"Sinfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... period of his life, appeared to be an inveterate duellist, and it 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 it will bear repetition :— A dispute arose in a coffee-house between him and a young man on some trivial ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of the 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. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... said Mr. Hardcap, oracularly. "The word of God is sharper than a two edged sword, and is quick even to the dividing asunder of the joints and the marrow. It is the book to awaken conviction of sin, the proper book for the sinner. There is no book so fitting to bring him to a sense of his sinfulness and awaken in him a ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... munificence, beggary; and for heaven, hell. Oh, thou miserable man, turn convert. For the Father stretches out both His hands to thee. Do but turn to Him and He will receive and embrace thee in His love.' It was the sin and misery of this world that first made Jacob Behmen a philosopher, and it was the sinfulness of his own heart that at last made him a saint. Behmen's full doctrine and practice of prayer also; his fine and fruitful treatment of what he always calls 'the process of CHRIST'; and, intimately connected with that, his still ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... It sprang out of mistaken doctrines, of which I shall not speak here: but it did not spring entirely from them. There was in them a seed of good, for which I shall always love and honour them, even though I differ from them; and that was, a noble hatred of sin. They felt the sinfulness of sin; and they hated themselves for having sinned. The mercy of God made them only the more ashamed of themselves for having rebelled against him. Their longing after holiness only made them loathe the more their past unholiness. ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... His sight, and He is so just that He cannot forgive sin; we only mock Him when we ask Him to forgive us our sins, if we plead our own merits, because, as I have shown you, we cannot possibly have any merits to plead—all our merits are but as filthy rags, they cannot cover up our vileness and sinfulness. But then Jehovah is all merciful as well as just, and He has, therefore, formed that blessed plan of salvation, the gospel plan, just suited to our wants, by which we can take advantage of the all perfect merits of Jesus ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... toga 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
... apprehension of the disciples concerning Christ (xiv. 26); and our Lord definitely says, "If I go, I will send Him unto you" (xvi. 7). With regard to the unbelieving world, the Spirit will prove the sinfulness of opposition to Christ, will convince the world of His righteousness as testified by the Father's approval manifested in the Ascension, and will procure the verdict of history that by the crucifixion the evil spirit who inspires ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... this engagement perished Jair, the son of Manasseh, whose loss was as great as if the majority of the Sanhedrin had been destroyed. (23) Presently Joshua discovered that the cause of the defeat was the sinfulness of Israel, brought upon it by Achan, who had laid hands on some of the spoils of Jericho. Achan was a hardened transgressor and criminal from of old. During the life of Moses he had several times appropriated to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... 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, spontaneous, wells up from an evil source. If educational ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... supposed, was much perturbed by this story, and dismayed that such sinfulness should cross his path. His first motion was to drive the woman forth, for he knew the heinousness of the craving for water, and how Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine and other holy doctors have taught that they who would purify the soul must ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... their eyes about them, to grow experienced in the ways of men, or the on-goings of the world. This spectacle gave me, I can assure you, much and no little insight; and so dowie was I with the thoughts of what I had witnessed of the selfishness, the sinfulness, and perversity of man, that I grew more and more home-sick, thinking never so much in my life before of my quiet hearthstone and cheerful ingle; and though Thomas Clod insisted greatly on my staying to their head-meeting dinner, and taking a reel with the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... temperaments 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, purity and impurity, light and darkness. Good and evil are different ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... but we are not to wait for that. We must come to him, to be shown the evil of our natures, the sinfulness of our lives. ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... 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
... business-bustle, which hides its fear and utter despair—but for all that black outlook they are not weaklings enough to mourn and let things go, nor do they belong to that cheap class of society doctors who mistake the present wretchedness of Humanity for sinfulness, and wish to make their patient less sinful and still more wretched. Both Nietzsche and Disraeli have clearly recognised that this patient of theirs is suffering from weakness and not from sinfulness, for which latter some kind ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Among all the Puritans who came to New England there is no more interesting figure than the learned, quick-witted pugnacious Welshman, Roger Williams. He was over-fond of logical subtleties and delighted in controversy. There was scarcely any subject about which he did not wrangle, from the sinfulness of persecution to the propriety of women wearing veils in church. Yet, with all this love of controversy, there has perhaps never lived a more gentle and kindly soul. Within five years from the settlement ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... form a surmise as to the real 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 one. "And if anybody ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... long sitting, without result. Every device that could be contrived to trap Joan into wrong thinking, wrong doing, or disloyalty to the Church, or sinfulness as a little child at home or later, had been tried, and none of them had succeeded. She had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... profane, and, retiring to some cave in the desert, despised the comforts of life, and gave himself up to penance and prayer. Among men who had thus altogether exalted themselves above the wants of the flesh, there was no toleration for its lusts. The sinfulness of the marriage relation, and the pre-eminent value of chastity, followed from their principles. If it was objected to such practices that by their universal adoption the human species would soon be extinguished, and no man would remain to offer praises ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... For his estranged, misguided Absalom— The proud, bright being who had burst away In all his princely beauty, to defy The heart that cherished him—for him he poured, In agony that would not be controlled, Strong supplication, and forgave him there, Before his God, for his deep sinfulness. The pall was settled. He who slept beneath Was straightened for the grave; and as the folds Sunk to the still proportions, they betrayed The matchless symmetry of Absalom. His hair was yet unshorn, and silken ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... intense sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin which oppressed the great-hearted Paul, and wrung from him ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... the person who answered the door. The hall was dirty, and the chair was hard; but the blessed consciousness of returning good for evil raised me quite above any trifling considerations of that kind. The tract was one of a series addressed to young women on the sinfulness of dress. In style it was devoutly familiar. Its title was, "A Word ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... am of sinfulness and sorrows full! Thou art the Mighty, Great, and Merciful! How should we not be friends, or thou not save Me who bring naught to thee who ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... doctrine of inherited moral responsibility for other people's misbehavior. I tried to make out a case for my poor Elsie, whom the most hardened theologian would find it hard to blame for her inherited ophidian tastes and tendencies. How, then, is he to blame mankind for inheriting "sinfulness" from their first parents? May not the serpent have bitten Eve before the birth of Cain, her first-born? That would have made an excuse for Cain's children, as Elsie's ante-natal misfortune made an excuse for her. But what difference ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Our missionaries are among four races, the white, the black, the red and the yellow. These are children of a common Father; they are under the dominion of a common sinfulness; they are the possible heirs of a common Saviour. We go to them with the same gospel, which is able to save them to the same fellowship of faith and love on earth ...
