"Sinfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laid a tax of a stiver a pound on the commodity, or about six per cent, ad valorem; and this was a more wholesome way of serving the State than by abridging the liberty of the people in the choice of personal attire. Meantime the preachers were left to thunder from their pulpits upon the sinfulness of starched rues and ornamental top-knots, and to threaten their fair hearers with the wrath to come, with as much success as usually attends ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of India and Iran are not the same. Zoroastrianism has little sympathy for pantheism or asceticism: it does not teach metempsychosis or the sinfulness of taking life. Images are not used in worship,[1144] God and his angels being thought of as pure and shining spirits. The foundation of the system is an uncompromising dualism of good and evil, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... mood he entered the Augustine monastery at Erfurt. He was full of an overwhelming sense of his own wretchedness and sinfulness. Like St. Paul, he was crying to be delivered from the body of death which he carried about him. He practised all possible austerities. He, if no one else, mortified his flesh with fasting. He passed nights in the chancel before the altar, or on his knees on the floor of his cell. He weakened ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... holding in the unmarried priesthood a power that could not be alienated from the service of the Church through any family interests—was, nevertheless, possible only with such fundamental doctrines as the Church held touching the sinfulness of the lusts of the flesh; and it goes to ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... "Press on!"—through tears and the cross must thou win the crown; be patient, trustful, in every duty and grief; "press on," and falter not; and its words linger like the music of a remembered dream in our ear, until, at the borders of the grave, we lay down the burden of our sinfulness and care, and, through the open gate of death, pass onward to that world where hope shall be exchanged for sight, and we, with unveiled eye, shall look upon the wondrous ways and works ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... 1870 from the French of 1854 who humbled Russia, or from the French of 1859 who triumphed at Solferino; and it would need a very comprehensive acquaintance with the lower forms of human pleasure to judge in what degree the sinfulness of Paris exceeds the sinfulness of Berlin. Had the French been as strict a race as the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae, as devout as the Tyrolese who perished at Koeniggraetz, it is quite certain that, with the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... look at the Lamb of God without feeling that we are sinners, and then we have a thousand difficult questions to ask. At other times the burden of sin is so heavy upon us, we see the sinfulness of sin so vividly, that we get away from the mere accident of place and time as far as it relates to sin, we see sin as God saw it, and must ever see it—then it is we look to the Crucified One. "When I feel myself in my heart of hearts a sinner," I once heard Dr. Parker say, "a ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... moutons. The Kreutzer Sonata is a terrible story, but like all novels with a purpose, it is inartistic. Othello kills Desdemona without moralising on the sinfulness of marriage, and Pozdnischeff stabs his wife from sheer jealousy. All the preaching is by the way. It might be cut out without affecting the work, and that is its condemnation. When the preacher ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Him, and yet believing He was some wonderful person, she repeated His own request, but with a changed meaning,—"Sir, give me this water." Perhaps to make her feel her sinfulness and to lead her into a better life, He showed her that though He was a stranger, He knew her past history. Her astonishment increased and she exclaimed, "Sir, I perceive that Thou art a Prophet." Ashamed, ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... again, when you see her, which will be very soon, do not let her see I have told you; appear to be greatly surprised. It is true that I am asking you to tell a lie, but it is a very innocent one, and its good intention will counteract its sinfulness—may God grant we never have worse upon our consciences! Thus, instead of lessons and the solemn precepts of your tutors, instead of a monotonous school-life, you are going to enjoy your liberty; ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... God heard his prayers. He had retained his purity and had chopped off his finger. And he lifted the shrivelled stump of that finger to his lips and kissed it. It seemed to him now that he had been humble then when he had always seemed loathsome to himself on account of his sinfulness; and when he remembered the tender feelings with which he had then met an old man who was bringing a drunken soldier to him to ask alms; and how he had received HER, it seemed to him that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he asked himself whether he loved anyone, whether ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... Holy Spirit prepare our hearts? First, He opens our hearts, awakens in us a sense of our need and sinfulness, then, when He has opened our hearts, He breathes into them a new life; He creates a longing for God. We feel within us a burning desire to know God. We catch eagerly at everything we hear about God, This is quite ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... telegraph was first laid a certain preacher thought proper to use it as an illustration of the connection between heaven and earth, thus: "When the sulphuric acid of genuine attrition corrodes the contaminating zinc of innate degeneracy and actual sinfulness, and the fervent electrical force of prayerful eternity ascends up to the residence of the Eternal Supreme One, you may calculate on unfailing and immediate despatch ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the consciences of many women to the sinfulness of such relations, and encouraged them in sundering ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... shall the sinful heart, alone, Behold unmoved the fearful hour, When Nature trembled on her throne, And Death resigned his iron power? Oh, shall the heart—whose sinfulness Gave keenness to His sore distress, And added to His tears of blood— Refuse ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... remembrance of the rigorous account which we are to give to God, made him often burst into the most pathetic expressions of holy fear. But humility was his distinguishing virtue, and he always expressed, both in words and actions, the deepest sentiments of his own nothingness, sinfulness, miseries, and pride. He often admired how perfectly the saints saw their own imperfections, and that they were dust, worms, and unworthy ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... be held responsible for her moral blindness? It sometimes requires suffering to teach the nature of sin. A child does not know that fire is dangerous until it burns itself. Her suffering must have opened her eyes to the 'exceeding sinfulness of sin.' For her own sake I hope it is so. As for myself, it does not matter. I have ceased to regard her with any other feeling than pity and charity. And although she would become a saint I could never love her again," he said to himself one night, after passing an evening with ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... centuries the question of how the soul came into the body was an intensely practical one—it was closely connected with the question of man's inherent sinfulness and his capacity for redemption. Tertullian's theory of the natural propagation of souls (traducianism), which involved the inheritance of a sinful nature, was succeeded on the one hand by the theory of preexistence (adopted by Origen ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... buy his ticket and gain the platform. He folded her in his arms, and exchanged one long, sobbing kiss. It seemed to Ralph Flare that the sound of that kiss was like a spell—the breaking of the pleasantest link in his life—the passing from sinfulness to a baser selfishness—the stamp and seal upon his bargain with ambition, whereby for the long future he was sold to the sorrow of avarice and the ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... revealed in Scripture seems often to lie between two extremes. It is emphatically so in regard to this question. What a paradox it is that side by side in the Epistle of John we should have the strongest affirmation of the Christian's sinfulness: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"; and the strongest affirmation of his sinlessness: "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... Christians now, as well as for Jews of old, the great master and teacher of heart religion. In the early church, in the middle ages, as now, Catholic alike and Protestant, whosoever has feared God and sought after righteousness; whosoever has known and sorrowed over the sinfulness and weakness of his own heart; whosoever has believed that the Lord God was dealing with him as with a son, educating him, chastening him, purifying him and teaching him, by the chances and changes of his mortal life; whosoever, I say, has had any real taste of ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... can count their number! God alone can look within; Oh, the sinfulness of sinning! Oh, ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... series is occupied with the Deluge. After a lamentation by Noah on the sinfulness of the world, God is introduced repenting that he made man, telling Noah how to build the Ark, and blessing him and his. Noah's wife is an arrant shrew, and they fall at odds in the outset, both of them swearing by the Virgin Mary. Noah begins and finishes the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... foot, but as a cultivated man of the world. Miss Alcott's Mephistopheles is even capable of generous impulses. With the kindness of a Good Samaritan, he saves a poor wretch from suicide and then destroys him morally. The devil is apparently a mixed character with a decided preponderance of sinfulness. ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... sin—access to happiness through a Divine Mediation—in a word, the Doctrine of the Cross—seems, as far as his recorded utterances go, to have been quite alien from his system of religion. The appeal to personal experience of sinfulness, forgiveness, and acceptance, he would have dismissed as mere enthusiasm—and he declared in his sermon on the Character and Genius of the Christian Religion, that "the Gospel has no enthusiasm." That it once was possible for a clergyman to utter ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... to make a bonfire of them would be an additional pleasure to be derived from them; and so I added to the intellectual recreation they afforded me the more sensational excitement of what I called "a blaze;" a proceeding of which the dangerous sinfulness was severely demonstrated to ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the different uses of that word "world." In the old-time conception it was used in a loose way as meaning the spirit that actuates men in the world. The scheme of selfishness and wickedness and sinfulness which has overcast all life is commonly spoken of in the Bible as the world spirit. In that sense the world is bad, and only bad. Men are to be saved out of it, ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... marrying a person with a difference of views. In this particular instance the respect of the man for religion had been injurious to his wife, because "had he been an open deist, she would have shrunk from the act in his company on suspicion of its sinfulness." It is justice to add that many of these extreme opinions, at least in the extreme form stated in this work, the author came finally to outgrow if in fact ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... was, I blush to say, thought of first; but the Spaniard was a man of honor, and Sir Richard his host; so he put away from his mind (with a self-denial on which he plumed himself much) the pleasure of a chase equally exciting to his pride and his love of danger. As for the sinfulness of the said chase, he of course thought no more of that than other Southern Europeans did then, or than (I blush again to have to say it) the English did afterwards in the days of the Stuarts. Nevertheless, he had put Lady Grenville out of his mind; and so left room to take Rose Salterne into ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... not; Victoria imparted to me the story of the knuckle-rapping. For her an added joy lay in the fact that on this occasion, if ever, she had deserved the affliction; she had been gloriously naughty, and gloried in it now; did not her sinfulness enhance the significance of this revolution? So carried away were we by our triumph that now again, after a long interval, we allowed our imagination to paint royalty in glowing colours, and our Arabian Nights and fairy tales seemed at last ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... complexity. The plot of the photoplay is usually based on the fundamental emotions which are common to all and which are understood by everybody. Love and hate, gratitude and envy, hope and fear, pity and jealousy, repentance and sinfulness, and all the similar crude emotions have been sufficient for the construction of most scenarios. The more mature development of the photoplay will certainly overcome this primitive character, as, while such an effort to reduce human life to simple instincts is very convenient ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... indifference she preferred straightforward, honest damnation to the soft self-deceptions of feminine religiosity. Ah! If she could have been a Roman Catholic, genuine and convinced—with what ardour would she have cast herself down before the confessional, and whispered her sinfulness to the mysterious face within; and with what ecstasy would she have received the absolution—that cleansing bath of the soul! Then—she could have recommenced!... But she was not a Roman Catholic. She could no more become a Roman Catholic than she could become the queen of some romantic ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... pastor of the church to which I have just referred—a sincere, fearless, but perhaps not fully enlightened man—seized gladly upon the occasion of York's liberality to attempt to reunite the former partners. He preached an earnest sermon on the abstract sinfulness of discord and rancor. But the excellent sermons of the Rev. Mr. Daws were directed to an ideal congregation that did not exist at Sandy Bar,—a congregation of beings of unmixed vices and virtues, of single impulses, and perfectly logical motives, of preternatural simplicity, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... converse of this saying is also true. Not fools exactly, but wisdom disguised in the motley of wit, often gains entrance to ears deaf to angelic voices. There are follies that are to be laughed out of their silliness and sinfulness. There are tyrants, big and little, to be dethroned by ridicule. There are offences, proof against appeals to conscience, that wince and vanish before keen satire. Even as a well-aimed joke brings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... purely benevolent one. I had a desire to shield your sister from the woebegone lecture she would have been sure to receive on the sinfulness of her course. If he had found her playing cards, what would have been ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... just because I cannot forget what I have been, that I come here to make amends for past neglect and sinfulness. I have a debt there, sir"—and she pointed solemnly towards the sky—"which must be paid. I have been an unfaithful steward, and must be reconciled to my good master ere I die. You may trust me. You know my income and my means. It is trifling; comparatively speaking—nothing. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... its place against the well-curb, and started back to the field, while Cynthy Ann carried her bucket of water into the kitchen, blaming herself for standing so long talking to Jonas. To Cynthy everything pleasant had a flavor of sinfulness. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... neither shadow that is caused by turning; because no man shall see His face and live. They, the sinners and the saints, do not want to be told that they, within themselves, can heal themselves and that sin has no real sinfulness. That is tempting them to the final denial, the last depth of betrayal, the blurring of moral values, the calling of evil good and the saying that good is evil. They know that this is the unpardonable madness. In the hours when ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the forlorn, poverty-stricken, ragged Archie, and the petted, and pampered, and richly-clad Willie; but to the eye of the unwearied watcher who had witnessed the patience and the goodness of the sick lad, and contrasted it with the petulance and sinfulness of her nephew, the gifts of ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... dazed with joy; then they began to prepare for the great journey. Everywhere self-flagellation, almsgiving, prophetic ecstasies and trances, the scholars and the mob at one in joyous belief. And everywhere also profligacy, adultery, incest, through the spread of a mystical doctrine that the sinfulness of the world could only be overcome by ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... country. The husband and wife were both of priestly descent, and in their modest lives, away among the hills, were lovely types of Old Testament godliness. That they are pronounced 'blameless' militates against no doctrine of universal sinfulness. It is not to be taken as dogma at all, but as the expression of God's merciful estimate of His servants' characters. These two simple saints lived, as all married believers should do, yoked together ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... faithful people, who are ready to sacrifice themselves for their country. Grant that I may become as holy as yourself, and drive from my mind all dark thoughts. I am a coward and a sinner: purge me from my cowardice and sinfulness, even as the north wind drives the dust into the sea. Wash me clean from all my iniquities, as one washes away uncleanness in the river of Kamo. Make me the richest woman in the world. I believe in your glory, which shall ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... nature of the suspense. Their very goodness must have made it very anxious. The girl's hands were lying in her lap; her head was lowered as if in deep thought; and the other went on delivering a sort of homily. Ingratitude was condemned in it, the sinfulness of pride was pointed out—together with the proverbial fact that it "goes before a fall." There were also some sound remarks as to the danger of nonsensical notions and the disadvantages of a quick temper. It sets one's best friends against ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... see the scornful curl of Culture's lip At such low sports! Dyspeptic preachers hear Harangue the sleepers on their sinfulness! Hear grave philosophers, so limp and frail They scarce can walk God's earth to breathe his air, Talk of the waste of time! Short-sighted men! God made the body just to fit the mind, Each part exact, no scrimping and no waste— Neglect the ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... difficulty vanish. This morning I had no time for retirement before breakfast; and, should circumstances ever become less under my control, this habit may prevent my having any morning oblation. The weakness and sinfulness of my heart have been making me almost tremble at the thought of another year: how shall I meet its thousand dangers and not fall? In religious communications in our house, I am apt to look for any intimation that I could appropriate of a shortened pilgrimage; but very little ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... associations of my early life; and I am deeply thankful for them. I have found, by much experiment, that there is no foundation on which the superstructure of Catholic religion can be more securely built than on the Evangelical confession of man's utter sinfulness, and of the free pardon purchased by the Blood of Christ. A man trained in that confession may, without sacrificing a jot of his earlier creed, learn to accept all that the Catholic Church teaches about Orders and Sacraments; but to the end he will retain some characteristic marks ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... is he that shall achieve the Holy Grail." Now the Holy Grail was the blessed dish from which Our Lord had eaten the Last Supper, and it had been brought to the land of Britain by Joseph of Arimathea; but because of men's sinfulness, it had been withdrawn from human sight, only that, from time to time, it appeared to ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... he but | have a glimpse Into fu |-turity, Well might he | fight against Farther ma |-turity; Yet does it | seem to me As if his | purity Were against | sinfulness Ample ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... restoration of his temporal power. Many of the priests went about, both before and after Caporetto, trying to betray their country. Some told the soldiers that God had sent the disaster of Caporetto to show them the folly and the sinfulness of loving their corruptible country here below in poor earthly Italy, better than the incorruptible country of all good Catholics, God's eternal kingdom ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... brung 'em a message from Elishyah, Sam says, the Elishyah that was to come. And the message was that the time was not ripe fur him to reveal himself as Elishyah unto the eyes of all men, fur they had been too much sinfulness and wickedness and walking into the ways of evil, right amongst that very congregation, and disobedience of the bishop, which was their guide. And he had sent 'em word, Elishyah had, that the bishop was his trusted servant, and into the keeping of the ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... neglect, the habit of lying begins. An untruth is passed over carelessly and the child allowed to cover up its sins without realizing their sinfulness. Likewise, many other evil habits that have wrecked lives and brought sorrow and disgrace into homes may be traced to the same carelessness on the part of parents ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... town-house to the club on Friday evenings. As he solemnly warned his congregation against attending the meetings the position he had taken up created talk, and Lang Tammas called at the manse with Sanders Whamond to remonstrate. The minister, however, harangued them on their sinfulness in daring to question the like of him, and they had to retire vanquished though dissatisfied. Then came the disclosures of Tammas Haggart, who was never properly secured by the Auld Lichts until Mr. Dishart took him in hand. It was Tammas who wrote anonymous letters to Mr. Byars ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... antiquity, before the coming of Christ, one sees a general searching after God in the world; the one idea that seems to run through all religions, is the idea of sacrifice—a coarse and brutal idea originally, perhaps; but the essence of it is that there is such a thing as sinfulness, and such a thing as atonement; and that only through death can life be reached. The Jews came nearest to the idea of a personal, ruling God: and the sacrificial system is seen in its fullest perfection with them. Then, in the wise counsels of God, it came about ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... affairs was chimed to by the monotonous bell. After listening to it for some minutes, Mrs. Chump was struck with a notion that Braintop's sinfulness in working on a Sunday, or else the shortness of the prayer he had put up to gain absolution, was the cause of his lack of ready wit. Hearing that he had gloves, she told him to go to church, listen devoutly, and return to luncheon. Braintop departed, with a sensation of relief in the anticipation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by referring to a recent calamity in which eighteen men had been crushed by the fall of a tower. Their fate was not to be regarded as a sign of their special sinfulness, but as a warning to others that they would likewise suffer unless they repented ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... replied at some length, stating that, in her judgment, it consisted of a conviction of one's own sinfulness and weakness, and a personal need of the Saviour for strength and support; that views of mere doctrine might and would differ, but when one was really brought to feel his need of divine help, and to seek the aid of ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... a circle of hungry boys who watched his deliberate jaws with envy and humility. Furthermore, the idea that smaller boys could have, not the courage, but the heart to congregate against him, must have come to him with a shock. He was appalled by a sense of the sinfulness of human nature, and dismayed by the odds against which ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... height, while the mind was compelled to revert irreverently to the picture of Moses on Mount Pisgah. He was the personification of impudence, withal, looking back and showing his teeth in superlative appreciation of his own sinfulness. He descended, and I looked to see him arise again, but I saw him ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... spiritual pride, nor any other kind of pride to get a nearer and clearer view of Christ than we ever had before. Quite the contrary. Such a vision turns us towards our inner selves, and enables us to behold by contrast the darkness and sinfulness and pollution of our own souls, and in such a view we shall find food for the deepest humiliation, but nothing ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... Judge, just, strong, and patient, who knowest the frailty and sinfulness of men, be Thou my strength and my whole confidence; for my own conscience sufficeth me not. Thou knowest what I know not; and therefore ought I under all rebuke to humble myself, and to bear it ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... of cogitation and incidental homilies upon the sinfulness of pride and free living, Messer Hugolin came to the point; he offered to take Constans into his employ as an apprentice in the tannery. Of course, Constans would have no wages until his indenture ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... two bright spots. He never confused the past. He remained alive, and blessed are those who live, if it is only to a sense of sinfulness. The anodyne of muddledom, by which most men blur and blend their ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... acknowledges no superior, and