Great Throughts Treasury

"Don’t complain about what you don’t have. Use what you’ve got. To do less than your best is a sin. Every single one of us has the power for greatness, because greatness is determined by service – to yourself and to others." - Oprah Winfrey, born Oprah Gail Winfrey

"There is no sin except stupidity." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

"Watch your motives in everything. Both the greedy man and the yogi eat. But would you say that eating is a sin because it is often associated with greed? Sin lies in the thought, in the motive. The worldly man eats to satisfy his greed, and the yogi eats to keep his body well. There is a lot of difference." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"The heart and the eye are the agents of sin." -

"One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all one pattern. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"And let no men’s sins dishearten thee: love a man even in his sin. Love is our highest word, and the synonym of God." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only sin which we never forgive in each other is a difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Ignorance is not innocence, but sin." - Robert Browning

"Three fatall Sisters wait upon each sin; First, Fear and Shame without, then Guilt within." - Robert Herrick

"Excess is not the only thing which breaks men in their health, and in the comfortab’e enjoyment of themselves; but many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth; and sloth is in itself both a great sin, and the cause of many more." -

"Excess is not the only thing that breaks up both health and enjoyment; many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth, which is both a great sin, and the cause of many more." -

"True repentance is to cease from sin." - Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"The wise man is free, since one who does as he wishes is free. Because he does what he wishes, the free man is wise. One who acts with wisdom has nothing to fear, for fear lives in sin. Where there is no fear there is liberty; where there is liberty there is power of doing what one wishes. Therefore, only the wise man is free." - Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"Every sin is a greater injury to him who does it than to him who suffers it." -

"To abstain from sin when a man cannot sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it." -

"The precept “Resist not evil,” was given to prevent us from taking pleasure in revenge, in which the mind is gratified by the sufferings of others, but not to make us neglect the duty of restraining men from sin." -

"What could begin this evil but pride, that is the beginning of all sin? And what is pride but a perverse desire of height, in forsaking Him to whom the soul ought solely to cleave, as the beginning thereof, to make the self seem the beginning." -

"For no reason whatever should one judge the actions of creatures or their ;motives. Even when we see that it is an actual sin, we ought not to pass judgment on it, but have holy and sincere compassion and offer it up to God with humble and devout prayer." - Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

"One man’s sin may be another man’s duty and a third man’s bliss… A democratic community cannot recognize the category of sin, legislate against it and punish those for whom the proscribed action is not sinful." - Sidney Hook

"Eat slowly; only men in rags and gluttons old in sin mistake themselves for carpet-bags and tumble victuals in." - Walter Raleigh, fully Sir Walter Raleigh

"As long as a man does not sin, he is feared; as soon as he sins, he himself is in fear." - Midrash or The Midrash NULL

"A big sin is forgotten, a little sin is not." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"Three things are weakening: fear, sin and travel." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"He who talks too much commits a sin." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"Tremble before a minor sin, lest it lead you to a major one." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"A sin leaves a mark; repeated, it deepens the mark; when committed a third time, the mark becomes a stain." - Zohar or The Zohar, literally "Splendor or Radiance" NULL

"The less the Temptation, the greater the Sin." - Thomas Fuller

"The improver of knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

"When a man resists sin on human motives only, he will not hold out long." - Thomas Wilson

"My child can be no more guilty or deserving of punishment for my sin than he can see with my eyes and feel with my nerves." - Washington Gladden

"It is a great sin to swear unto a sin, but greater sin to keep a sinful oath." - William Shakespeare

"Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy." - William Shakespeare

"One sin doth provoke another." - William Shakespeare

"Some rise by sin, ands some by virtue fall." - William Shakespeare

"One sin another doth provoke." - William Shakespeare

"Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue." - William Shakespeare

"The twin concepts of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics. " - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand. Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to him is an “unbroken wilderness.” But, because for the Lakota there was no wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy - free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surrounding; the other sought the dominance of surrounding. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a due portion of the thing they sought, while, in fearing, the other found need of conquest. For one man the world was full of beauty; for the other it was a place of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world, there to become a creature of wings, half-man and half-bird. Forever one man directed his Mystery to change the world He had made; forever this man pleaded with Him to chastise the wicked ones; and forever he implored his God to send His light to earth. Small wonder this man could not understand the other. But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, become hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence. " - Chief Luther Standing Bear

"The principle of self-interest rightly understood produces no great acts of self-sacrificed, but it suggest daily small acts of self-denial. By itself it cannot suffice to make a man virtuous; but it disciplines a number of person sin habits of regularity, temperance, moderation, foresight, self-command; and if it does not lead men straight to virtue by the will, it gradually draws them in that direction by their habits. If the principle of interest rightly understood were to sway the whole moral world, extraordinary virtues would doubtless be more rare; but I think that gross depravity would then also be less common. The principle of interest rightly understood perhaps prevents men from rising far above the level of mankind, but a great number of other men, who were falling far below it, are caught and restrained by it." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"When a man resists sin on human motive only, he will not hold out long." - Daniel Wilson

"The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless. " - Dorothy Leigh Sayers

"It has become a conviction with me that psychology may in the long run do much to change the conception of the fundamental nature of the religious life, which, on the whole, is now too generally made a matter of doctrine. It is too intellectual At the doors of most churches one is met by required beliefs in a particular conception of God, in a speculative theory about the divinity of Christ, definite ideas concerning sin and salvation, the efficacy of ordinances, and the claims of supernatural revelation. What people are really seeking is access to refreshing fountains of life, sources of strength and guidance. They crave association with people and institutions which may convey to them a sense of what is most worthwhile in life and what may furnish impulsion toward real and enduring values. They know pretty well what those values are when allowed to let their own deepest desires express themselves. " -

"The era of Moshiach is the fulfillment and culmination of the creation of the world, for which purpose it was originally created. Something of this revelation has been experienced once before on earth, at the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai [when] "To you it has been shown, to know that the L-rd is G‑d; there is none else beside Him" (Deuteronomy 4:35). G‑dliness was then perceived with physical vision.... Subsquently, however, sin coarsened both them and the world - until the era of Moshiach, when the physicality of the body and the world will be refined, and we will be able to apprehend the revealed Divine light which will shine forth to Israel by means of the Torah.... "The glory of G‑d will be revealed; and all flesh will see that the mouth of G‑d has spoken" (Isaiah 40:5)... This all depends on our deeds and labor throughout the duration of the galut... When a person does a mitzvah, he draws down a flow of Divine light into the world, to be suffused and integrated into the material reality." - Shneur Zalman of Liadi

"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." - Emma Goldman

"Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted in ourselves." - Ezra Taft Benson

"There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?" -

"A man is always capable of a sin which he thinks another is capable of, or which he himself is capable of imputing to another." - Frederick William Faber

"Nothing is a greater stranger to my breast, or a sin that my soul more abhors, than that black and detestable one, ingratitude." -

"A God without wrath brought human beings without sin into a kingdom without judgment through ministrations of a Christ without a cross." - Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr