Great Throughts Treasury

"All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions. " - Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr

"After the first blush of sin comes its indifference. " - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

" Only a theoretical deity is left to any man who has ceased to commune with God and a theoretical deity saves no man from sin and disheartenment. " - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"People under delusion accumulate tainted merits but do not tread the Path. They are under the impression that to accumulate merits and to tread the Path are one and the same thing. Though their merits for alms-giving and offerings are infinite. They do not realize that the ultimate source of sin lies in the three poisons within their own mind. They expect to expiate their sins by accumulating merit. Without knowing that felicities obtained in future lives have nothing to do with the expiation of sins. Why not get rid of the sin within our own mind, for this is true repentance?" - Dajian Hui-neng or Huineng

"There is no sin which cannot be pardoned except that one which lacks repentance, and there is no gift which is not augmented save that which remains without acknowledgement. For the portion of the fool is small in his eyes." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"Sin is a technique of the pseudo-religions. A true religion has no need of the concept at all. The pseudo-religion cannot live without the concept of sin, because sin is the technique of creating guilt in people." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"Awareness means that whatsoever is happening in the moment is happening with complete consciousness; you are present there. If you are present when anger is happening, anger cannot happen. It can happen only when you are fast asleep. When you are present, immediate, transformation starts in your being, because when you are present, aware, many things are simply not possible. All that is called sin is not possible if you are aware. So, in fact, there is only one sin and that is unawareness." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"Brethren, it is easier to declaim against a thousand sins of others, than to mortify one sin in ourselves." - John Flavel

"Exaltation is gone from the synagogue, from the church, and also from many a classroom and university. The cardinal sin is boredom, and the major failure the denial to our young of moments of exaltation." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"To celebrate is to contemplate the singularity of the moment and to enhance the singularity of the self. What was shall not be again... Every moment is a new arrival, a new bestowal. How to welcome the moment? How to respond to the marvel? The cardinal sin is in our failure not to sense the grandeur of the moment, the marvel and mystery of being, the possibility of quiet exaltation. The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state - it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Celebration is an act of expressing respect or reverence for that which one needs or honors... inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Everyone who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random; we are not here, that we may go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, toil for our bread, eat and drink, laugh and joke, sin when we have a mind, and reform when we are tired of sinning, rear a family and die. God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, . . . for a purpose." - John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman

"It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing. " - José Martí, fully José Julián Martí Pérez

"A man does not necessarily sin who does that which our reason and our conscience condemn." - Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

"We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation - have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it." - Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

"Behavior now must be changed from within the new consciousness rather than from Mosaic laws carving behavior from without. Sin and desire are now within conscious desire and conscious contrition, rather than in the external behaviors of the decalogue and the penances of temple sacrifice and community punishment. The divine kingdom to be regained is psychological not physical. It is metaphorical not literal. It is "within" not in extenso." - Julian Jaynes

"When the rabbis speak of paradise and hell...these are only metaphors for the agony of sin and the happiness of virtue." - Kaufmann Kohler

"It is the sin of the soul to force young people into opinions - indoctrination is of the devil - but it is culpable neglect not to impel young people into experiences." - Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn

"There is no greater curse than the lack of contentment. No greater sin than the desire for possession. Therefore, he who is contented with contentment shall always be content. " - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

"There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord the destroyer of sin and death finds none free from charge, so is He come to free us all." - Pope Leo I, aka Pope Leo The Great, Pope Saint Leo I NULL

"I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth." - Lin Yutang

"Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis

"The sin of thousands always goes unpunished." - Lucan, full name Marcus Annaeus Lucanus NULL

"Do not teach your children never to be angry; teach them how to be angry and sin not." - Lyman Abbott

"For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it." - Martin Buber

"In the morning of life, before its wearisome journey, The youthful soul doth expand, in the simple luxury of being; It hath not contracted its wishes, nor set a limit on its hopes; The wing of fancy is unclipped, and sin hath not seared the feelings: Each feature is stamped with immortality, for all its desires are infinite, And it seeketh an ocean of happiness, to fill the deep hollow within." - Martin Tupper, fully Martin Farquhar Tupper

"Thou shalt not, it is said, make unto thee any graven image of God. The same commandment should apply when God is taken to mean the living part of every human being, the part that cannot be grasped. It is a sin that, however much it is committed against us, we almost continually commit ourselves—Except when we love. " - Max Frisch

"This passage from nothingness to real being, this quitting of oneself is a birth accompanied by pain, for by it natural love is excluded. All grief except grief for sin comes from love of the world. In God is neither sorrow, nor grief, nor trouble. Wouldst thou be free from all grief and trouble, abide and walk in God, and to God alone. As long as love of the creature is in us, pain cannot cease." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

"The sin carries its own penance." - Mexican Proverbs

"The pastorate was formed against a sort of intoxication of religious behavior, examples of which are found throughout the Middle East in the second, third, and fourth centuries, and to which certain Gnostic sects in particular bear striking and indisputable testimony. In at least some of these Gnostic sects, in fact, the identification of matter with evil, and as absolute evil, obviously entailed certain consequences. This might be, for example, a kind of vertigo or enchantment provoked by a sort of unlimited asceticism that could lead to suicide: freeing oneself from matter as quickly as possible. There is also the idea, the theme, of destroying matter thorough the exhaustion of the evils it contains, of committing every possible sin, going to the very end of the domain of evil opened up by matter, and thus destroying matter. Let us sin, then, and sin to infinity. There is also the theme of the nullification of the world of the law, to destroy which one must first destroy the law, that is to say, break every law. One must respond to every law established by the world, or by the powers of the world, by violating it, systematically breaking the law and in effect, overthrowing the reign of the one who created the world." - Michel Foucault

"Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it." - Mignon McLaughlin

"Life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin... I want you all to treasure death and suffering more than life and to appreciate their cleansing and purifying character. Death which is an Eternal verity is revolution, as birth and after is slow and steady evolution. Death is as necessary for man's growth as life itself... All fear is a sign of want of faith... Hate the sin and love the sinner." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

""Hate the sin and not the sinner" is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"No sin is so light that it may be overlooked. No sin is so heavy that it may not be repented of." - Moses ibn Ezra, fully Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as ha-Sallah "Writer of penitential prayers"

"The boon and benevolence which is not thanked for, is like the sin which is not forgiven." - Muhammed al-Taqī or Muhammad al-Jawād, given name Muhammad ibn ‘Alī ibn Mūsā

"Set imagined it was to please, but it was to astonish God that he painted. His presumption and arrogance were pronounced and dangerous, for they would certainly lead to the Sin of Despair, thence to death and nothingness. Bent said so, half in jest, only half. Rather, as Set himself said on occasion, he painted in vain, in order to relieve the terrible boredom of God. He expounded: God's boredom is infinite. Surely we humans, even with our etiquette and our institutions and our mothers-in-law, ceased to amuse Him many ages ago. What sustains Him is the satisfaction, far deeper than we can know, of having created a few incomparables - landscapes, waters, birds and beasts. He takes particular pride in the stars, and it pleases Him to breathe havoc upon the oceans. He sighs to the music of the desert at dawn. The eagle and the whale give Him still to ponder and admire. And so must he grieve for the mastodon and the archaeopteryx. And the bear - ah! He used both hands when he made the bear. Imagine a bear proceeding from the hands of God!" - N. Scott Momaday, fully Navarre Scott Momaday

"Besides the guilt of sin and the power of sin, there is the stain of sin." - Nathanial Culverwell, also spelled Nathaniel Culverwell

"By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"I have unlearned contempt.—It is a sin that is engendered earliest in the soul, and doth beset it like a poison-worm, feeding on all its beauty." - Nathaniel Parker Willis

"It is the sin which we have not committed which seems the most monstrous." - Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux, sometimes Nicholas Desperaux or Nicolas Boileau

"For it is not ordained for the Spiritual Man that, finding his high realm, he shall enter altogether there, and pass out of the vision of mankind. It is true that he dwells in heaven, but he also dwells on earth. He has angels and archangels, the hosts of the just made perfect, for his familiar friends, but he has at the same time found a new kinship with the prone children of men, who stumble and sin in the dark. Finding sinlessness, he finds also that the world’s sin and shame are his, not to share, but to atone; finding kinship with angels, he likewise finds his part in the toil of angels, the toil for the redemption of the world. " - Patañjali NULL

"Accept the long night patiently, quietly, humbly, and resignedly as intended for your true good. It is not a punishment for sin committed but an instrument of annihilating egoism. " - Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte

"The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that." - Pearl Bailey, fully Pearl Mae Bailey

"People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"Thou wilt not chronicle our sand-like sins; for sin is small, and mean, and barren. Good Only is great, and generous, and fruitful. Number the mountains, not the sands, O God!" - Philip James Bailey

"Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet Which brought from heaven the news and prince of peace. Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat; To cry for vengeance sin doth never cease; In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears, Nor let his eye see sin but through my tears." - Phineas Fletcher

"Nothing, great and small, could exist were it not for His help. We find that all the obstacles [to observing the] prohibitions, or even thoughts, are from the Almighty alone. And without His ‘help,’ I would become a meshumad [apostate]. But if you ignore this principle, you may think that you are ‘something’ and value yourself as a man of virtue [a sheiner yid]. [You say to yourself,] ‘I went away from sin and I am clean of sin.’ But the result is that G-d leaves him, for every haughty-hearted person is an abomination to G-d, and he and I cannot live [in the same place]. Then he finds himself in the grasp of his Urge and be caught in its trap and do whatever it tempts him to do. And [R. Pinhas] said that all this is because of the compassion of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His great kindness which is continuously over the soul, he is seduced in order to fail through a [small] thing in order to remind him that without the help of G-d he is worth nothing. [If] he does not remember through a small thing, he would stumble in a great thing until he comes to … [unclear] the belief in his own power … Then he must break himself very much, until he knows that he himself becomes nothing and very small, and then he becomes a vessel prepared to accept help and assistance from G-d, may He be blessed." - Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz

"Every sin is linked to a reason, good or bad—with the sole exception of vanity, which needs no reason to grow and grow. If someone finds it necessary to honor me, that means he is more humble than I. Which means he is better and saintlier than I. Which means that I should honor him. But then, why is he honoring me?" - Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz

"It is possible for a person to correct the world, while the evil continues to cling to him. The Besht revealed this thing [to Menahem Mendel of Bar]: that one must descend to Gehinnom on behalf of G-d, may He be blessed. And this is alluded to in the gemara [Talmudic aphorism], ‘Greater is a sin for its own sake [than a mitzvah for its own sake.’" - Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz

"Rabban Gamaliel the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince said: “Great is study of the Torah when combined with a worldly occupation, for toil in them both puts sin out of mind. All study of the Torah which is not supplemented by work is destined to prove futile and causes sin. Let all who occupy themselves with communal affairs do so for Heaven's sake, for then the merit of their fathers sustains them and their righteousness endures forever. And as for you, G-d will then say: I count you worthy of great reward as if you had done it all yourselves. Be careful in your relations with the government; for they draw no man close to themselves except for their own interests. They appear as friends when it is to their advantage, but they do not stand by a man in his time of stress… Do His will as if it was your will that He may do your will as if it was His will. Make your will of no effect before His will that He may make the will of others of no effect before your will.”" - Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL