quotations about sin
Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God. This is man's greatest tragedy and God's heaviest grief.
A. W. TOZER
And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings From the Gospel of John
Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.
PHILIP YANCEY
attributed, Jesus Now: Unveiling the Present-Day Ministry of Christ
God is the creditor of that punishment which is due upon Sin; and He has the right of abating, as well as the right of exacting.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
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
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
But the trail of the serpent is over them all.
THOMAS MOORE
Lalla Rookh
God planteth in mortal men the cause of sin whensoever he wills utterly to destroy a house.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Niobe
I ought to have a number of scriptures marked to bring sin to remembrance. I ought to make use of all bodily affliction, domestic trial, frowns of Providence on myself, house, parish, church, or country, as calls from God to confess sin.
ROBERT MURRAY M'CHEYNE
The Life and Remains, Letters, Lectures, and Poems of the Rev Robert Murray M'Cheyne
For consequences of past sin,
Effect doth ever follow cause;
If we sow tares, we reap not grain,
For such are Nature's laws.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Sin Will Leave Its Scars"
Sin in its ordinary progress first deceives, next hardens, and then destroys.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
That is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge, sin is not present.
ANNIE BESANT
The Immediate Future: Lectures Delivered in Queen's Hall
The damage a man does to another, he may make amends for by restitution or recompense, but sin cannot be taken away by recompense, for that were to make the liberty to sin a thing vendible. But sins may be pardoned to the repentent either gratis or upon such penalty as God is pleased to accept.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
JOHN OWEN
The Mortification of Sin
For every sin there is forgiveness, and especially for the sins of youth.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
It appears, therefore, that every man lies under a twofold condemnation for his sins: he is sentenced to various temporal sufferings, to be terminated by death; and to eternal misery in another world. And if any one should object to this, on the supposition that his sins do not merit so tremendous a punishment, I would inquire whether human legislators and judges ever think the criminals themselves competent to decide on the equity of their statutes and decisions? and whether we are capable of determining the degree of evil contained in rebellion against the authority of the infinite Creator, and what punishment the glory of his name, and the everlasting advantage of the whole creation, may require him to inflict upon transgressors? In respect of the former part of this sentence, alleviations and respites alone can be expected; but we may hope for the entire abolition of the latter, as we live under a dispensation of mercy, through the great Mediator of the new covenant. Of this salvation we may hereafter enlarge; at present it suffices to say, with the Psalmist, "If thou, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared."
THOMAS SCOTT
"On Man's Situation as a Sinner in this Present World", Essays on the Most Important Subjects in Religion
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
If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.
HYMAN G. RICKOVER
The New York Times, November 3, 1986
Sin first is pleasing, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is impenitent, then he is obstinate, then he is resolved never to repent, and then he is ruined.
ROBERT LEIGHTON
attributed, Day's Collacon