— The American Missionary Vol. XLIV. No. 2. • Various
... Grenville, as nearest, 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 ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... all the glories of His Mother are essentially His own. And yet we daily see ministers of the Gospel ignoring Mary's exalted virtues and unexampled privileges and parading her alleged imperfections; nay, sinfulness, as if her Son were dishonored by the piety, and took delight in the defamation ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... in charge would go off to have a chat with a parish priest in the neighbourhood, or to have a smoke behind a hedge, or to drink beer with a friend. Never had he hidden a novel under his mattress, nor a bottle of anisette in a cupboard. For a long time, even, he had had no suspicion of the sinfulness around him—of the wings of chicken and the cakes smuggled into the seminary in Lent, of the guilty letters brought in by servers, of the abominable conversations carried on in whispers in certain corners of the courtyard. He had wept hot tears when he first perceived that few among ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... began his sermon by an account of the sufferings and persecution of Christ; of the causes and effects of his death; of the sinfulness of the Jews, etc. He talked for about half an hour, and his sermon was simple enough and adapted to his audience. He described the agony of Christ when in the garden to which he often resorted with his disciples, and the treachery of Judas who knew ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... 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 ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... 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. I give in ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... Despond. 'Truly,' said Christian, 'I do not know.'—No work of man is perfect, not even the all-but-perfect Pilgrim's Progress. Christian was bound to fall sooner or later into a slough filled with his own despondency about himself, his past guilt, his present sinfulness, and his anxious future. But Pliable had not knowledge enough of himself to make him ever despond. He was always ready and able to mend his pace. He had no burden on his back, and therefore no doubt in his heart. ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... that Saviour appears to me. To bear with one so imperfect, so weak, so inconsistent, as myself, implied long suffering and patience more than words can express. I love most to look on Christ as my teacher, as one who, knowing the utmost of my sinfulness, my waywardness, my folly, can still have patience; can reform, purify, and daily make me ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... gold. They divided the spoil, and returned home wealthy men. Subsequently, however, one of them, either feeling scruples with regard to the possession of the booty or else in the due order of confession, unburdened himself to his priest, who at once impressed upon him the sinfulness of retaining the stolen treasure and the obligation of endeavouring to find the rightful owners and restoring it to them. The penitent, therefore, went to explain these views to his fellow-thief, who appearing fully convinced ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... witnessing not only homes made happier through their labors, but hearts so melted by their personal kindness, and by the Gospel message which they carry, that husbands and wives, convicted of the sinfulness of their neglect of the great salvation, come forward to declare themselves soldiers of the cross, and unite with the ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... being, who then became responsible for the thoughts and actions of life. If one chose evil instead of good, the soul, it was asserted, went after death into an inferior grade of animal life, low in proportion to the sinfulness of that existence. Those who chose the better part became at last so exalted that evil had no power over them, and they were happy for ever and ever. It was also believed that the beatified soul retained the love ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... to be married at a neighbouring church to the young musician Heinz. But some months before Reginald Gower's return from abroad, during a severe illness which had brought him to the borderland, Mr. Willoughby was aroused to a dawning sense of his own sinfulness and need of pardon, which had, almost unconsciously to himself, a ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... the Almighty before he will live. It is religion alone which can lead him to the truest manhood, which will quicken his slumbering intellectual faculties and prevent him from being an easy prey to the selfishness and sinfulness of men. Let us support this society in its grand work, by our money, our sympathy and our prayers. Let us join in the fight, and by-and-by we will share in the triumph. Dr. Strieby, you can remember just before this society was formed, that it was a disgrace to be an abolitionist. It is a glory ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... 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 ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... we cannot blame ourselves too much for all these sins; we cannot think them too heinous. We cannot confess them too openly; we cannot cry too humbly and earnestly for forgiveness. But we never shall feel the full sinfulness of sin; we never shall thoroughly humble ourselves in confession and repentance, unless we remember that all our sins have been sins against a Father, and a forgiving Father, and that it is His especial glory, the very ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... 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 with all ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... mortal yet e'er 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 followers have no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... self-revelation of God in His providence, of which only the psalm speaks, is modified according to our moral character, being full of love to those who love, being harsh and antagonistic to those who set themselves in opposition to it. There is a higher law of grace, whereby the sinfulness of man but draws forth the tenderness of a father's pardoning pity; and the brightest revelation of His love is made to froward prodigals. But that is not in the psalmist's view here, nor does it interfere with the law of ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... her soul was drowned in a great awe. He had first to thank God for having chosen him as the instrument of his will, and then he spoke to Evelyn of the wonder and magnitude of God's mercies. That at the very height of her artistic career he should have roused her to a sense of her own exceeding sinfulness was ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Papacy. The teaching of Calvin appealed more directly to the ignorant, for his creed was stern and simple. The Calvinists even declared Luther an agent of the devil, in striking contrast to their own leader, who was regarded as the messenger of God. For such men there were no different degrees of sinfulness—some were held to be elect or "chosen of the Lord" at their birth, while others were predestined for everlasting punishment. It was characteristic of Calvin that he called vehemently for toleration from the Emperor, Charles V, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... right that he should suffer the penalty of his headstrong conduct. Give him his supper and we will leave him to think of his sinfulness." ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... Therefore the whole state by secret confession, which we also use, tell their sins to the magistrates, who at once purge their souls and teach those that are inimical to the people. Then the sacred magistrates themselves confess their own sinfulness to the three supreme chiefs, and together they confess the faults of one another, though no special one is named, and they confess especially the heavier faults and those harmful to the state. At length the triumvirs ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... we were made for God, and our nature, with all its longings and powers, cries out for Him. And therefore has God so arranged the world, in spite of all its evils, and in spite of all our sinfulness, that, if we do not prevent it, it will lead us out to happiness—lead us out to Himself. It was our sin that despoiled the face of the world; but God, in His mercy, has drawn good out of evil, He has made the effects of sin minister to our advantage, if we will but have ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... shutteth out fear. It is sufficient for the utmost fervour of gratitude that we are saved from punishments, too great to be conceived; but our salvation is surely not complete, till by the illumination from above, we are made to know 'the exceeding sinfulness of sin,' and that horribleness in its nature, which, while it involves all these frightful consequences, is yet, of itself more affrightful to a regenerated soul than those consequences. To him who but for a moment felt the influence of God's presence, the thought of eternal exclusion from the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... came in crowds to his study, and he, with unutterable delight, unfolded the Gospel of Christ to one company after another, until near midnight. On the 25th, Tamo, a deacon from the mountains, was overwhelmed with a sense of his sinfulness. At the same meeting, priest Eshoo sat with his face buried in his handkerchief, and when spoken to wept, but said nothing. On the day following, he led the devotions in the male seminary, in a prayer so humble ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... the best of us, does not feel within him the bitterness of the lingering poison, which sin has deposited in his heart? The holier a man is, the more he is conscious of his sinfulness. To the end of life this must be so; for there is no reaching perfection here. Those, chiefly, who have made most progress in the struggle against sin here, know how hateful it is. The higher men rise here ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... had 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 sin, but he had become so accustomed to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... was brought him at nine o'clock the next day, and he flung himself from his bed, clad in his hair shirt and cowl, with naked feet, knelt, worshipped, and prayed long before it, recalling the infinite benefits of the Saviour to the children of men, commending his sinfulness to Christ's mercy, asking for help to the end and imploring with tears never to be left. Then he was houselled and anointed. He said, "Now let our doctors and our diseases meet, as far as may be. In our heart there will be less trouble about them both. I have ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... our own state. We are as far removed from the sinfulness of the world, as any hermit of the desert, whilst we have the enjoyment of comforts ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Gospel were indeed 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... woman," resumed Roger Chillingworth, after a pause, "who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... heaven and earth. Suppose we had been there in the temple, and known all this, should we have liked to be singing about beasts and birds, with God Himself close to us? We should not have liked it—we should have been terrified, thinking perhaps about our own sinfulness, perhaps about that wonderful majesty which dwelt inside. We should have wished to say or sing something spiritual, as we call it; at all events, something very different from the 104th psalm about woods, and rivers, and dumb beasts. We do not like ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... 