He who would keep his heart pure and holy, must plant a sentinel at every avenue by which sin may find access there, guarding against none more than the "little" sins, as they are called.
The secret of our existence is the connection between our sins and our sufferings.= (?)
Liars are the cause of all the sins and crimes in the world.
Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
Whoso turns his attention to the bitter strifes of these days and seeks a reason for the troubles that vex public and private life must come to the conclusion that a fruitful cause of the evils which now afflict, as well as of those which threaten us, lies in this: that false conclusions concerning divine and human things, which originated in the schools of philosophy, have crept into all the orders of the state, and have been accepted by the common consent of the masses. For since it is in the very nature of man to follow the guide of reason in his actions, if his intellect sins at all his will soon follows; and thus it happens that looseness of intellectual opinion influences human actions and perverts them. Whereas, on the other hand, if men be of sound mind and take their stand on true and solid principles, there will result a vast amount of benefits for the public and private good. [ ?terni Patris (“On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy”), §2, 1879.]
The actions we call sinful are as much the consequence of the order of nature as those we call virtuous. They are part and parcel of the struggle for existence through which all living things have passed, and they have become sins because man alone seeks a higher life in voluntary association.
Feed no man in his sins; for adulation / Doth make thee parcel-devil in damnation.
God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
The less we have to do with our sins the better.
"I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance: let us plead together: declare thou, that thou mayest be justified. Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me." Is. xliv. "I am the first and the last, saith the Lord. Whoso will equal himself to me, let him declare the order of things since I formed the first peoples, and the things which are to come. Fear ye not, have I not declared all these things, ye are my witnesses."
One proof of this fills me with dismay. The Catholic religion does not oblige us to tell out our sins indiscriminately to all, it allows us to remain hidden from men in general, but she excepts one alone, to whom she commands us to open the very depths of our heart, and to show ourselves to him as we are. There is but this one man in the world whom she orders us to undeceive; she binds him to an inviolable secrecy, so that this knowledge is to him as though it were not. We can imagine nothing more charitable and more tender. Yet such is the corruption of man, that he finds even this law harsh, and it is one of the main reasons which has set a large portion of Europe in revolt against the Church.
But we know at the same time our misery, for this God is none other than he who repairs our misery. Thus we can only know God well by knowing our sins. Therefore those who have known God without knowing their misery, have not glorified him, but have glorified themselves. _Quia non cognovit per sapientiam, placuit Deo per stultitiam prædicationis salvos facere._
I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil. Lambs took not away the sins of the world, but I am the lamb who take away sins. Moses gave you not that bread from heaven. Moses has not led you out of captivity, and made you truly free.
When David foretold that Messiah would deliver his people from their enemies, we may believe that these according to the flesh were the Egyptians, and then I know not how to show that the prophecy was fulfilled. But we may well believe also that the enemies were their sins, for in truth the Egyptians were not their enemies, and their sins were. This word enemies is therefore equivocal.
The servant does not know what the master does, for the master tells him only the act and not the purpose; this is why he is so often slavishly obedient and often sins against the purpose. But Jesus Christ tells us the purpose.
But, in proportion as men have passed from anarchy to social organization, and in proportion as civilization has grown in worth, these deeply ingrained serviceable qualities have become defects. After the manner of successful persons, civilized man would gladly kick down the ladder by which he has climbed. He would be only too pleased to see "the ape and tiger die." But they decline to suit his convenience; and the unwelcome intrusion of these boon companions of his hot youth into the ranged existence of civil life adds pains and griefs, innumerable and immeasurably great, to those which the cosmic process necessarily brings on the mere animal. In fact, civilized man brands all these ape and tiger promptings with the name of sins; he punishes many of the acts which flow from them as crimes; and, in extreme cases, he does his best to put an end to the survival of the fittest of former days by axe and rope.
Se la moglie pecca, non e il marito innocente=--If the wife sins, the husband is not innocent.
Women's sins are not alone the ills they do, / But those that they provoke you to.
There are sins of omission as well as those of commission.--_Madame Deluzy._
Commit The oldest sins the newest kind of ways.
But if he say, as in fact he does elsewhere, that he will save his people from their sins, as do also Isaiah and others, the ambiguity is removed, and the double sense of enemies is reduced to the single sense of iniquities. For if he had sins in his mind he might well denote them by the word enemies, but if he thought of enemies, he could not designate them by the word iniquities.
If you would know whether you have made a good confession, ask yourself if you have resolved to abandon your sins.--ST. BERNARD.
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.
He who has published an injurious book sins in his very grave, corrupts others while he is rotting himself.
It is better to cleanse ourselves of our sins now, than to reserve them to be cleansed at some future time.
There is a kind of pride in which are included all the commandments of God, and a kind of vanity which contains the seven mortal sins.
We must come to the biblical conviction that the forgiveness of our sins is not just some “heavenly bookkeeping” that will enable us to slip into heaven some day; God’s forgiveness is a present reality that enables us to concentrate on walking daily with a loving and accepting God who desires to live through us.
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt, be in religion, what we priests term it, the greatest of sins?
He sins as much who holds the sack as he who puts into it.
Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to presume to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control. I could find no label that would suit me, so, in my desire to range myself and be respectable, I invented one; and, as the chief thing I was sure of was that I did not know a great many things that the -ists and the -ites about me professed to be familiar with, I called myself an Agnostic. Surely no denomination could be more modest or more appropriate; and I cannot imagine why I should be every now and then haled out of my refuge and declared sometimes to be a Materialist, sometimes an Atheist, sometimes a Positivist, and sometimes, alas and alack, a cowardly or reactionary Obscurantist.
Father, Your Word clearly states that You will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. You will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless. (Isa. 13:11)
"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.
<...> many national leaders including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King saw American slavery as an immense problem, a curse, a blight, or a national disease. If the degree of their revulsion varied, they agreed that the nation would be much safer, purer, happier, and better off without the racial slavery that they had inherited from previous generations and, some of them would emphasize, from England. Most of them also believed that America would be an infinitely better and less complicated place without the African American population, which most white leaders associated with all the defects, mistakes, sins, shortcomings, and animality of an otherwise almost perfect nation.
Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense.
When nations are to perish in their sins, / 'Tis in the Church the leprosy begins; / The priest, whose office is, with zeal sincere, / To watch the fountain and preserve it clear, / Carelessly nods and sleeps upon the brink, / While others poison what the flock must drink.
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.
The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.
Jesus Christ has come to blind those who saw clearly, and to give sight to the blind; to heal the sick and let the sound perish; to call sinners to repentance and justification, and leave the just in their sins; to fill the hungry with good things and to send the rich empty away.
Mercy, misericordia, does not in the least mean forgiveness of sins, but pity of sorrows.
Few love to hear the sins they love to act.
Two sins only God does not forgive--worship of false gods and injury to men.
Temper is significant, not in what it is alone but in what it reveals. . . . It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped involuntarily when off one's guard; IN A WORD, the lightning form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 34.
~Reproach.~--Few love to hear the sins they love to act.--_Shakespeare._
O Heaven! were man / But constant, he were perfect; that one error / Fills him with faults; makes him run through all sins.
Repent then for thy secret sins, and for the hidden malice of those which thou knowest.
He has adopted our sins, and has admitted us into covenant with him, for virtues are his own, and sins are strange to him; while virtues are strange to us, and sins are our own.
Our sins, like to our shadows, when our day is in its glory, scarce appeared. Towards our evening how great and monstrous they are!--_Sir J. Suckling._
Habit is the purgatory in which we suffer for our past sins.
The greatest virtues of men are only splendid sins.
Charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
It is not his own individual sins that the hero atones for, but original sin=, _i.e.
Not only has the debt (of our sins) been fully paid, there is no possibility of ever going into debt again.
Mens peccat, non corpus, et unde consilium abfuit culpa abest=--It is the mind that sins, not the body, and where there was no intention there is no criminality.
Success in war, like charity in religion, covers a multitude of sins.
Idleness is the badge of gentry, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the step-mother of discipline, the chief author of mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion on which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases.
Nymph, in thy orisons / Be all my sins remembered.
Our compell'd sins / Stand more for number than accompt.
Of four things every man has more than he knows--of sins, and debts, and years, and foes.
A woman who writes commits two sins: she increases the number of books, and decreases the number of women.--_Alphonse Karr._
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
_Against those who trusting in the mercy of God live carelessly, without doing good works._--As the two sources of our sins are pride and indolence, God has revealed to us two of his attributes for their cure, mercy and justice. The property of justice is to abase our pride, however holy may be our works, _et non intres in judicium, etc._; and the property of mercy is to combat indolence by exciting to good works, according to that passage: "The goodness of God leads to repentance," and that other of the Ninevites: "Let us do penance to see if peradventure he will pity us." Thus mercy is so far from authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which formally assails it, so that instead of saying: "Were there not mercy in God, we must make every effort after virtue," we should say, on the contrary, that because there is mercy in God we must make every effort.
De' peccati de' signori fanno penitenza i poveri=--The poor do penance for the sins of the rich.
The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
Happy, because the chastisement is not so much against us, as against our most cruel enemies--our sins.
Guardati dall' occasione, e ti guardera / Dio da peccati=--Keep yourself from opportunities, and God will keep you from sins.
When devils will their blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows.--_Shakespeare._
Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgement; and some men they follow after.
Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.--_Shakespeare._
Non purgat peccata qui negat=--He who denies his sins does not atone for them.
Greater mischiefs happen often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.--_Burke._
Poor men do penance for rich men's sins.
The peculiar feature of Death by Suicide is that it is not only self-inflicted but sudden. And there are many sins which must either be dealt with suddenly or not at all. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 183.
So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.--_Jeremy Taylor._
Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.
Our compell'd sins Stand more for number than for accompt.
_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.
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.
Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever.
Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness.
No one can live your life for you. No one but yourself can answer your questions, meet your responsibilities, make your decisions and choices. Your relations with God no one but yourself can fulfil. No one can believe for you. A thousand friends may encircle you and pray for your soul, but until you lift up your own heart in prayer no communication is established between you and God. No one can get your sins forgiven but yourself. No one can obey God for you. No other one can do your work for Christ, or render your account at the judgment-seat.
I am convinced that there is no man that knows life well, and remembers all the incidents of his past existence, who would accept it again; we are certainly here to punish precedent sins.--_Campbell._
He proves by a miracle that he remits sins.
_Koran_. God forgiveth past sins; let men forgive and pardon. Forgive freely. Forgiving others is the nearest thing to piety.
Deut. xxxii. 20. "I will hide myself from them in view of their latter sins, for they are a froward generation. They have provoked me to anger by things which are no gods, and I will provoke them to jealousy by a people which is not my people, by an ignorant and foolish nation."
Our prayers and our virtues are abomination before God if they are not the prayers and the virtues of Jesus Christ. And our sins will never be the object of the mercy, but of the justice of God, if they are not those of Jesus Christ.
Amos viii. The prophet having enumerated the sins of Israel, said that God had sworn to take vengeance on them.
These are the effects of the sins of the peoples and of the Jesuits, great men have wished to be flattered, the Jesuits have wished to be loved by the great. They have all been worthy to be given up to the spirit of lying, the one party to deceive, the others to be deceived. They have been greedy, ambitious, pleasure loving: _Coacervabunt tibi magistros_.
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.
He hath ill repented whose sins are repeated.
_He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler._ That is, from the little things, the hidden traps and nets that are set for us. Great sins frighten where little snares entangle. It is easier to escape the huntsman's arrow than the crafty lure.
February 26 MORNING “Salvation is of the Lord.” — Jonah 2:9 SALVATION is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul “dead in trespasses and sins,” and it is He also who maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.” “Salvation is of 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 towards my own preservation, except what God Himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Wherein I sin, that is my own; but wherein I act rightly, that is of God, wholly and completely. If I have repulsed 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 liveth in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I weaned from the world? I am weaned 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.” 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 manna which comes down from heaven? What is that manna but Jesus Christ himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh increase of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help cometh 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 great deep, let me learn this morning in my closet: “Salvation is of the Lord.
Lord Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.
Charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
As if there were two hells, one for sins against charity, the other for sins against justice.
What tragic wastes of gloom / Curtain the soul that strives and sins below!
If thou knewest thy sins thou wouldest lose heart.--I shall lose it then O Lord, for on thy word I believe their malice.--No, for I by whom thou learnest it can heal thee of them, and what I tell thee is a sign that I will heal thee. As thou dost expiate them, thou wilt know them, and it will be said to thee: "Behold, thy sins are forgiven thee!"
_Instructions of Ali Ibn-abi Talib, the first Khalif to his son_--"My son, fear God both secretly and openly; speak the truth, whether you be calm or angry; be economical, whether you be poor or rich; be just to friend and foe; be resigned alike in times of adversity and prosperity. My son, he who sees his own faults has no time to see the faults of others; he who is satisfied with the allotments of Providence does not regret the past; he who unsheaths the sword of aggression will be killed by it; he who digs a pit for his brother will fall into it; he who forgets his own sin makes much of the sin of another; he who takes to evil ways will be despised; he who commits excesses will be known to do them; he who associates with the base will be subject to constant suspicion; he who remembers death will be content with little in this world; he who boasts of his sins before men, God will bring him to shame."