needs no guide—or the same being, awakened to the mystery of his own actual weakness, his possible strength; his own actual ignorance, his possible wisdom; his own actual sinfulness, his possible holiness: and then; by a humility which is the highest daring; by a self-distrust which is the truest self-assertion, vindicating the divine element within, by taking personal and voluntary service under no ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... parted from Miss Morison, Maurice walked on in a blissful state of conscious sinfulness. He understood himself well enough to know that before him lay repentance, but this did not dampen his present enjoyment. He had not so far outgrown his New England conscience as to escape remorse for ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... of the downfall of many a brilliant character is a bosom sinfulness little expected to be in existence. No man saw the black and ugly thing but it was there. A lady had a tall and graceful plant. The flowers were white and beautiful and all the town said, "What a fine flower!" One day a storm swept across the garden. One plant was ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... have trouble enough with any two of the three. Mr. Rowell continues to hold our respect in spite of the whole trinity. Too much conscience always on duty at a peak load is no way to attract a vast variety of people who relish a degree of sinfulness now and again. We do not repudiate the value of conscience in public affairs. The public man without it provides almost the only sane argument for the preservation of the gallows. But when one man carries so much of it, a number of others may be excused for ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Thy promised rest, Dismayed with doubts, with sinfulness distressed; "Oh! let Thy kingdom come!" I pray "that I May join the glad new song they sing on high;" Then thy sweet words bring patience, "I prepare For thee an heavenly mansion, bright and fair, That where I am Thou mayest with Me abide, And taste full ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... form of religious brooding. In Dr. Starbuck's collection of cases, seventy-five per cent. of the males and sixty per cent. of the females confessed to feelings of depression, anxiety, and sadness before conversion. This may be attributed partly to the harping upon a conviction of sinfulness, which in itself is wholly of an unhealthy character. It does not indicate moral health, and it is very far from indicating physiological health. The following confessions are pertinent, and will illustrate both points. ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... leaders of religious life and thought in his day were unquestionably the Pharisees. The controlling idea with them, and consequently with the people, was the sanctity of God's law. They were conscious of the sinfulness of the people, and their demand for repentance was constant. It is a rabbinic commonplace that the delay of the Messiah's coming is due to lack of repentance in Israel. But near as this conception is to John's, we need but to recall his words to the Pharisees ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... hearing it and using it all their lives, they ought to have understood better. There cannot be a greater mistake than to infer, from the strong expressions in which a devout man bemoans his exceeding sinfulness, that he has led a worse life than his neighbours. Many excellent persons, whose moral character from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to their fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gained the golden crown Who did not in his search the cross upbear; For heaven he need entertain no care Who fears to sinfulness the Devil's frown, And lays, if once espoused, his burdens down, Because so many of his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... effect of intelligence, love, pity, or sorrow; though, in better speech, it was a blending of them all—a look easy to fancy as the mark of a sinless soul doomed to the sight and understanding of the utter sinfulness of those among whom it was passing; yet withal no one could have observed the face with a thought of weakness in the man; so, at least, would not they who know that the qualities mentioned—love, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... grace is received from God. And I, for my part, believe, that this bitter sorrow will never leave us till we come where neither sin nor anything else will ever disquiet us. True, both past sin, and present sinfulness, affect us more at one time than at another; and, likewise, in a different manner. I know one who often wishes for death, that she may be freed from the torment of her sinful heart. No one's sins can equal hers, because there ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... room. Presently we would hear the old Don muttering dotingly to himself the name of Seraphina's mother, the young wife of his old days, so saintly, and snatched away from him in punishment of his early sinfulness. It was impossible that she should have been deceived in Don Patricio (O'Brien's Christian name was Patrick). The intendente was a man of great intelligence, and full of reverence for her memory. Don Balthasar admitted that he himself was growing old; and, besides, there ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... which he was guilty, so far as he specifies them, were profane swearing, from which he suddenly ceased at a woman's reproof, and certain sports, innocent enough in themselves, which the prevailing Puritan rigor severely condemned. What, then, of that vague and exceeding sinfulness of which he so bitterly accuses and repents himself? It was that vision of sin, however disproportionate, which a deeply wounded and graciously healed spirit often has, in looking back upon the past from that theological standpoint whence all want of conformity to the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... lamentation in Latin; and at different dates in King Richard's reign the poet Gower, Chaucer's contemporary and friend, inveighed both in Latin and in English, from his conservative point of view, against the corruption and sinfulness of society at large. But by this time the great peasant insurrection had added its warning, to which it was impossible ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... freedom upon the sinner's side had not something also of the purpose of God within him. God is not merely in the sunshine; God is in the cavern of the man's sin. God is with the sinner wherever he can be. There is no soul so black in its sinfulness, so determined in its defiant obstinacy, that God has abandoned his throne room at the centre of the sinner's life, and every movement is the God movement and every effort is the God force, with which