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 God were not ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... began to cry, but Mrs. Grier was firm; and when, a little later, Helen came down-stairs, ready for her ride, the house was strangely quiet. Mrs. Grier, really troubled at her children's sinfulness, confided their misdeeds to Helen, and was not soothed by the smile that flashed across ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... observing that tho the young Gentlewoman had mention'd the Sinfulness of what she had propounded to her, yet she did not so much insist upon that, as on the hazard and difficulty of attempting it; which gave her so much Encouragement of Succeeding, that she told her, as to ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... elders, at least if the tongue of slander wags not with gross untruth concerning the colleagues of John Adams. But he was not in Europe to amuse himself, though at an age when amusement is natural and a tinge of sinfulness is so often pardoned; he was there with the definite and persistent purpose of steady improvement and acquisition. At his age most young men play the cards which a kind fortune puts into their hands, with the reckless intent only of immediate gain, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... again, should she 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 ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 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 steps forward the artist retires. And as we are dealing with Tolstoi ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... China. But I rather suppose that where there are any self-mortifications imposed (which is very rare in this part of China), they are imposed to secure merit, not to atone for sin. I do not remember ever to have met with an individual among the Chinese who had any sense of sinfulness of heart, or even any remorse for sinfulness of conduct except he was first taught it by the Gospel. It is one of the most difficult truths to convey to their minds that they are sinners against God. We have had a few inquirers who have expressed a deep sense ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... recalcitrant archbishop and a remonstrant ci-devant duchess,' cried Berkeley, lightly, 'upon the moral guilt and religious sinfulness of rebellion against the constituted authority of a communist phalanstery. It would be simply charming. I can imagine myself composing a dignified exhortation to deliver to his grace, entirely compiled out of his own printed ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... 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
... Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami, royal power! Cease not to protect your 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 be spread over the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... woman, I know, but I have repented, and do repent constantly of all the sins of my youth and the backslidings of my age—which have been numerous; and once I had a very heavy backsliding—but that's neither here nor there. So, as I was a-saying, having collected all my sinfulness of life, and humbleness before Heaven, into a goodish bit of courage, forward I steps—a little furder—and a leetle furder more—un-til I come'd just up to the beautiful shining star lying upon the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... laziness, the meanness, the want of frankness to himself and others, the despicable vanity, the attempt to appear what he is not, the indulged unfounded suspiciousness towards his friends, all the little base defects which must have pained a nature like his more than any real sinfulness, as the prodding of a surgeon's instruments would have agonised such a man more than an actual amputation. He narrates in extenso all his vacillations about nothing at all, all his givings way to laziness, all his insincere confidences made to others. One morning is consumed in debating ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... utterly. His own miserable experience will make him sure of it, if he will not believe it, as Scripture declares it. But it is not unlikely that some persons, perhaps some who now hear me, may fall into an opposite mistake. They may attempt to excuse their lukewarmness and sinfulness, on the plea that God does not inwardly move them; and they may argue that those holy men whom they so much admire, those saints who are to sit on Christ's right and left, are of different nature from themselves, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... beginning; because in Him there is no variableness, 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 they, the saints and sinners, wipe ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... kingdom begin to decay. And it is then, O Brahmana, that ill-looking monsters, and dwarfs, and hunch-backed and large-headed wights, and men that are blind or deaf or those that have paralysed eyes or are destitute of the power of procreation, begin to take their birth. It is from the sinfulness of kings that their subjects suffer numerous mischiefs. But this our king Janaka casteth his eyes upon all his subjects virtuously, and he is always kind unto them who, on their part, ever adhere to their respective duties. Regarding myself, I always with good deeds please those ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... your correspondent rose to withdraw.) "I am sorry not to talk with you longer, but a delegation of the ministry are just outside the door. They propose to sit down and discuss with me the exceeding sinfulness of a greed of worldly gain, especially when it runs into piracy.—My best compliments to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... again! We bring them, and lay them before the Spirit of Grace. O Almighty Spirit of Grace, May these Poor, blind, mad Sinners become objects for the Triumphs of Grace! O Almighty Spirit of God, and of Grace, cause these poor men to see their own Sinfulness and Wretchedness! Make them willing to be Saved from such Sinfulness and Wretchedness; Discover to them the only Saviour of their Souls. Oh! Dispose them, Oh! Assist them to give the Consent of their Souls unto His Wonderful Proposals. Let them Dy, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the question of certain unmentionable forms of perverted sexual vice, the sinfulness of what are commonly classified as "sins of the flesh" consists in wrongful indulgence or lack of self-control in respect of that which in itself is legitimate and good. The Christian ideal is not abstinence, but temperance. A Christian will be temperate, for example, in ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... much more to say in fierce denunciation, but Hartigan, while regretting the sinfulness of the habit, pointed out that this was a land of few pleasures and a land of horses; and if, as was natural, they sought to get their pleasure out of their horses, then surely Dr. Jebb would not consign them all to hell for it, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the mainland he wrapped himself in warm and comfortable sophistries. The wickedness of subterfuge vanished now that subterfuge was found to be successful in attaining a desired end. For that which is successful seldom appears wholly evil. To-day Uniacke glowed in the fires of his sinfulness. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... His blessing, and that God will not tolerate it; and at the same time the clearest indication of the principles under which God deals with it, and removes it. Let us see in the light of the story if we can learn how to look at the sin of prayerlessness, and at the sinfulness that lies at the root of it. The words I have quoted above, "Neither will I be with you any more, except ye put away the accursed thing from among you," take us into the very heart of the story, and ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... vote against our human nature, Crying to God in all the polling places To heal our everlasting sinfulness And make ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... Doctor Gill made a nuisance of herself by constant interference in the affairs of others. As a gossip she was notorious. It appeared to her that the neckbands worn by the Doctor were longer than was fitting. She therefore took occasion to visit the clergyman, and harangued him at length on the sinfulness of pride. Then she exhibited a pair of scissors, and suggested that she should cut down the offending neckbands to a size fitting her ideas of propriety. The Doctor listened patiently to her exhortation, and at the end offered her the neckbands on which to work ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... that exceedingly heterogeneous thing, her character. Moreover, Mrs. Baines watched the posts, and she also watched Sophia—she was not the woman to trust to a streak of pure nobility—and she came to be sure that Sophia's sinfulness, if any, was not such as could be weighed in a balance, or collected together by stealth and then suddenly placed before the girl on ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Conciliation Hall; and the songs and ballads which it was giving to the youth of Ireland—who received them with delight, treasuring every line "as if an angel spoke"—were bright with the spirit of battle, and taught any doctrine except the sinfulness of fighting for liberty. The Liberator grew fearful of that organ and of the men by whom it was conducted. He distrusted that quiet-faced, thoughtful, and laborious young man, whom they so loved and reverenced—the founder, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... with these, it is a great mistake to entice them toward the gospel by describing the moral grandeur of Christ's character and teaching. We should at once seek to arouse them to a sense of their great sinfulness. When a man realizes that his life is being eaten out by some insidious disease, he will need no further urging to go to a physician. This is the weakness of modern preaching—that we expatiate on the value of the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... me make a Christian confession of the sinfulness of my nature? It were indeed heresy to claim an equal capacity for good. There I acknowledge the need ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... here taught—that even unwitting contact with death might bring sin upon the Nazarite. Sometimes we are tempted to excuse ourselves, and to forget the absolute sinfulness of sin, apart altogether from the question of premeditation, or even of consciousness, at the time, on our part. The one who became defiled, was defiled, whether intentionally or not; GOD'S requirement was absolute, and where not fulfilled the vow was broken; the sin-offering had to be offered, ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... between the Deity and the devil for the possession of every soul, the latter generally being considered victorious. The flood, the tornado, the volcano, were all evidences of the displeasure of heaven and the sinfulness of man. The blight that withered, the frost that blackened, the earthquake that devoured, were ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... that it is his father, (which is a circumstance constituting another species of sin); or, suppose that he is unaware that this man will defend himself and strike him back, and that if he had known this, he would not have struck him (which does not affect the sinfulness of the act). Wherefore, though this man sins through ignorance, yet he is not altogether excused, because, not withstanding, he has knowledge of the sin. Secondly, this may happen on the part of the ignorance itself, because, to wit, this ignorance is voluntary, either directly, as when ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... there were several like Oowikapun who were unhappy in their souls, and were going to try this method in hope of relief. Perhaps, like him, they had in some way or other been in a place where a few rays of light had shone upon their souls. These had revealed to them the sinfulness of their lives and the hideousness of sin; but being ignorant of the great Physician, instead of looking to him for healing and happiness, they were going to see if there was any efficacy in these ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... there are 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 mistakes, never passed ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... 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
... to be averted. The 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
... person to whom the door of her habitation was 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 ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Dolman had intensified the strained relationship that existed between the good people who frowned upon all racing endeavor and those who saw but little sinfulness in John Porter's ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... life, "Parsifal" of its direct opposite and flat contradiction; and anyone who accepts the one view must needs loathe the other as sinful. To me the "Siegfried" view of life commends itself; and I unhesitatingly assert the sinfulness of the "Parsifal" view. The two operas invite comparison; for at the outset their heroes seem to be the same man. Siegfried and Parsifal are both untaught fools; each has his understanding partly enlightened by hearing of his mother's sufferings and death (compare Wordsworth's "A deep distress hath ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... whom she felt life would be wretched: she saw herself surrounded by enlightened and polished society, such as her sainted mother had graced before her; she saw herself moving in a new sphere, and fulfilling new duties: then imagination placed before her bewildered mind the sinfulness of deserting the station in which Heaven had placed her. She sighed deeply as she almost determined to refuse, when a glimpse of her abhorred lover, Don Gregorio, caused a sudden and violent revulsion of feeling, and ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... excesses of mad virtue, lasted only a short time, or lasted only in individual saints or blood-maniacs; and the men of the Renaissance speedily regained their level of indifferent righteousness and of indifferent sinfulness. Righteousness and sinfulness both passive, without power of aggression or resistance, and consequently in strange and dreadful peace with each other. The wicked men did not dislike virtue, nor the good men vice: the villain could admire a saint, and the saint ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Some men of war use to have about their loins an apron or girdle of mail, gird fast for the safeguard of the nether part of their body. So St. Paul would we should gird our loins, which betokeneth lechery or other sinfulness, with a girdle, which is to be taken for a restraint or continence from such vices. In "truth," or "truly gird:" it may not be feigned, or falsely girt, but in verity and truth. There be many bachelors, as yet men unmarried, which seem to be girt ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... 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, which neither the civilization of the nineteenth century nor ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... come to disclose a secret—my own sinfulness in keeping it—and to implore your pardon. Do you remember that night Senor Stewart dragged me before you in the ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... 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
... than earnestness, and as a matter of duty I devoted some time every Sabbath-day to the perusal of God's word, with which I had become more extensively acquainted by reading it during sermon-time at church. I well know that even then, and at a much earlier period too, conviction of my own sinfulness was working very deeply, though not permanently, in my mind: it was not an abiding impression, but a thing of fits and starts, overwhelming me while it lasted, but soon shaken off by diverting my thoughts to something else. These convictions ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... established church without her bonnet, but it created such an agitation in the congregation that the Bishop wrote her a letter on the impropriety and requested her to come with her head covered. She refused. He then called and labored with her as to the sinfulness of the proceedings, and at parting commanded her either to cover her bead or stay away from church altogether. She choose the latter. I saw and beard that letter read at a luncheon in London, where several ladies were present. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... them is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, even Jesus Christ the Lord, the everlasting Rock, on which all morality and all society is founded. Whosoever shall fall on that Rock in repentance and humility, confessing, bewailing, and forsaking his worldliness and sinfulness, he shall indeed be broken: but of him it is written, 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.' And he shall find that Rock, even Christ, a safe standing-ground amid the slippery mire of this world's temptations, and the storms ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... about to say something about the sinfulness of the children of this world, but was unable to frame words. He abandoned the attempt, and, before he knew what he was doing, asked her if she was pleased with the letter he had given her when ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland |
