quotations about sin
The great cheat and delusion set before every generation is simply this tradition, that there is anything like real substantial pleasure in sin.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
By our sinful falls -- the powers of the soul are weakened; the strength of grace is decayed; our evidences for heaven are blotted; fears and doubts in the soul are raised (will God once more pardon this scarlet sin, and show mercy to this wretched soul?); the corruptions in the heart are more advantaged and confirmed; and the conscience of a man after falls is the more enraged or the more benumbed.
THOMAS BROOKS
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices
A sinner is an incendiary and sets the world on fire.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Sin is a terrible reality -- and one reason it's so terrible is because it separates us from God. But sin is also terrible because it affects every one of us, no matter how good or bad we are. In other words, we are all guilty before God, and none of us deserves His forgiveness or salvation.... But does this mean our situation is hopeless? Does this mean God will never forgive us, and Heaven's door is forever closed to us? No, it doesn't -- and the reason is because God has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. We can never cleanse ourselves of our sins, no matter how hard we try -- but God has provided the way for us to be forgiven and cleansed!
BILLY GRAHAM
"Jesus is all the necessary proof that God will forgive you", Marietta Daily Journal, August 12, 2017
God builds for every sinner, if he will but come back, a highway of golden promises from the depths of degradation and sin clear up to the Father's house.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Young Goodman Brown
A sin is wrong not because it makes you feel bad--though it should--but because it is wrong.
S. M. STIRLING
The Sunrise Lands
Sin, by its deadly infusions into the soul of man, wastes and eats out the innate vigor of the soul, and casts it into such a deep lethargy, as that it is not able to recover itself.
JOHN SMITH
Select Discourses
History is to the effect that man's sins always find him out; but men continue to bet that they won't.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
'Tis not for us to warn a wilful sinner;
We stay him not, but let him run his course,
Till by misfortunes rous'd, his conscience wakes,
And prompts him to appease th' offended gods.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.
THOMAS MERTON
No Man Is an Island
When the sinner hath used his liberty to repent, and God hath used his prerogative to pardon, the sin which hath been, is as if it had not been.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, ... are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.
MARTIN LUTHER
Dr. Martin Luther's Saemmtliche Schriften
Sin is a slippery slope, and even the most pious of us, once we've taken those first tentative steps toward sin, find it difficult to turn back.
ROGER CARPENTER
"The Story of Sin (1975) - The Blu Review", We Are Movie Geeks, August 10, 2017
Too often, we say we are defeated by this or that sin. No, we are not defeated. We are simply disobedient. It might be good if we stop using the terms victory and defeat to describe our progress in holiness. Rather, we should use the terms obedience and disobedience. When I say I am defeated by some sin, I am unconsciously slipping out from under my responsibility. I am saying something outside of me has defeated me. But when I say I am disobedient, that places the responsibility for my sin squarely on me. We may in fact be defeated, but the reason we are defeated is because we have chosen to disobey.
JERRY BRIDGES
The Pursuit of Holiness
On the determinist hypothesis an omnipotent God could have prevented all sin by creating us with better natures and in more favourable surroundings.... Hence we should not be responsible for our sins to God.
J. M. E. MCTAGGART
Some Dogmas of Religion
God laid no foundation of wickedness in the principles of His creation; it is an unnatural super-structure of our own, without a foundation.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast at midnight when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be!
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living