man tries to break forth ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... true, and if all it promised could ever find fulfilment, it might perhaps be prudent to admit the sinfulness of man and to give up the joys and glories of this world to win the eternal treasure that it described. Many a good and wise man whom he had known—nay the Emperor, the great and learned Theodosius himself—was devoted heart and soul to the Christian faith, and Demetrius knew ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you know I am almost ready to accept your doctrine of the congenital sinfulness of human nature? I am afraid that is the only thing which goes to the bottom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the fact is that Mrs. Plausaby stated to Albert her opinion that it would be a nice thing for him to go and see Cousin John's folks at Glenfleld. She made the suggestion with characteristic maladroitness, at a moment when Albert had been holding forth on his favorite hobby of the sinfulness of land-speculation in general, and the peculiar wickedness of misrepresentation and all the other arts pertaining to town-site swindling. Perhaps Albert was too suspicious. He always saw the hand of Plausaby in everything proposed by his mother. He bluntly refused to go. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... connected with the institution; that John Brown raids, and incendiary emissaries, are wicked; that unlicensed denunciations of all implicated in the system, are grossly wrong. Still, can there be no calm and considerate discussion of the rightfulness or sinfulness of the laws which define and regulate slavery? Must all the cruelties and iniquities which accompany its existence be left unchallenged, and their authors uncondemned? Then is the whole system to be swept away as a curse and enormity, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... Pagans, the Hj holds that man was born good, while the Christian, tormented by the things divine, cleaves to the comforting doctrine of innate sinfulness. Hence the universal tenet, that man should do good in order to gain by it here or hereafter; the enlightened selfishness, that says, Act well and get compound interest in a future state. The allusion to the Theist-word apparently means that ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... scarce assumed, He perished. Where his troubled dreams, And where the admirable streams Of youthful impulse, reverie, Tender and elevated, free? And where tempestuous love's desires, The thirst of knowledge and of fame, Horror of sinfulness and shame, Imagination's sacred fires, Ye shadows of a life more high, Ye dreams ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... and power of Jesus Christ as if they needed it not. Whether you know it or not, you are a broken reed; and the only way of your ever being bound up and made strong is that you shall recognise your sinfulness, your necessity, your abject poverty, your utter emptiness, and come to Him who is righteousness, riches, fulness, and say, 'Because I am weak, be Thou my strength.' The secret of all noble, heroic, useful, happy life lies in the paradox, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... opened during my sojourn; and he would take no denial. He mixed for himself a glass of rum-punch, which he seemed in the habit of drinking at my good mother's charge, groaned aloud, and forthwith began reading me a lecture upon the sinfulness of my past courses, and especially of the last horrible action I had ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... And, though the Scriptural statements as to the ever increasing darkness of this age be rejected, no meaning can be given to these passages that separate the believer from this world, without the recognition of the black background of the failure and sinfulness of this age. It is noticeable that the modern systems take no notice of the difference between the saved and the unsaved, as they also make little of the future state. This is in accordance with the fact that both of these truths are wholly dependent upon regeneration; and that is the one truth ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... be further from scientific fact than that cross-grained and ill-tempered puritanism identifying pleasure with something akin to sinfulness. Philosophically considered, Pain is so far stronger a determinant than Pleasure, that its vis a tergo might have sufficed to ensure the survival of the race, without the far milder action of Pleasure ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... own teaching, that the nearer the soul approaches to God, the more distinctly also she discerns her sinfulness and misery; the more clearly she sees the many hitherto unsuspected windings and lurking- places of corrupt nature; the better, consequently, she understands how numerous still are the impediments which must be removed before she can fully and freely expand her wings and take her flight to her ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... commanding officer would give you the meeting on account of his having taken measures which, however harsh and exasperating, were still within the strict bounds of his duty. Besides, Gardiner is a precise Huguenot, and has adopted certain ideas about the sinfulness of such rencontres, from which it would be impossible to make him depart, especially as his courage is beyond all suspicion. And besides, I—I, to say the truth—I dare not at this moment, for some very weighty reasons, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... third is, how much it abuseth men's wit, training it to a wanton sinfulness and lustful love. For, indeed, that is the principal if not only abuse I can hear alleged. They say the comedies rather teach, than reprehend, amorous conceits; they say the lyric is larded with passionate ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... obey the Church of Rome, and not to teach any doctrines condemned by her [Note 2] But having been enlightened by the study of the Bible, which providentially fell into his hands, he saw his errors, and wisely judging that an oath to do any criminal deed ceases to be obligatory after the sinfulness of the contemplated act is seen, he renounced those errors one after another, as fast as the light of truth illumined his mind. This work he commenced in 1517, and continued from year to year till near the close of his life. In 1530, eleven ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... homes by the restoring of their dead, to formulate a system of moral and ethical teachings, to start a wave of kindliness and a ministry of mercy and love; he had come to save a lost world, to lift men up out of sinfulness into holiness. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... weeping with the bodily eyes or in the heart, disregard of the shame that might curtail or garble confession, and obedience to the penance enjoined. Secondly, true confession must be promptly made, for dread of death, of increase of sinfulness, of forgetfulness of what should be confessed, of Christ's refusal to hear if it be put off to the last day of life; and this condition has four terms; that confession be well pondered beforehand, that the man confessing have comprehended in his mind the number and greatness of his sins ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... writes to Jerome, asking him to solve this question.4 Tertullian, whose fervid mind was thoroughly imbued with materialistic notions, unhesitatingly cut this Gordian knot by asserting that our first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of all mankind, so that sinfulness and souls were propagated together. 5 Thus the perplexing query, "how souls are held in the chain of original sin," was answered. As Neander says, illustrating Tertullian's view, "The soul of the first man was the fountain ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... is the very thought existing in my mind. But from its sinfulness I have never given expression to it. Neither Bhishma, nor Drona, nor Kshattri, nor Gautama (Kripa) will ever sanction the exile of the Pandavas. In their eyes, O dear son, amongst the Kurus ourselves and the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... smoking aroused in his teachers and parents a strange, not quite intelligible horror. It really was horror. Children were mercilessly flogged and expelled from school, and their lives were made a misery on account of smoking, though not a single teacher or father knew exactly what was the harm or sinfulness of smoking. Even very intelligent people did not scruple to wage war on a vice which they did not understand. Yevgeny Petrovitch remembered the head-master of the high school, a very cultured and good-natured old man, ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... either pent back (as when he sits still listening to a lecture), or forced into uninteresting and unprofitable channels. When this desire masters him during school hours, it goes by the name of "naughtiness," and is regarded as a proof of the inborn sinfulness of his "fallen" nature. To repress the desire, to keep the child in a state either of absolute inaction or of mechanically regulated activity, is the function of school discipline. Whatever in the child's life is free, natural, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... is only the capacity of suffering all evils, as original sin is only the capacity of committing all crimes.'[6] Hence all calamity is either the punishment of sins actually committed by the sufferers, or else it is the general penalty exacted for general sinfulness. Sometimes an innocent being is stricken, and a guilty being appears to escape. But is it not the same in the transactions of earthly tribunals? And yet we do not say that they are conducted without ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... ceremonial of admission to entitle any man to unite with his brethren in commemorating the Saviour as he desired his friends and brethren to remember him by the rite of the last supper. Until then, the Christian communion was but for a favored few. Mr. Hale believed that the greater the sinfulness of the individual soul the greater the need and the greater the title to be taken into the fellowship and the brotherhood of the Saviour of souls. So, without polemical discussion, or any heat of controversy, he set the example which has been so widely ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Marutta, as the gods through power of asceticism and the celestial Rishis also, had all obtained fame, so wilt thou also obtain great celebrity. The sons of Dhritarashtra, on the other hand, enslaved by sinfulness and ignorance, will, without doubt, be ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... Christ with love and reverence, and make his own life as much like it as he can. But I want him to remember, too, that God made him as he is, and made his father and mother and all the rest back to the first man, and that there is no guilt of sinfulness upon man as a race. There is only the burden of ignorance. We live in the dark. We were born into it. As far as our knowledge of right and wrong goes, so far are we guilty. But He has made us as we are, and if there is ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... knocked together a box house, where they lived and did the cooking, and served the meals in a tent pitched against the side. That tent was joyful with placards on it calculated to redeem the world-worn pilgrim from the sinfulness of boarding houses and pick-me- up hotels. 'Try Mother's Home-Made Biscuits,' 'What's the Matter with Our Apple Dumplings and Hard Sauce?' 'Hot Cakes and Maple Syrup Like You Ate When a Boy,' 'Our Fried Chicken Never Was Heard ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... could be appeased and a ransom effected in no other way than through the one sacrifice of the Son of God. Only his death and the shedding of his blood could make satisfaction. And we must consider also that we by our sinfulness had incurred that wrath of God and therefore were responsible for the offering of the Son of God upon the cross and the shedding ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... what they are—the Queen would feel less strongly about it; but they always select chapters from the Old Testament and Psalms which are so totally inapplicable that it does away with all the effect it ought to have. Moreover, really to say (as we probably should) that the great sinfulness of the nation has brought about this War, when it is the selfishness and ambition of one man and his servants who have brought this about, while our conduct has been throughout actuated by unselfishness and honesty, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... plea to urge but this, Our own exceeding sinfulness, And all the love to sinners shown Who claim ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... was said of him that he had been engaged in more encounters of the kind than any man of note among his contemporaries. More than one fellow-creature he had deprived of life; but he lived long enough to be convinced of the sinfulness of his conduct, and made a solemn vow never to fight another duel. The following anecdote of his forbearance is well known, but ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... endeavour was not only to make the range of men's thought more comprehensive, but to enrich it with the rejected wisdom of paganism. Religion occupied a narrower space in the new views of life than in those of Dante and the preceding time. The sense of sinfulness was weaker among the Humanists, the standard of virtue was lower; and this was common to the most brilliant of the Italian prelates, such as Aeneas Sylvius, with the king of the Renaissance, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... doubt he will—we trust the court will give him the full penalty of the law without fear or favor, so that his case may prove a solemn and impressive warning that shall make a lasting impression on the minds of the thoughtless young men of this community in favor of honesty, and in regard to the sinfulness of stealing. We would not exult over the downfall of any man; but when the proud young Charlton gets his hair cropped, and finds himself clad in 'Stillwater gray,' and engaged in the intellectual employments of piling shingles ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... this promise Abraham has entire faith. His monotheism was indeed of an imperfect kind. It did not exclude a belief in other gods, though they were regarded as inferior to his own. His family God, though almighty, was not omnipresent. He came down to learn whether the rumors concerning the sinfulness of Sodom were correct or not. He was not quite sure of Abraham's faith, and so he tested it by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac, in whom alone the promise to Abraham's descendants could be fulfilled. But though the monotheism ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... was not many years ago the center of corruption of thousands—yes, millions—of the growing youth of this country. The elimination of the saloon has made possible the development of millions of young people free from the particular type of sinfulness for which the saloon was responsible. In like manner, the elimination of commercialized vice has rendered our cities incomparably safer for our young men and women than they once were. The substitution of wholesome amusement for young folks in good environment for the unregulated commercialized ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... sphere of Gotama's thought and he would probably have asked why on this hypothesis there is any evil in the world. That is a question which the Gospels are chary of discussing but they seem to indicate that the disobedience and sinfulness of mankind are the root of evil. A godly world would be a happy world. But the Buddha would have said that though the world would be very much happier if all its inhabitants were moral and religious, yet the evils inherent in individual existence ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... is; First, to examine your lives and conversations by the rule of God's commandments; and whereinsoever ye shall perceive yourselves to have offended, either by will, word, or deed, there to bewail your own sinfulness, and to confess yourselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment of life. And if ye shall perceive your offences to be such as are not only against God, but also against your neighbours; then ye shall reconcile yourselves unto them; being ready to make restitution and satisfaction, according ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... this is the sting of sinfulness, the wretched consciousness of an unclean heart. It is just this feeling, "God is not my friend; I am going on to the grave, and no man can say aught against me, but my heart is not right; I want a river like that which the ancients ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... my Lord Cedric such a man; and yet thou hast drawn a picture that will be ever before me until I see him. Sister Agnes would say,—'there is a sinfulness in doubt and anxiety, inasmuch as such thoughts lash the soul to uneasiness and draw it from celestial contemplations. Think not on it!' neither will I, but rather, I will fancy the morrow's sun glinting upon myriad white-capped waves; the bosom of the ocean swelling ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... subsequent trials, the existence of the Plot was taken for granted as an incontestable fact. Another fact was also assumed, most improperly indeed, but not without some show of reason, that it was an admitted doctrine of the Romish church, that however sinful an act might be in itself, it lost its sinfulness if the interests of the church demanded its performance. Therefore it was argued, to kill a heretic-king, to swear falsely, to deceive an enemy, is to do nothing wrong in the eyes of a Papist, if the pope or the bishops command it. Such a man it is proper for us to regard as an enemy, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the kind of effort which he put forth to obtain the object of his desires is most forcibly described in the passage quoted at the beginning of this letter. In view of this standard, you will be able to see, in some measure, the exceeding sinfulness of sin; and it will drive you more entirely out of yourself to the cross of Christ. You will see the necessity of daily renewing your repentance, submission, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... pathetic appeal for her husband's life. She deplored the sinfulness which had resulted in the tragedy. She took on herself the blame for it all. She had sent one man to his death, and her husband stood in peril of a shameful death on the gallows. But it was in the power of Mabel to save him. On her knees ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... by what he said to his companion. "Dost thou not fear God?" he asked. He had himself forgotten God, no doubt, and put Him far away in the sinful past. But now God was near, and in the light of God he saw his own sinfulness. He confessed it, doing so not only in his secret mind but audibly. Thus he separated himself from it, as he did also from the companion who had led him astray, when he would not come with him on the path of penitence. Not less distinctly ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... with some of the current lies about the impossibility of being pure. The only answer to this is a flat denial from experience. I know it is possible, and, when once attained, easy. The means, under God, in my own case, was a letter from my father. A quiet, simple statement of the sinfulness of the sin and a few of the plain texts from St. Paul saved me. A film fell from my eyes at my father's letter. My first statement is that all fathers ought to write such a letter to their sons. It is not difficult ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... every one of our four terrible foes—Sin, Sickness, Sorrow, Satan. He has borne our Sin, and we may lay all, even down to our sinfulness itself, on Him. "I have overcome for thee." He has borne our sickness, and we may detach ourselves from our old infirmities and rise into His glorious life and strength. He has borne our sorrows, and we must not even carry a care, but rejoice ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson |
