c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
We are to count on this fact that we are dead to sin's rule, that we can stand up to it and say no. Therefore we are to guard our bodies so that sin does not reign in us. So we see that God has made provision for our holiness. Through Christ He has delivered us from sin's reign so that we can now resist sin. But the responsibility for resisting is ours.
— Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness
Indwelling sin remains in us even though it has been dethroned. And though it has been overthrown and weakened, its nature has not changed. Sin is still hostile to God and cannot submit to His law (Romans 8:7). Thus we have an implacable enemy of righteousness right in our own hearts. What diligence and watchfulness is required of us when this enemy in our souls is ready to oppose every effort to do good!
— Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness
Indifference is one of the seven deadly sins, actually the greatestof them all, because it is the only one that sins against life.
— Karl Ove Knausgård
For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force.
— John Chrysostom
Every sexual sin begins with flattery.
— Sunday Adelaja
It wasn't an epidemic yet because no one knew about it.
— Tom Clancy, Executive Orders
If sin becomes an abomination to you, you will have a hundred percent victory over it.
— Sunday Adelaja
The greatest sin is doubting God’s truth
— Sunday Adelaja
There is no sin that will be left unpunished.
— Sunday Adelaja
The word “marriage” lingered in Guy’s ears, too. It was a solemn word to him. It had the primordial solemnity of holy, love, sin. It was Miriam’s round terra cotta-coloured mouth saying, “Why should I put myself out for you?” and it was Anne’s eyes as she pushed her hair back and looked up at him on the lawn of her house where she planted crocuses. It was Miriam turning from the tall thin window in the room in Chicago, lifting her freckled, shield-shaped face directly up to his as she always did before she told a lie, and Steve’s long dark head, insolently smiling.
— Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train
Rejecting sin is not a burden; on the contrary, it brings freedom and relief.
— Sunday Adelaja
Sooner or later sin makes its claim on a person.
— Sunday Adelaja
The sin of fornication hinders a person from enjoying God's blessings
— Sunday Adelaja
To get free from sexual sin, you have to fight.
— Sunday Adelaja
If a person is outside the sin zone, the devil is powerless against him.
— Sunday Adelaja
Freedom from sin is real
— Sunday Adelaja
Unless a person actually hates sin, he will continue to practice it.
— Sunday Adelaja
Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18). From the beginning God purposed to glorify Himself “in the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end” (Eph. 3:21). To this end, He created the world, and formed man. His all-wise plan was not defeated when man fell, for in the Lamb “slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) we behold the Fall anticipated. Now will God’s purpose be thwarted by the wickedness of men since the Fall, as is clear from the words of the psalmist, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee: the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain” (Ps. 76:10).
— Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God
Sin is not just what the catechism says it is. Sin is not simply that which we commit. Sin is also what we desire but are too weak to do.
— Sándor Márai, La mujer justa
Sin is incompatible with the glory, beauty and holiness of God.
— Sunday Adelaja
It was a sin. Kissing a guy who wasn't betrothed to her was wrong in every way. Everyone knew that. It was haram. Forbidden. You would go to hell for that...
— Azin Sametipour, Tehran Moonlight
God gave Adam and Eve that free will and choice. He gave them one warning: eat of any tree that is here, including the wonderful tree of life, but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…I wish Adam and Eve had thought more about what knowledge meant. Eve saw it as a good thing, to know more. But how do you really know something? You experience it
— Dee Henderson, Taken
Good intentions are not good at all.
— Fritz Chery
The moment of confession is not merely when one hears another pronounce the words: God forgives you, or 'in God's name I absolve you.' Rather it is that point at which the sinner unfeignedly experiences himself as truly judged and pardoned by God.
— Thomas C. Oden, Corrective Love: The Power of Communion Discipline
One trains the eye of confession most closely on what is hurting. If sin is present it will be aching. Confession begins where the raw anguish of conscience is rubbing against the primordial awareness of God's holiness.
— Thomas C. Oden, Corrective Love: The Power of Communion Discipline
The confessor can nullify the exquisitely seasonable moment of confession by talking instead of listening. When he sees pedagogy and advice as more important than simple listening, he diverts the stream of confession.
— Thomas C. Oden, Corrective Love: The Power of Communion Discipline
Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king.
— G.K. Chesterton
Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor is trying to learn anew to listen to the deeper range of feelings of others, without forgetfulness of the Word of God.
— Thomas C. Oden, Corrective Love: The Power of Communion Discipline
Malone had been raised by a lady both Irish and Catholic, in a good bourgeois home in which careless table manners were a sin, much less this storm in his heart.
— Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance
The deeper irony is that the evidence of sin that are always found in and around the body of Christ may become indirect intimations of its holiness. It could not be a holy church if it had clean hands, as if severed from its task of saving sinners and healing human hurt.
— Thomas C. Oden, Corrective Love: The Power of Communion Discipline
God lives in my soul, and I must spend my life scrubbing my soul clean of any trace of sin so that it derserves to host his presence. Repentance is a daily chore; at each morning prayer session we repent in advance for the sins we will commit that day. I look around at the others, who must sincerly believe in their inherent evil, as they are shamelessly crying and wailing to God to help them expunge the yetzer hara, or evil inclination, from their consciousness.
— Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
After all, that’s all a man really needs: a big city full of sin and sleaze, and a chance.
— Mark Lawrence
The heart of the difference between cheap-grace doctrines of guilt-free existence and the Christian gospel is this: Modern chauvinism desperately avoids the message of guilt by treating it as a regrettable symptom. Christianity listens to the message of guilt by conscientious self-examination. Hedonism winks at sin. Christianity earnestly confesses sin. Secularism assumes it can extricate itself from gross misdeeds. Christianity looks to grace for divine forgiveness. Modern consciousness is its own fumbling attorney before the bar of conscience. Christianity rejoices that God himself has become our attorney. Modernity sees no reason to atone for or make reparation for wrongs. Christianity knows that unatoned sin brings on misery of conscience. Modern naturalism sees no need for God. Christianity celebrates God's willingness to suffer for our sins and redeem us from guilt.
— Thomas C. Oden, Guilt Free
Horizontal (human-centered) grief is much less concerned with being broken and more concerned with being busted.
— Matt  Chandler, Into the Great Outdoors
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,Guiltie of dust and sin.
— George Herbert
Men learn wisdom from their sins, not from their righteous deeds.
— Marmaduke William Pickthall
What causes all this?""Pride. What else?
— W.P. Kinsella, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy
The miracles of Jesus are nevertheless more than individual blessings. They are also symbols and types that reveal the full scope of Jesus' identity as the mighty Jehovah, the Creator, the one who provides for his people, and above all the Christ, who wrought the great Atonement, conquering sin and death. For people in every age Jesus can redeem from sin, change hearts and heal souls, strengthen and empower, and bring about a glorious resurrection, which are the greatest miracles of all.
— Eric D. Huntsman
My eyes are my greatest sin.
— Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros
Her clear conscience mocked rumour’s mendacity, But we are a mob prone to credit sin.
— Ovid, Fasti
I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born.
— Thomas Robert Malthus
There is a glimmer of metal that wavers between his thighs. He turns to face me. The balls of his large gauge nipple rings catch my eye as they glint in the light of the room. But, it is the tintinabular rings below that cause my eyes to descend to his shining metallic beacon of love. I feel my jaw slightly drop open and a small puff of air escapes over my lips. I am wildly transfixed. What is that? What will he do with it? I nervously wonder without a solution. He moves toward me with the sound of pockets full of change, and I know my life will never be the same.
— Anastasia
The devil does some of his best work behind stained glass.
— Eugene H. Peterson, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way
Problem with Man isn't just his ignorance, not just his iniquities, not just his rebellious nature, not just his pride; above all, his problem is his unwillingness to come out of it
— Ajay Chandan
Duty is sinless.
— Amit Kalantri
I believe marriage was designed to do what only marriage can do - point us to Jesus by modeling his love for us. This, though, isn’t easy or even preferable. This means the sin in us, the pride and selfishness and anger and stubbornness and greed and lust in us, will be revealed through our partner. A spouse can help us grow in a way that no one else in this world can.
— Cole Ryan, Dating: I Think We've Missed The Point
I recall Decimus instructing me while at work that wrong friends will make my heart yearn for sin more than it usually does. Compromises will be easier and wisdom will be replaced with folly. I just figured that they didn’t know him, and therefore were judging him. Plus, I told them that Erebus …was interested in becoming a Christian, and that was the basis of our friendship. My biggest mistake was when I told John that Jesus spent time with sinners far worse than Erebus. ‘Oh foolishness, you forget I was with Jesus when he was in the homes and company of sinners,’ John chided. ‘Jesus did not come to make friends, but to call sinners to repent. Do that long enough and let’s see how many friends you pick up…His visits were hardly a social call…He did not save any lost soul by living like that lost soul…until Erebus sees Christ in you, you are guilty of leading him astray as I’m afraid he is leading you astray...As I see it, friendships are grown when you are all going in the same direction, and can help, encourage and protect all involved. Friendships are not to be reckless, but constructive and purposeful where you are building each other up and improving each other’s character. If this isn’t that inner, guiding principle of all the friends you hold, then in what direction is it actually going, and what good will be derived from it? If friends are not making each other better, then they’re fulfilling the role of our spiritual enemy by tearing down what is good and ruining what had potential……
— Rick Lambert
Those who have castrated themselves from all sin for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, are blessed; they abstain from the world.
— Clement of Alexandria
If one night you see someone committing a sin, tomorrow do not look at him as a sinner. He may have repented during the night and you did not know.
— Ali ibn Abi Talib
People who excuse their faults and claim they didn't deserved to be punished - there are lots of them. But those who don't excuse their faults and admit they didn't deserve to be spared - they are few.
— Zhuangzi
Whether you realize it or not, your ongoing battle with unbelief drives all your sinful thoughts, emotions, desires, and actions.
— James MacDonald
Our view of human problems determines who is qualified to speak to them. If sin is the primary human problem, then those with the theological and practical expertise in dealing with sin – in its varied and complex forms – should lead the way in the field of people-helping. Unless we have an accurate and robust conception of sin, the church will concede much of its work to outside professional and will be ill-equipped to cooperate with them when needed.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
You stupid cow!” He laughed at her behind those icicle eyes. “You really think anyone is better than you? Everyone’s a thief, woman! Waiting for the next terrible thing to do to get ahead of their neighbor. Forty of us around a table weren’t enough to convince you of that?
— Devon Trevarrow Flaherty, The Night of One Hundred Thieves
A rebellion against God, even as believers, is fueled by the toxic fumes of unbelief.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
When we worry, we are telling God, "You are neither trustworthy nor in control, so I need to worry and scheme as I take matters into my own hands." In this way unbelief drives worry, for it is impossible to worry when we are trusting in the provision of our sovereign God.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. That’s what religion is all about.
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Stantasyland: Quips Quotes and Quandaries
No matter how hard we try, we are at best imperfect people. When we allow sin, we allow our imperfections to show.
— Bidemi Mark-Mordi
All sin is ultimately irrational. Though people persuade themselves that they have good reasons for sinning, when examined in the cold light of truth on the last day, it will be seen in every case that sin ultimately just does not make sense." Wayne g
— Wayne A. Grudem
Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore.
— Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
All that alcohol does for them is to liberate the sense of sin, which reason suppresses in saner moments.
— Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
The modern skeptical world has been taught for some 200 years a conception of human nature in which the reality of evil, so well-known to the age of faith, has been discounted. Almost all of us grew up in an environment of such easy optimism that we can scarcely know what is meant, though our ancestors knew it well, by the satanic will. We shall have to recover this forgotten but essential truth ‑ along with so many others that we lost when, thinking we were enlightened and advanced, we were merely shallow and blind.
— Walter Lippmann
It is not, in Calvin’s view, that we sin because we believe the wrong things; it is, rather, that we believe the wrong things because we sin.
— Russell D. Moore
We're Christians. We have to care what people think. The appearance of wrongdoing, remember? I'm not going to move in with you had have people think we're living in sin. What sort of witness would that be?
— Francine Rivers, The Atonement Child
Forming Holiness with filthy hands and heart which leads to a disastrous future is like trying to impress or form when your life is without formation.
— Peter Isekiigbe DE Rock
By daily contrition, and habitual mortification of the flesh, man is day by day RENEWED, bearing heavenly fruits and celestial graces, of an inexplicable sweetness. Contrariwise, the pleasure of the world bringeth heaviness of heart, vexation of spirit, and a wounded conscience: yea, so great hence is the calamity of the soul, and so heavy the loss of the heavenly gift (a loss which necessarily flows from the pleasures of the flesh, and from worldly delights) that he who duly calls the same to mind, cannot be exceedingly fear and dread any of the fleshly and worldly joys, which serve but to divert him from those that are spiritual and heavenly, and to quench in him the most sweet grace of devotion that brings the soul into the kingdom of God.
— Johann Arndt, Johann Arndt: True Christianity
I, however, have really never been anywhere yet, not because some sins or other could wrap themselves around me there, but because I'd rather sin at home, where God even announces the weather to me in advance on TV, slowly, so that I can write it down, in case it's worth the proper guilt. Sinning is enough, there's no need for surprises as well.
— Elfriede Jelinek, Greed
Sloth may disguise itself as "conscientious work" and meet with various forms of public approval or success. But work that is not motivated by love for the life of the community, beyond the temporal and spatial confines of one's own small life, cannot free either worker or community from profound anxiety.
— Ellen F. Davis
When our heart wants to live in purity & do the right thing, God will keep us from falling into sin.
— Stormie Omartian
Let them enjoy their Eden while they can; though there's plenty of apples, I fear, on the tree yet, Mr Lawford.
— Walter de la Mare
Antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees, those men blush not in actions blacker than the night, will 'schew no course to keep them from the light. One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke. Poison and treason are the hands of sin; Ay, and the targets to put off the shame. Then, lest my life be cropped to keep you clear, By flight I'll shun the danger which I fear.
— William Shakespeare
Whenever someone 'pretends' as perfect, never made a mistake, error, sin in his life, I know that he has never been in the field...
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
Every sinner must be punished in a manner befitting his sin!
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
What do you want?” Boyd whispered.“You—
— Ais, Evenfall: Volume 1: Director's Cut
I'm going to Hell in a basketWeaved in from my sinsLike wickerWith little Wiccan tiesAs if I'm a witchAccused
— Matthew Little, Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems.
The Apostle “Paul’s antidote for wimpy Christians is weighty doctrine. . . .everything that exists—including evil—is ordained by a holy and all-wise God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly. We don’t make God. He makes us. We don’t decide what he is going to be like. He decides what he is going to be like. He decides what we are going to be like. He created the universe, and it has the meaning he gives it, not the meaning we give it. If we give it a meaning different from his, we are fools. . . . our eternal joy and strength and holiness depend on the solidity of this worldview putting strong fiber into the spine of our faith. Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. And wimpy Christians won’t survive the days ahead.
— John Piper, Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ
May your criminal enjoyments vanish as a shadow! may your ill-gotten wealth leave you without a resource; and may you yourself remain alone and deserted, to learn the vanity of these things, which now divert you from better pursuits!
— Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles, Manon Lescaut
I had more to say,” Sin said, still looking frustrated. “But it doesn’t come out right when I try. I always say the wrong things.”Boyd nodded but he was so caught by their proximity, by the green of Sin’s eyes, that at first he struggled with his own words.“It’s alright,” he said at last. “As long you don’t hate me, it’s enough.”“That is not enough,” Sin growled. “Not by a goddamn long shot. You just have no idea, Boyd. No fucking clue.”“About what?”“Everything. Why I acted the way I did…Why I was so pissed off. It will never make any sense to you because I don’t know how to explain.”“So try,” Boyd pressed. “Please.”“I don’t know how.
— Ais
I don’t even like the phrase ‘opportunity to sin’ because it implies the opportunity to obey.
— Geoffrey Wood
Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses the conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God.
— Oswald Chambers
Keep yourselves from idols." The warning isn't given to them because it wasn't a real danger or because there was an off chance someone might fall into idolatry. It was given because this is our root problem on any given day. It is what we, especially as followers of Jesus, must fight against.
— Joe Thorn, Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself
The greatest sin you could commit is immortality, because it means that you’ll eventually commit all else.
— Abdullah  Ali, Flashover
Sin/ alienation is psychological disease which if unhealed can lead to the living hell of lost hopes and blighted lives.
— Susan Howatch, Mystical Paths
Sin is when you turn away from God—or, in the other language, alienation occurs when the ego, that erratic, unreliable driver of the personality, temporarily turns aside from the great quest for integration with the inner self, the self that’s authentic, the self that contains the potential to be fully human, fully fulfilled and fully alive.
— Susan Howatch, Mystical Paths
He who sleeps does not sin.
— Martin Luther
We are all guilty of sin, error, and moments of sheer stupidity; none of us should be casting stones. The occasional arced pebble might be overlooked.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.
— Thomas Watson
Some of these beginners, too, make little of their faults, and at other times become over-sad when they see themselves fall into them, thinking themselves to have been saints already; and thus they become angry and impatient with themselves, which is another imperfection. Often they beseech God, with great yearnings, that He will take from them their imperfections and faults, but they do this that they may find themselves at peace, and may not be troubled by them, rather than for God's sake; not realizing that, if He should take their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptuous still. They dislike praising others and love to be praised themselves; sometimes they seek out such praise. Herein they are like the foolish virgins, who, when their lamps could not be lit, sought oil from others.
— San Juan de la Cruz, Dark Night of the Soul
I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.
— John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
You will never turn from a sin you don’t hate.
— Jen Wilkin
A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
The whole conception of 'sin' is one which I find very puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful nature.
— Bertrand Russell, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell: 1903-1959
As for the vice of lust - aside from what it means for spiritual persons to fall into this vice, since my intent is to treat of the imperfections that have to be purged by means of the dark night - spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, many of which can be called spiritual lust, not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds from spiritual things. It happens frequently that in a person's spiritual exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from any of three causes outside one's control. First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit, the superior part of the soul, experiences renewal and satisfaction in God; and the sense, the lower part, feels sensory gratification and delight because it is ignorant of how to get anything else, and hence takes whatever is nearest, which is the impure sensory satisfaction. It may happen that while a soul is with God in deep spiritual prayer, it will conversely passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure. This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy and gladness in this act of love - for the Lord grants the grace and gives himself for this reason - the sensory part also takes its share, as we said, according to its mode. Since, after all, these two parts form one individual, each one usually shares according to its mode in what the other receives. As the Philosopher says: Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver. Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more advanced ones, the sensory part of the soul is imperfect, God's spirit is frequently received in this sensory part with this same imperfection. Once the sensory part is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it no longer has these infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul, rather than the sensory part, receives God's Spirit, and the soul thus receives everything according to the mode of the Spirit.
— San Juan de la Cruz, Dark Night of the Soul
a sense of the love of Christ in the cross
—  lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification
If you cannot give God glory for something, you should not do it. If a person is not fully persuaded that an activity is pleasing to God, then it is a sin: "whatsoever is not of faith is sin" (Romans 14:23)
— Alan de Jager
This is the worst thing about poisons and deadly sins - that we enjoy them.
— R.W. Schmidt, The Lands Beyond the Moon
we were made to be like this; filled with ashes and feels, burning down to what we dont want to be and what we dont want to see. sins? they are just a choice.
— malaika tanweer
For, when the friendship is purely spiritual, the love of God grows with it; and the more the soul remembers it, the more it remembers the love of God, and the greater the desire it has for God; so that, as the one grows, the other grows also. For the spirit of God has this property, that it increases good by adding to it more good, inasmuch as there is likeness and conformity between them. But, when this love arises from the vice of sensuality aforementioned, it produces the contrary effects; for the more the one grows, the more the other decreases, and the remembrance of it likewise. If that sensual love grows, it will at once be observed that the soul's love of God is becoming colder, and that it is forgetting Him as it remembers that love; there comes to it, too, a certain remorse of conscience. And, on the other hand, if the love of God grows in the soul, that other love becomes cold and is forgotten; for, as the two are contrary to one another, not only does the one not aid the other, but the one which predominates quenches and confounds the other, and becomes strengthened in itself, as the philosophers say. Wherefore Our Saviour said in the Gospel: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' That is to say, the love which is born of sensuality ends in sensuality, and that which is of the spirit ends in the spirit of God and causes it to grow. This is the difference that exists between these two kinds of love, whereby we may know them.
— San Juan de la Cruz, Dark Night of the Soul
Ossa autem alia quae sunt infra basilare non bene ad sensum apparent nisi ossa illa decoquantur, sed propter peccatum dimitiere consuevi. [The bones which are below the os basilare cannot be well seen unless they are removed and boiled, but owing to the sin involved in this I am accustomed to pass them by.]
— Mondino de' Liuzzi Mondino dei Luzzi Mundinus de Leuciis
...so unbelief alone commits sin..Hence Christ calls unbelief the only sin.
— Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans
Sometimes, too, when their spiritual masters, such as confessors and superiors, do not approve of their spirit and behavior (for they are anxious that all they do shall be esteemed and praised), they consider that they do not understand them, or that, because they do not approve of this and comply with that, their confessors are themselves not spiritual. And so they immediately desire and contrive to find some one else who will fit in with their tastes; for as a rule they desire to speak of spiritual matters with those who they think will praise and esteem what they do, and they flee, as they would from death, from those who disabuse them in order to lead them into a safe road—sometimes they even harbour ill-will against them. Presuming thus, they are wont to resolve much and accomplish very little. Sometimes they are anxious that others shall realize how spiritual and devout they are, to which end they occasionally give outward evidence thereof in movements, sighs and other ceremonies; and at times they are apt to fall into certain ecstasies, in public rather than in secret, wherein the devil aids them, and they are pleased that this should be noticed, and are often eager that it should be noticed more.
— San Juan de la Cruz, Dark Night of the Soul
God never loses any part of our past for his future when we surrender ourselves to him. Every mistake, sin, and detour we take in the journey of life is taken by God and becomes his gift for a future of blessing.
— Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ
Disclosing one's "deep, dark secrets" makes them no less deep or dark or secret than any other petty flaw.
— Alan de Jager
The proper biblical understanding of sin is much more radical and far-reaching. It can never be used as a weapon, because it will recoil on anyone who tries to deploy it that way.
— Timothy J. Keller, Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life's Biggest Questions
Sensual indulgence weakens the mind and debases the soul. The moral and intellectual powers are benumbed and paralyzed by the gratification of the animal propensities and it is impossible for the slave of passion to realize the sacred obligation of the Law of God, to appreciate the atonement, or to place right value upon the soul.
— Ellen G. White, Patriarchs And Prophets
While it is important on the one hand that laxness in dealing with sin be avoided, it is equally important on the other to shun harsh judgment and groundless suspicion.
— Ellen G. White, Patriarchs And Prophets
The more we love God, the more unpleasant sin becomes.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.
— Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous.
— Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Gossip is a Sin just like all other sins that not only hurts those it is spoken about and slanders their reputation, but it also hurts the one who speaks it and the one who listens. Gossip is cruel & usually is a result of jealousy or bitterness. Either way, Stop the cycle of gossiping and start being loving instead.
— Heather Wolf, Kipnuk the Talking Dog
A man may beat down the bitter fruit from an evil tree until he is weary; while the root abides in strength and vigour, the beating down of the present fruit will not hinder it from bringing forth more. This is the folly of some men; they set themselves with all earnestness and diligence against the appearing eruption of lust, but, leaving the principle and root untouched, perhaps unsearched out, they make but little or no progress in this work of mortification.
— John Owen, The Mortification of Sin
But that wasn't the chief thing that bothered me: I couldn't reconcile myself with that preoccupation with sin that, so far as I could tell, was never entirely absent from the monks' thoughts. I'd known a lot of fellows in the air corps. Of course they got drunk when they got a chance, and had a girl whenever they could and used foul language; we had one or two had hats: one fellow was arrested for passing rubber cheques and was sent to prison for six months; it wasn't altogether his fault; he'd never had any money before, and when he got more than he'd ever dreamt of having, it went to his head. I'd known had men in Paris and when I got back to Chicago I knew more, but for the most part their badness was due to heredity, which they couldn't help, or to their environment, which they didn't choose: I'm not sure that society wasn't more responsible for their crimes than they were. If I'd been God I couldn't have brought myself to condemn one of them, not even the worst, to eternal damnation. Father Esheim was broad-minded; he thought that hell was the deprivation of God's presence, but if that is such an intolerable punishment that it can justly be called hell, can one conceive that a good God can inflict it? After all, he created men, if he so created them that ti was possible for them to sin, it was because he willed it. If I trained a dog to fly at the throat of any stranger who came into by back yard, it wouldn't be fair to beat him when he did so.If an all-good and all-powerful God created the world, why did he create evil? The monks said, so that man by conquering the wickedness in him, by resisting temptation, by accepting pain and sorrow and misfortune as the trials sent by God to purify him, might at long last be made worthy to receive his grace. It seem to me like sending a fellow with a message to some place and just to make it harder for him you constructed a maze that he had to get through, then dug a moat that he had to swim and finally built a wall that he had to scale. I wasn't prepared to believe in an all-wise God who hadn't common sense. I didn't see why you shouldn't believe in a God who hadn't created the world, buyt had to make the best of the bad job he'd found, a being enormously better, wiser and greater than man, who strove with the evil he hadn't made and who might be hoped in the end to overcome it. But on the other hand I didn't see why you should.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge
One and all do mistakes, that doesn’t mean they all are sinner
— Rocky13
I discovered that everything you do is in response to a request or a suggestion made to you by some other party either inside you or outside. Some of these suggestions are good and praiseworthy and some of them are undoubtedly delightful. But the majority of them are definitely bad and are pretty considerable sins as sins go.
— Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman
The idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch himself, although she had never had doubts of the faith in which she had been brought up. She knew that the support of religion was possible only upon condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole meaning of life. She was not simply miserable, she began to feel alarm at the new spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which she found herself. She felt as though everything were beginning to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double to over-tired eyes. She hardly knew that times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired what had happened, or what was going to happen and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
It means the God who worries about our sins is not only God the judge, but also God the caretaker. He worries about sin because He craves righteousness, but also, simply, because He loves us.
— Lauren F. Winner, Girl Meets God
Whether or not I protect the weeds isn't a matter of just recognizing the weed for what it is, but possessing the conviction to grab hold of the roots and yank like my life depends on it.
— Angie  Smith, Mended: Pieces of a Life Made Whole
Believing in the possibility of resurrection and eternal life, Christians seek ‘redemption’ through moral behaviour. But moral behaviour does not, in itself, assuage fear of death, on the contrary, when people come to view themselves as marred by Sin, for instance because they are taught to believe that their most intimate feelings are sinful, this may increase significantly their anxiety about dying.
— Daniel Waterman
But we can never change enough to impress God. And here's the reason: trying to impress God, others, or ourselves puts us at the center of our change project. It makes change all about my looking good. It is done for my glory. And that's pretty much the definition of sin. Sin is living for my glory instead of God's.
— Tim Chester, You Can Change: God's Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions
She understood she was far from perfect, but to even imagine that Jesus could step off the throne of heaven to die for someone so small and full of sin, it was hard to understand
— Philip Cook, ERDEN FLAME OF THE CREATOR
The things that tempt us do not come from external persuasions…they originate from our very own hearts. They’re conceived there, entertained by our thoughts and then acted upon. Our hearts need daily scrubbings and consistent discipline to battle against its baleful wishes. Knowing and shedding light upon our heart’s darkness with honest accountability is a good first step towards an untainted ticker! ~Jason Versey
— Jason Versey, A Walk with Prudence
Ribs closing on his heart, Will battled internal sirens whose song he couldn’t yet decipher. During his childhood, ‘sin’ had been such an abstract word. It denoted getting your Sunday best dirty and torn, or lying to have your brother punished for things you’d done yourself. But now, on the cusp of adulthood, the word seemed to grow and change, to acquire terrifying shades of darkness. He was beginning to understand that there was more to it. That there were things the human body longed for that were infinitely worse than playing in mud and telling fibs.
— Ingela Bohm, Rebel Hand
Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of thy sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this, and thou wilt die a conqueror; yea, thou wilt, through the good providence of God, live to see thy lust dead at thy feet.
— John Owen, The Mortification of Sin
There's a sin, a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever. There will be reckoning yet ... it may be sooner or it may be later, but it's a coming as sure as the Lord is just
— Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave
Not to be daily employing the Spirit and new nature for the mortifying of sin is to neglect that excellent succor which God has given us against our greatest enemy. If we neglect to make use of what we have received, God may justly hold his hand from giving us more. His graces, as well as his gifts, are bestowed on us to use, exercise, and trade with. Not to be daily mortifying sin is to sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who has furnished us with a principle of doing it.
— John Owen, The Mortification of Sin
My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom.
