Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for truth, toying and coquetting with truth; this is the sorest sin, the root of all imaginable sins.
Virtue is an angel; but she is a blind one, and must ask of Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. Mere knowledge, on the other hand, like a Swiss mercenary, is ready to combat either in the ranks of sin or under the banners of righteousness: ready to forge cannon-balls or to print New Testaments; to navigate a corsair's vessel or a missionary ship.
Sei gut, und lass von dir die Menschen Boses sagen; / Wer eigne Schuld nicht tragt, kann leichter fremde tragen=--Be good, and let men say ill of thee; he who has no sin to bear of his own can more easily bear that of others.
If a man find the power of sin furiously at work within him, dragging his whole life downward to destruction, there is only one way to escape his fate--to take resolute hold of the upward power, and be borne by it to the opposite goal. Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 108.
He who laughs can commit no deadly sin.
La vida de Henry era tan frágil como la de Xander o la de mi madre, y sentí que empezaba a resquebrajarme. Me abrumaba tener que luchar sola por él. Henry se había quedado en el banquillo porque yo lo había obligado, porque lo había llevado allí a rastras y lo había obligado a seguir expectante, a mantenerse en guardia. No podía, sin embargo, obligarlo a que aquello le importara. Yo era la única que luchaba por él, y ya no estaba segura de estar a la altura de las circunstancias.
Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur=--To be in love and act wisely is scarcely in the power of a god. _Faber._ [Greek: Hamartolai ... en anthropoisin hepontai thnetois]--Proneness to sin cleaves fast to mortal men.
They sin who tell us love can die; With life all other passions fly, All others are but vanity. Love is indestructible, Its holy flame forever burneth; From heaven it came, to heaven returneth. It soweth here with toil and care, But the harvest-time of love is there.
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.
No hay dulzura sin sudor=--No sweetness without sweat.
Even should the whole human race be absorbed in one vast polity, within which "absolute political justice" reigns, the struggle for existence with the state of nature outside it, and the tendency to the return of the struggle within, in consequence of over-multiplication, will remain; and, unless men's inheritance from the ancestors who fought a good fight in the state of nature, their dose of original sin, is rooted out by some method at present unrevealed, at any rate to disbelievers in supernaturalism, every child born into the world will still bring with him the instinct of unlimited self-assertion. He will have to learn the lesson of self-restraint and renunciation. But the practice of self-restraint and renunciation is not happiness, though it may be something much better.
The most inhibited sin in the canon.--_Shakespeare._
The greatest sin is to think that you are weak.
Forgiveness is perfect when the sin is not remembered.
What is it that renders death terrible? Sin. We must therefore fear sin, not death.--ST. ALPHONSUS.
Man-like is it to fall into sin, Fiend-like is it to dwell therein; Christ-like is it for sin to grieve, God-like is it all sin to leave.
Christianity is Christianity by this one fundamental truth, that as God is the father of man, so truly, and not poetically, or metaphorically only, man is the son of God, participating in God's very essence and nature, though separated from God by self and sin. This oneness of nature between the Divine and the human does not lower the concept of God by bringing it nearer to the level of humanity; on the contrary, it raises the old concept of man and brings it nearer to its true ideal. The true relation between God and man had been dimly foreseen by many prophets and poets, but Christ was the first to proclaim that relation in clear and simple language. He called Himself the Son of God, and He was the firstborn son of God in the fullest sense of that word. But He never made Himself equal with the Father in whom He lived and moved and had His being. He was man in the new and true sense of the word, and in the new and true sense of the word He was God. To my mind man is nothing if He does not participate in the Divine.
As a spring lock closes itself, but cannot be unlocked without a key, so we ourselves may run into sin, but cannot return without the key of God's grace.--_Cawdray._
~Asceticism.~--I recommend no sour ascetic life. I believe not only in the thorns on the rosebush, but in the roses which the thorns defend. Asceticism is the child of sensuality and superstition. She is the secret mother of many a secret sin. God, when he made man's body, did not give us a fibre too much, nor a passion too many. I would steal no violet from the young maiden's bosom; rather would I fill her arms with more fragrant roses. But a life merely of pleasure, or chiefly of pleasure, is always a poor and worthless life, not worth the living; always unsatisfactory in its course, always miserable in its end.--_Theodore Parker._
Thence come the various sects of the Stoics and Epicureans, the Dogmatists, Academicians, etc. The Christian religion alone has been able to cure these two distempers, not so as to drive out the one by the other according to the wisdom of the world, but so as to expel them both by the simplicity of the Gospel. For it teaches the righteous that it lifts them even to a participation of the divine nature; that in this exalted state they still bear within them the fountain of all corruption, which renders them during their whole life subject to error and misery, to death and sin; and at the same time it proclaims to the most wicked that they can receive the grace of their Redeemer. Thus making those tremble whom it justifies, and consoling those whom it condemns, religion so justly tempers fear with hope by means of that double capacity of grace and of sin which is common to all, that it abases infinitely more than reason alone, yet without despair; and exalts infinitely higher than natural pride, yet without puffing up: hereby proving that alone being exempt from error and vice, it alone has the office of instructing and of reforming men.
