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“The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.”
― Billy Sunday

“One reason sin flourishes is that it is treated like a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake.”
― Billy Sunday

“Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“By definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. This is what the television news is all about. Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“If you don’t delight in the fact that your Father is holy, holy, holy, then you are spiritually dead. You may be in a church. You may go to a Christian school. But if there is no delight in your soul for the holiness of God, you don’t know God. You don’t love God. You’re out of touch with God. You’re asleep to his character.”
― R.C. Sproul, Choosing My Religion

“In forming an estimate of sins, we are often imposed upon by imagining that the more hidden the less heinous they are.”
― John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion

“No doubt it is true that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repented than over all the saints who consistently remain holy, and the rare, sudden gentlenesses of arrogant people have infinitely more effect than the continual gentleness of gentle people. Arrogance turned gentle melts the heart.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt.”
― Timothy B. Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story

“In the Bible, the opposite of Sin, with a capital 'S,' is not virtue - it's faith: faith in a God who draws all to himself in his resurrection.”
― Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace

“No, I thought, growing more rebellious, life has its own laws and it is for me to defend myself against whatever comes along, without going snivelling to God about sin, my own or other people's. How would it profit a man if he got into a tight place, to call he people who put him there miserable sinners? Or himself a miserable sinner? I disliked the levelling aspect of this sinnerdom, it was like a cricket match played in a drizzle, where everybody had an excuse - and what a dull excuse! - for playing badly. Life was meant to test a man, bring out his courage, initiative, resource; and I longed, I thought, to be tested: I didn't want to fall on my knees and call myself a miserable sinner.
But the idea of goodness did attract me, for I did not regard it as the opposite of sin. I saw it as something bright and positive and sustaining, like the sunshine, something to be adored, but from afar.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is as bitter as wormword, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell”
― Justin Cronin, The Passage

“A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“She freshens me up above a bit. Who'd ha thought that face - as bright and as strong as the angel I dream of - could have known the sorrow she speaks on? I wonder how she'll sin. All on us must sing.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“One sin seldom mentioned is that of killing time.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“The love of Christ is always there and unchanging, no matter what we do, but it is when we are obedient that we actually begin to feel it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Being afraid is the worst sin there is.”
― Jean-Paul Belmondo

“I'm here to tell you, there ain't much forgiveness in that old-time religion. That particular savior was a mean son of a bitch. If you sinned, honey, he was going to get you, no doubt about it.”
― Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story

“Blood doesn't satisfy cravings. It magnifies them.”
― Matt Haig, The Radleys

“Don't pity this sinful world!
Just pity those who made it so!”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“We spend so much time trying to put send to death that we don't spend enough time striving to know God deeply, trying to gaze upon the wonder of Jesus Christ and have that transform our affections to the point where our love and hope are steadfastly on Christ.”
― Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel

“The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the patience of God, and Christ is evidence for the forgiveness of God. It is when we are wrapped up in our own little peeves that we begin to displace His benevolence with malevolence.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“We need a bigger estimation of God and a smaller estimation of sin.”
― Judah Smith, Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human

“What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Sometimes we get way too fixated on how powerful sin is and how weak we are. We worry that if we relax for a second, we'll mess up royally and ruin everything. Ironically, our paranoia only serves to make us more conscious of our sinfulness.”
― Judah Smith, Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human

“Wasting talent is a sin. I’m not big on sin, but I know a sin when I see one staring me in the face. I’m not big on sin, but I know a sin when I see one staring me in the face. It’s just not courteous to not use or wear something that somebody’s given you as a well-meaning gift. It goes against Southern ways, not that God is Southern by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think He expects us to be an example for the rest of the country, as far as manners go.”
― Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise

“There are wrongs for which religion makes no provision, and of which it has no comprehension.
--"Wanda”
― Ouida

“Satan's sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude.”
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“Ashlei was free to spout off how much she loved her savior because Jesus was not about to rear back and tell her He did not quite feel the same way, that He had died for the sins of the world just because it was fun and did not want things to be too serious. He was only thirty-three, after all, and might want to martyr himself for other people.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre

“И я, с главою, ужасом стесненной:
"Чей это крик? �� едва спросить посмел. ��
Какой толпы, страданьем побежденной?"

И вождь в ответ: "То горестный удел
Тех жалких душ, что прожили, не зная
Ни славы, ни позора смертных дел.

И с ними ангелов дурная стая,
Что, не восстав, была и не верна
Всевышнему, средину соблюдая.

Их свергло небо, не терпя пятна;
И пропасть Ада их не принимает,
Иначе возгордилась бы вина".

(Песнь третья, "Ад")”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“People tell me it's a sin
To know and feel too much within”
― Bob Dylan