Now, men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts
- How fair, to sinless Adam, Eden smiled!
- But sin brought tears, and Eden was wild!
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, Constance; Or, The Portrait
Sin in its ordinary progress first deceives, next hardens, and then destroys.
JOHN THORNTON, Maxims and Directions for Youth
Some sins, like asps, always carry their sting with them.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is good for a man to repent of his sins; but better for him had he never sinned.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs
Sin is the great element of hell, and where it exists heaven cannot be. Its triumphs are deeper than those of time, and more terrible than death. It has swept over the moral world, more glorious than the physical, and blighted by the beautiful and desecrated the holy. It has scattered abroad and afar the seeds of envy, war, lust, intemperence, murder, and all abomination and iniquity. It has drawn man aside from innocence and rectitude, and he has gone forth from the joy of Eden with a bowed head and a burning heart; and, worse than all, it has spread a veil athwart his moral vision, and alienated him from his Maker.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
- Look on Sin and loathe it;
- With minds loathing it,
- Then will ye make
- An end of Misery.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA, Iti-Vuttaka
Sin is sweet in the mouth and bitter in digestion. It lies hard on the stomach.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
I don't remember ever being see-saw, when I'd made my mind up that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It's like a bit o' bad workmanship--you never see th' end o' the mischief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow creatures worse off instead o' better.
If one could wallow amid filth for half a life and then wash himself clean in a day, then sin would be no worse than dirt on the hands which water can cleanse in a minute. Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
No sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Many people keep their old sins warm while they go to try on virtue and see if they like it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Remorse withers the succulent fruits of sin.
ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims
The path of the sinner back to God is brighter and brighter all the way up to the smile of the face and the touch of the hand; and that is salvation.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts
A sin is nothing but a deordination of reason, but that is enough.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
Sin is the exact opposite of love. Love means harmony; sin, discord. Love is constructive; sin, destructive. Love clings to God as a Father, as Jesus did. Sin would murder God if it could, as it murdered Jesus on Calvary.
REUEN THOMAS, Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have to hold on to. If you're really desperate, you might need to grope, saying, for example, "I've never killed anyone with a hammer" or "I've never stolen from anyone who didn't deserve it."
DAVID SEDARIS, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
That purple-lined palace of sweet sin.
The man who sins and then repents deserves a well-twisted rope at the gallows.
ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims
- He that hath sinned
- In body, word, or thought,
- Or in anything
- That is called sinful,
- Doing not that which is righteous,
- But doing much that is unrighteous--
- This fool after the dissolution of the body,
- Shall go to perdition.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA, Iti-Vuttaka
You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it; and yet it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So many a soul sways toward heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts
It is certain, sin hath no real pleasures to bestow; they are all embittered, either by adverse strokes of providence from without, or painful and dreadful gripes and stings of conscience within.
WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine
Many refuse to let Christ in when he knocks at the door of their hearts for the express purpose of paying their debt of sin. These people are like the poor tenant woman of whom we once read. She could not pay her rent and her landlord was about to put her out of his house. Her pastor heard of her distress and hastened with the money to pay her rent for her. She heard the knock at the door, but supposing it was her hard-hearted landlord, she hid and refused to open the door.
It is a great deal easier to commit a second sin, than it was to commit the first; and a great deal harder to repent of a second, than it was to repent of the first.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Moral and Religious Aphorisms
To make it evident that Sin is a great evil, we need but reflect a little on the nature and effects of it. If we inquire into the nature of Sin, we shall find that it is founded in the subversion of the dignity, and defacing the beauty of human nature: And that it consists in the darkness of our understanding, the depravity of our affections, and the feebleness and impotence of the will.
WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine
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