To acquire courage it is very useful to read the lives of the saints, especially of those who, after living in sin, attained great sanctity.-- ST. ALPHONSUS.
"He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me, and accuse me of sin, since God himself is my protector?
SALVATION BELONGS TO THE LORD! — JONAH 2:9 Salvation is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul “dead in . . . trespasses and sins,”1 and He it is who maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.” “Salvation belongs to the LORD!” If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God’s gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because He upholds me with His hand. I do nothing whatever toward my own preservation, except what God Himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Whenever I sin, that is my own doing; but when I act correctly, that is wholly and completely of God. If I have resisted a spiritual enemy, the Lord’s strength nerved my arm. Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who lives in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I separated from the world? I am separated by God’s chastisements sanctified to my good. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me. All my jewels were fashioned by heavenly art. I find in God all that I want; but I find in myself nothing but sin and misery. “He only is my rock and my salvation.”2 Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul and helped me to feed upon it. Do I live on the bread that comes down from heaven? What is that bread but Jesus Christ Himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh supplies of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help comes from heaven’s hills: Without Jesus I can do nothing. As a branch cannot bring forth fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can I, except I abide in Him. What Jonah learned in the ocean, let me learn this morning in my room: “Salvation belongs to the LORD.
So dear to heav'n is saintly chastity, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape.
'T is my vocation, Hal; 't is no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.
The wages of sin is death.
God pardons sin; but He will not pardon the will to sin.--ST. ALPHONSUS.
These foundations solidly established on the inviolable authority of Religion make us understand that there are two truths of faith equally constant--the one, that man in his state at creation or in that of grace is elevated above the whole of nature, made like unto God and sharer of his divinity--the other, that in the state of corruption and sin he has fallen from his former state and is made like unto the brutes. These two propositions are equally fixed and certain. The Scripture declares this plainly to us when it says in some places: _Deliciæ meæ esse cum filiis hominum. Effundam spiritum meum super omnen carnem. Dii estis, etc.;_ and in other places, _Omnis caro fænum. Homo assimilatus est jumentis insipientibus et similis factus est illis. Dixi in corde meo de filiis hominum_.... Eccles. iii.
Hablar sin pensar es tirar sin encarar=--Speaking without thinking is shooting without taking aim.
Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you: it is your murderer, and the murderer of the whole world. Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used; kill it before it kills you; and though it bring you to the grave, it shall not be able to keep you there.
Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.
The Sin of Paradise was eating the tree of knowledge before the tree of life. Life must ever be first. Knowing and not being, hearing and not doing, admiring and not possessing, all are light without life.--_Selected._
All that God allows not is forbidden; sins are forbidden by the general declaration that God has made, that he allows them not. Other things which he has left without general prohibition, and which for that reason are said to be permitted, are nevertheless not always permitted; for when God removes any one of them from us, and when, by the event, which is a manifestation of the will of God, it appears that God allows not that we should have a thing, that is then forbidden to us as sin, since the will of God is that we should not have one more than the other. There is this sole difference between these two things, that it is certain God will never allow sin, while it is not certain that he will never allow the other. But so long as God allows it not, we must look upon it as sin, so long as the absence of God's will, which alone is all goodness and all justice, renders it unjust and evil.
What sin has not been committed in the name of efficiency?
A worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin.
From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion.
In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin.
_Koran_. O ye who believe, repent unto God, for He loveth them who are penitent. O ye who believe in me, who by much sin have done a great wrong to themselves, despair not of the mercy of God, for He forgiveth all sins. Verily He forgiveth and is merciful.
Where lives the man that has not tried How mirth can into folly glide, And folly into sin!
Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail, / And say, there is no sin but to be rich; / And being rich, my virtue then shall be, / To say, there is no vice but beggary.
The thought of foolishness is sin.
But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
It is not his own individual sins that the hero atones for, but original sin=, _i.e.
Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.
How sweet the music of this first heavenly chime floating across the waters of death from the towers of the New Jerusalem. Pilgrim, faint under thy long and arduous pilgrimage, hear it! It is REST. Soldier, carrying still upon thee blood and dust of battle, hear it! It is REST. Voyager, tossed on the waves of sin and sorrow, driven hither and thither on the world's heaving ocean of vicissitude, hear it! The haven is in sight; the very waves that are breaking on thee seem to murmur--"_So He giveth His beloved_ REST." It is the long-drawn sigh of existence at last answered. The toil and travail of earth's protracted week is at an end. The calm of its unbroken Sabbath is begun. Man, weary man, has found at last the long-sought-for _rest_ in the bosom of his God!--_Macduff._
'Tis my vocation, Hal; 'tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.= 1
Ah Sin was his name.
Gravity is the best cloak for sin in all countries.
The substance of a man is full good when sin is not in a man's conscience.
Original sin is foolishness to men, but it is admitted to be so. This doctrine must not then be reproached with want of reason, since I admit that it has no reason. But this foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of men, _sapientius est hominibus_. For without this how can we say what man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible point, and how should it be perceived by his reason, since it is a thing against reason, and since reason, far from finding it out by her own ways, revolts from it when it is offered her?
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
Tell me where you lost the company of Christ, and I will tell you the most likely place to find Him. Have you lost Christ in the closet by restraining prayer? Then it is there you must seek and find Him. Did you lose Christ by sin? You will find Him in no other way than by the giving up of the sin, and seeking by the Holy Spirit to mortify the member in which the lust doth dwell. Did you lose Christ by neglecting the Scriptures? You must find Him in the Scriptures. It is a true proverb, "Look for a thing where you dropped it; it is there." So look for Christ where you lost Him, for He has not gone away.--_Spurgeon._
Rather than providing him with economic opportunity, the Act of that name seems designed to make the poor man do penance all his life for the sin of being born into a non-capital-owning family… .One searches it in vain for measure designed to provide economic opportunity to the capital owner. But nobody proposes to educate, train, or rehabilitate either him or his children, even when their “unemployment” is notorious.
The essence of all immorality, of sin, is the making self the centre to which we subordinate all other beings and interests.
Peche avoue est a moitie pardonne=--A sin confessed is half forgiven.
Believe that God loves you so as you cannot conceive of it; even with your sin and in your sin he loves you.
Moreover, in removing race and racism from the discussion altogether, we’re paving the way for us as one race to call racism what it actually is: sin borne in a heart of pride and prejudice.
Religious zeal leads to cleanliness, cleanliness to purity, purity to godliness, godliness to humility, humility to the fear of sin.
He that turns not from every sin, turns not aright from any one sin.
Jesus Christ, without riches, and without any exterior manifestation of science, is in his own order of holiness. He gave forth no scientific inventions to the world, he never reigned; but he was humble, patient, holy; holy before God, terrible to devils, without spot of sin. O! in what great pomp, and with what transcendent magnificence did he come to the eyes of the heart, which discern wisdom.
"As I was praying God with all my heart, and confessing my sin and the sin of all my people, and prostrating myself before God, even Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, came to me and touched me about the time of the evening oblation, and he informed me and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to teach thee that thou mightest understand. At the beginning of thy prayer I came to show thee that which thou didst desire, for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter and consider the vision. Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to abolish iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness; to accomplish the vision and the prophecies, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Fling away ambition; / By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, / The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
~Covetousness.~--Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.--_Shakespeare._
They who voluntarily commit sin show a contempt for life eternal, since they willingly risk the loss of their soul.--ST. GREGORY THE GREAT.
So cultivate the soul that all its powers will open out to God, and in beholding God be drawn away from sin. Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 118.
Thinking about sin, beyond what is indispensable for the firm effort to get rid of it, is waste of energy and waste of time.
It is a great sin to swear unto a sin, / But a greater still to keep a sinful oath.= 2
To be penitent, to feel sorry for sin, to shed tears, to even make decisions does not bring in salvation. Confession, decision, and many other religious acts can never be and are not to be construed as new birth. Rational judgment, intelligent understanding, mental acceptance, or the pursuit of the good, the beautiful, and the true are merely soulical activities if the spirit is not reached and stirred.
Thus, again, it is not the nuptial benediction which hinders sin in generation, but the desire of begetting children for God, which is no true desire except in marriage.
We know God only by Jesus Christ. Without this mediator all communion with God is taken away, by Jesus Christ we know God. All who have thought to know God, and to prove him without Jesus Christ, have had but feeble proofs. But for proof of Jesus Christ we have the prophecies, which are solid and palpable proofs. And these prophecies, accomplished and proved true by the event, mark the certainty of these truths, and consequently the divinity of Jesus Christ. In him then, and by him we know God; apart from him, and without the Scripture, without original sin, without a necessary mediator, foretold and come, we could not absolutely prove God, nor teach sound doctrine and sound morality. But by Jesus Christ, and in Jesus Christ we prove God and teach morality and doctrine. Jesus Christ is then the true God of men.
Most dangerous / Is that temptation that doth goad us on / To sin in loving virtue.
Drudgery and knowledge are of kin, / And both descended from one parent sin.
The conception of a God gives an altogether new colour to worldliness and vice. Worldliness it changes into heathenism, vice into blasphemy. The carnal mind, the mind which is turned away from God, which will not correspond with God--this is not moral only but spiritual Death. And Sin, that which separates from God, which disobeys God, which CAN not in that state correspond with God--this is hell. Natural Law, Death, p. 169.
Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument, zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, / Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd; / No reckoning made, but sent to my account / With all my imperfections on my head.
_Traditions_. Sorrow for sin is repentance. He who repents is like him who has not sinned.
For right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.
As a matter of fact, men sin, and the consequences of their sins affect endless generations of their progeny. Men are tempted, men are punished for the sins of others without merit or demerit of their own; and they are tormented for their evil deeds as long as their consciousness lasts.
O, what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
Daniel prays that the people may be delivered from the captivity of their enemies, but he was thinking of sins, and to show this, he says that Gabriel came to tell him that his prayer was heard, and that there were only seventy weeks to wait, after which the nation would be delivered from iniquity, that sin would have an end, and the Redeemer, the Most Holy, should bring in eternal righteousness, not legal, but eternal.
Saints are sad, because they behold sin (even when they speculate) from the point of view of the conscience, and not of the intellect.
With respect to the first, I am no optimist, but I have the firmest belief that the Divine Government (if we may use such a phrase to express the sum of the "customs of matter") is wholly just The more I know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own), the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does _not_ flourish nor is the righteous punished. But for this to be clear we must bear in mind what almost all forget, that the rewards of life are contingent upon obedience to the _whole_ Law--physical as well as moral--and that moral obedience will not atone for physical sin, or _vice versa_.
Tears are the deluge of sin and the world's sacrifice.
You that have faith in the Fountain, _frequent it_. Beware of two errors which are very natural and very disastrous. Beware of thinking any sin too great for it; beware of thinking any sin too small. There is not a sin so little, but it may be the germ of everlasting perdition; there is not a sin so enormous, but a drop of atoning blood will wash it away as utterly as if it were drowned in the depths of the sea.--_James Hamilton._
"Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of
To those whose god is honour, disgrace alone is sin.
Could we investigate the spirit as a living organism, or study the soul of the backslider on principles of comparative anatomy, we should have a revelation of the organic effects of sin, even of the mere sin of carelessness as to growth and work, which must revolutionize our ideas of practical religion. There is no room for the doubt even that what goes on in the body does not with equal certainty take place in the spirit under the corresponding conditions. Natural Law, p. 345.
It is better to be affected with a true penitent sorrow for sin than to be able to resolve the most difficult cases about it.
Ohne Wissen, ohne Sunde=--Where there's no knowledge there's no sin. _Ger. Pr._ [Greek: hoi aroures karpon edousin]--They who eat the fruit of the field. _Hom._ [Greek: hoi dystychountes ex heteron cheirona paschonton paramythountai]--The unhappy derive comfort from the worse misfortunes of others. _?sop._ [Greek: hoi kyboi Dios aei eupiptousi]--The dice of Zeus always fall luckily. _Sophocles._ [Greek: hoi pleiones kakoi]--The majority of mankind are bad. _Bias, one of the seven sages._ [Greek: hoi polloi]--The multitude; the masses. [Greek: hoie per phyllon genee, toiede kai andron]--As is the generation of leaves, such is that of men.