brother trolled recovery and support groups, searching for women with dependency issues, the way I frequented bookstores with the hope of finding a well-adjusted, intelligent woman. Between us, his record was more stellar, his sin more reprehensible; though, knowing my brother, he slept soundly through the night without ever experiencing the slightest remorse.
— Richard J.  O'Brien
I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but i know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.....Mockingbirds don't do one thing to but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's garden, don't nest in corncribs,they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.
— Harper Lee
The ritual sacrifice of children has been taboo for thousands of years. Yet tragically it is practiced every day across our world. We sacrifice children on the altars of our most destructive sins. When the sickness of pornography has run to its most evil and destructive end, it takes the form of child pornography. When prostitution reaches its sickest, most depraved form, it becomes child prostitution.
— Wess Stafford
The speaker indicts our unbelieving responses to Jesus' COMMAND not to worry. We take it less seriously than His commands about overt actions and justify ourselves that we would not worry if He kept us from any circumstance we might worry about.
— Jim Savastio
Be annoyed and sin not" ~R. Alan Woods [2012]
— R. Alan Woods
If pride is a sin, then love must be the mother of sin.
— Lionel Suggs
What was I was dying for? The sins of the past? The wrongs of the present? Did it even matter?
— Dana Michelle Burnett, Spiritus
One of the effects of original sin is an instinctive prejudice in favour of our own selfish desires. We see things as they are not, because we see them centered on ourselves. Fear, anxiety, greed, ambition and our hopeless need for pleasure all distort the image of reality that is reflected in our minds. Grace does not completely correct this distortion all at once: but it gives us a means of recognizing and allowing for it. And it tells us what we must do to correct it. Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
But why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was?
— Zadie Smith, White Teeth