— Samuel Morse
Reproof is unavoidable. God’s Word demands it when a brother falls into open sin. The practice of discipline in the congregation begins in the smallest circles. Where defection from God’s Word in doctrine or life imperils the family fellowship and with it the whole congregation, the word of admonition and rebuke must be ventured. Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin. It is a ministry of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine fellowship, when we allow nothing but God’s Word to stand between us, judging and succoring. Then it is not we who are judging; God alone judges, and God’s judgment is helpful and healing. Ultimately, we have no charge but to serve our brother, never to set ourselves above him, and we serve him even when we must speak the judging and dividing Word of God to him, even when, in obedience to God, we must break off fellowship with him. We must know that it is not our human love which makes us loyal to the other person, but God’s love which breaks its way through to him only through judgment. Just because God’s Word judges, it serves the person. He who accepts the ministry of God’s judgment is helped.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could; every covetous desire would be oppression, every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head. Men may come to that, that sin may not be heard speaking a scandalous word in their hearts - that is, provoking to any great sin with scandal in its mouth; but yet every rise of lust, might it have its course, would come to the height of villainy: it is like the grave that is never satisfied.
— John Owen, The Mortification of Sin
Anything is forgiven those who sin elegantly
—  while gaucheness sours even the noblest deed.
Absolute hospitality would in no way amount to the absence of violence. To the contrary, it would enthrone violence precisely under the guise of nonviolence because it would leave the violators unchanged and the consequences of violence unremedied.
— Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good
Two types of dust I require to wipe my sin
— Munia Khan
The Amida Buddha delivers those who recognize their own weakness and cowardice... Those who admit their own faults and above all, those who believe... A wholehearted trust in Amida Buddha gives peace of mind to those who've known despair. Even the most vicious and evil of sinners will attain salvation and be reborn in paradise... Even a piece of shit like me!
— Naoyuki Ochiai, Syndrome 1866 T05
Vanity might be a "sin" according to some lights, but he thought in measured doses it was one of life's allowable simple pleasures. It helped everyone get through their days.
— G.M. Malliet
Before we received Christ, we were slaves to sin. But because of Christ’s work on the cross, sin’s power over us has been broken. Satan has no right of ownership or authority over us. He is a defeated foe, but he is committed to keeping us from realizing that. He knows he can block your effectiveness as a Christian if he can deceive you into believing that you are nothing but a product of your past, subject to sin, prone to failure, and controlled by your habits.
— Neil T. Anderson, The Bondage Breaker
When God says hold up, wait, pray, it’s not your time yet, our entire bodies rebel, legs kicking and flailing like some overturned dung beetle certain that if we try hard enough we might be able to gain a little traction on our own
— Heather Choate Davis, Elijah & the SAT: Reflections on a hairy old desert prophet and the benchmarking of our children's lives
Greed, one of the badliest capital sins, is not good, is not good for knolege, love, money. Greed "the capital sin" is necessary
— S.M Camacho
Comfort came in and stood with an appearance of guilt and shame. Her head bent, her eyes soaked with tears, her hands and legs, vibrating like a guiter string as perspiration covered her entire body, she felt like disappearing into the thin air, maybe to another mind creating world.
— Michael Bassey Johnson, Comfort
Man's thought is always of the punishment that will come to him if he sins. God's thought is always of the glory man will miss if he sins. God's purpose for redemption is glory, glory, glory.
— Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life
And in the sin of wantingalways to be right, the punishmentis knowing it isn't possible.
— Jennifer Clarvoe, Invisible Tender
I've done many things that I thought I would never dare to do because they were sins. But I didn't realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.
— Sigrid Undset, The Wreath
But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
She was a logical child, as far as children go. She did not understand how such a nice, kind, good God as the one they preyed to, could condemn the whole earth for sinfulness and flood it, or condemn his only Son to a disgusting death on behalf of everyone. This death did not seem to have done much good.
— A.S. Byatt, Ragnarok
The preachers preach and the sinners sin sincerely.
— Morrissey, Autobiography
You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sin, you know, and cry tears doing it that are genuine as any.
— Leif Enger, Peace Like a River
...when it comes time for punishment for our sins, surely it's only the person who's done wrong who's expected to pay?"Sister Agnes smiled, "Not even them, if they've accepted the Savior.
— Elizabeth Ludwig, Tide and Tempest
I grew up believing Christians didn’t just believe in Jesus. To be saved, people had to look and speak a certain way. They followed a long list of nots to ensure their holiness. They fit the mold. They followed the rules.
— Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith