"Sin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we say to the doctrine of the fall of man as the ground of inflicting endless misery on the human race? A man to be punished for what he could not help! He was expected to be called to account for Adam's sin. It is singular to notice that the reasoning of the wolf with the lamb should be transferred to the dealings of the Creator with his creatures. "You stirred the brook up and made my drinking-place muddy." "But, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thoughtful for a time. "I can't understand," she finally said, "why Gran'pa Jim acts the way he does. Often he has told me, when I deserved censure, to 'face the music' and have it over with. Once he said that those who sin must suffer the penalty, because it is the law of both God and man, and he who seeks to escape a just penalty is a coward. Gran'pa knows he is innocent, but the government thinks he is guilty; so why doesn't he face the music and prove his innocence, ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... construct his play backwards, and even to write his last act first.[10] This doctrine belongs to the period of the well-made play, when climax was regarded as the one thing needful in dramatic art, and anticlimax as the unforgivable sin. Nowadays, we do not insist that every play should end with a tableau, or with an emphatic mot de la fin. We are more willing to accept a quiet, even an indecisive, ending.[11] Nevertheless it ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Again, it may be taken for granted that as in the natural world, so in the spiritual world, the Creator of all things effects His purposes by operating according to laws. On this principle St. Paul in Rom. viii. 2 speaks of "the law of sin and death," meaning that sin and death are invariably related to each other as antecedent and consequent. By an irrevocable law {9} death is ordained to be "the wages of sin" (Rom. vi. 23). Of ourselves we can judge that it does not consist with the power and wisdom of an omnipotent ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... it after my child is born. 'Tis a child of sin, you say, and I am unrepentant, a wicked woman not fit to take a holy vow, to which, moreover, you cannot force me," she ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... to hear it. I ought to confess it because it was a sin, a sort of meddling with the Lord's plans. You see, I'd taken it in my head that someone would have to give you a home. It didn't seem as if that old ma'shland would be good for anything, and I knew your father ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... stage, we need not now enter into its discussion. At one aspect, and one only, of this vast and complex theme we may, however, be permitted to glance for a moment before we pass on. If God dwells in us, it is frequently asked, whence comes what Paul so pathetically calls "the law of sin which is in our members"—whence come the wrongful desires and harmful passions of whose power we are so painfully conscious? That is an entirely legitimate and even inevitable query, but the solution ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... it be sin to declare it, I will say your religion hath mother-comfort in it. Perhaps you have felt, in the woods among Iroquois, that sometime need of mother-comfort which a civilized woman may feel who ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... a fine afternoon, she would go out into the streets and look listlessly through shop-windows at hats and gowns and all the pretty things she would have thought it sin so much as to desire to wear. Where Rose lingered longest was outside those heavenly places where you saw far off a flutter of white in the windows, which turned out to be absurd, tiny, short-waisted frocks and diminutive under-garments, and little heartrending shoes; things ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... sins is formally to remit their condemnation and penalty, regarded as a bond upon the soul. "Almighty God ... pardoneth and absolveth all those who truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel." Book of Common Prayer, Declar. of Absol. To acquit of sin or crime is to free from the accusation of it, pronouncing one guiltless; the innocent are rightfully acquitted; the guilty may ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... hand or any word.... Ah, Mahommed Hassan, it was he! Mahommed had put this phial in his pocket. His bitter secret was not hidden from Mahommed. And this was an act of supreme devotion—to put at his hand the lulling, inspiring draught. Did this fellah servant know what it meant—the sin of it, the temptation, the terrible joy, the blessed quiet; and then, the agonising remorse, the withering self-hatred and torturing penitence? No, Mahommed only knew that when the Saadat was gone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... like the rest of us. You carry your life in your hands. Don't nourish past griefs. Cast the memory of them away. There's nothing which narrows a man more than morbidness. You have a past which may sometimes bring the ghosts around you, but remember the sin was not wholly yours, and there is an atonement which in measured fashion you may commence whenever you please. I have said enough about that. Greatness and gaiety go hand in hand. There! You see, I was a philosopher before I became a professor of propaganda. Good! You smile. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... detain the arms, especially of Philip. "My reasons are," he says, "first, lest we render ourselves more afraid of them and their guns than indeed we are or have cause to be. Alas! it is not the gun, but the man; nor, indeed, is it the man, but our sin that we have cause to be afraid of. Secondly, your so doing will open an effectual door to the entertainment of the Gospel." Probably Mr. Eliot was right, and the keeping the arms only irritated the high-spirited chief, who said to the messenger of the Governor ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... with all the loves and hopes of a man, was proclaimed to be a beast to be bred and sold in market with the horse and the swine,—that land, with its fair name, Virginia, has been made a desolation so signal, so wonderful, that the blindest passer-by cannot but ask for what sin so awful a doom has been meted out. The prophetic visions of Nat Turner, who saw the leaves drop blood and the land darkened, have been fulfilled. The work of justice which he predicted is being executed to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... I, after we had rubbed noses and gathered 'round the dried-apple barrel. 'I don't suppose there's another community in the whole world into which sin and chicanery has less extensively permeated than this. Life here, where all the women are brave and propitious and all the men honest and expedient, must, indeed, be an idol. It reminds me,' says I, 'of Goldstein's beautiful ballad entitled "The ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... never told falsehoods. His old aunt had laboured to impress upon him from infancy that to lie was to commit a sin which is abhorred by God and scorned by man; and her teaching had not been in vain. The child would have suffered any punishment rather than have told a deliberate lie. He looked straight in the master's face and said, ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... starts up, awake and strong, at the approach of Death. As the show of the world withdraws, the realities assert themselves. He repents, and makes confession of his sin, seeing it now in its true nature, and calling it by its own name. It is a compensation of the weakness of some that they cannot be strong in wickedness. The king did not so repent, and with his strength was the ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... un exquisito cuidado de esta joya. (Con entusiasmo.) Joya, digo: cuerpo y alma de lo ms selecto que da de s la humanidad. Velad por ella sin descanso. Mariucha! (Acaricindola.) Mi Mariucha! Merece que nos desvivamos 830 por llevarla a su esfera ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... his uncle had warned him again and again aginst the sin of anger. He had thought lightly of his uncle's counsels, and he had not practised the virtue of humility, which, as St. Teresa said, was the surest virtue to seek ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... not know what sin these two must have committed except that although they were brother and sister, they were in such wise bound by ties of love, that they could not be separated, and so, as it were, wished to be punished for ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... to my unhappy children over yonder. If I could set some of the forlorn souls in my parish beside the happier creatures who weep over imaginary woes as they are painted by his eloquent lips, that brilliant scene would be better than any sermon. Day and night I look down on lives as full of sin, self-sacrifice and suffering as any in those famous books. Day and night I try to comfort the poor by my cheery voice, and to make their wants known by proclaiming them with all my might. But people seem to be so intent on ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... are secure only when they act upon principles. He who does not accept a principle, asserted by another, will not long enjoy the benefit of it himself; and nations always perish by their own sin. Oh may those whom your united people entrusted with the noble care to be guardians of your Union—be pleased to consider that truth ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... a god come in To shield me suddenly from sin, And set my house of life to rights; Nor angels with bright burning wings Ordering my earthly thoughts and things; Rather my own frail guttering lights Wind blown and nearly beaten out; Rather the terror of the nights ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... supernatural events they had just witnessed. She felt as if it was not the time to be absorbed in anything less than the divine glory of those conversions. The thought that all the time she was singing, with the one passion of her soul to touch the conscience of that tent full of sin, Jasper Chase had been unmoved by it except to love her for herself, gave her a shock as of irreverence on her part as well as on his. She could not tell why she felt as she did, only she knew that if he had not told her tonight she would still have felt the same toward him as ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... Lucy. It has appeared to me in these few months' sojourn with her, that I have stood to her in light of a mother. William Vane," she solemnly added, keeping her hold upon him, "I shall soon be where earthly distinctions are no more; where sin and sorrow are no more. Should Lucy Carlyle indeed become your wife, in after years, never, never cast upon her, by so much as the slightest word of reproach, the sin of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and intelligence know that all the ills of life—scarcity of money, baldness, the comma bacillus, Home Rule, ... and the Potato Bug—are due to the Sherman Bill. If it is repealed, sin and death will vanish from the world, ... the skies will fall, and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... I knew 'twas wrong, For he was neither kith nor kin; Need one do penance very long For such a tiny little sin? ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... world perceive of the subtler inward grace Breathing upon the dust of the coarse clay clod? What knows the world of me—the Me that is prisoned within— Seeing only the self that sickens its sensitive eyes— How can it know that this hateful mask hides not the sneer of Sin, That this cloak of crass, crude flesh, ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... give you truth in the inward parts, and make you to understand wisdom in the secret places of your heart. Pray God's Spirit to quicken your soul, and bring it to life, that it may see and love what is good, and see and hate what is wrong; and instead of being most hard on your neighbour's sin, to which you are not tempted, be most hard on your own sin, on the sin to which you are most tempted, whatsoever that may be. You have your besetting sin, doubt it not; every one has. I know that I have. ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... returned so often to these subjects, and so frequently called upon them to take a lesson from her,—at the same time vaunting and, as it were, rioting in, her huge unworthiness, and abundant excess of sin,—that, in the course of a short time, she became, in that small chamber, rather a nuisance than a comfort, and rendered them, if possible, even more unhappy than they had ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... confederates; join in a league with him and wicked spirits subordinate to him, in undermining the Gospel and overthrowing the Church; and conspire and co-operate in rebellion against God. This, of course, was regarded as the most flagrant of crimes, and constituted the real character of the sin ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... commanded us to stone such: what then sayest thou of her? And this they said, trying him that they might have whereof to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground. But when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground. And they, when they heard it, went out one by one, beginning from the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman, where ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... across this upward pathway of man, to be pursued by free choice and personal effort, is the dogma of the Vicarious Atonement and the forgiveness of sin, of which "His Holiness" claims to hold ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... of inculcating manners by means of the press infected others besides the gangsman. In a Navy whose officers not only plumed themselves on representing the ne plus ultra of etiquette, but demanded that all who approached them should do so without sin either of omission or commission, the idea was universal. Pride of service and pride of self entered into its composition in about equal proportions; hence the sailing-master who neglected to salute the flag, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... headache. The country being all scrub, I was compelled as usual to ride with a bell on my stirrup. Jingle jangle all day long; what with heat, fever, and the pain I was in, and the din of that infernal bell, I really thought it no sin to wish myself out of this world, and into a better, cooler, and less noisy one, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... our guiltiest beast resign, A sacrifice to wrath divine. Perhaps this offering, truly small, May gain the life and health of all. By history we find it noted That lives have been just so devoted. Then let us all turn eyes within, And ferret out the hidden sin. Himself, let no one spare nor flatter, But make clean conscience in the matter. For me, my appetite has played the glutton Too much and often upon mutton. What harm had e'er my victims done? I answer, truly, None. Perhaps, sometimes, by hunger ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... When Richard had obtained a success, he pursued it in a haughty, passionate spirit; when he suffered a check, he offered Saladin peace, but always on condition of surrendering Jerusalem to the Christians, and Saladin always answered, "Jerusalem never was yours, and we may not without sin give it up to you; for it is the place where the mysteries of our religion were accomplished, and the last one of my soldiers will perish before the Mussulmans renounce conquests made in the name ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... simplicity of a German peasant, and as Bucholz stopped before one of these places and asked him if he would like to go inside, he made not the slightest objection. Quietly following his guide they found themselves within the walls of one of those gilded palaces of sin, that have so often proved the avenues through which many unsuspecting young men have entered upon a ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the ingenuous mind without you. And since deviating more or less from the paths of propriety and rectitude must be incident to human nature, do thou, Fortune, put it in my power, always from myself, and of myself, to bear the consequence of those errors! I do not want to be independent that I may sin, but I want to be independent in ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of the family were very angry. Old Lady Jack McGee was so enraged that she said to my wife: "I thought you were a Christian. You'll never see your God." She seemed to think that because Matilda had sought freedom she had committed a great sin. ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... a sternness, a menace even, in the full, deep voice, that dispelled all hope in the minds of the two thus under judgment. They had committed the one unpardonable sin. In vain Hazon elaborately explained the whole affair, diplomatically setting forth that the act being accidental, and done by strangers and white people, in ignorance, no ill-luck need befall the nation, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... to the lord, The turkey smokes on every board. Sure men for gluttony are cursed, Of the seven deadly sins the worst.' An ant, who climbed beyond his reach, Thus answered from the neighbouring beech: 'Ere you remark another's sin, 27 Bid thy own conscience look within; Control thy more voracious bill, Nor for a ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... frōda fæder Ōhtheres, 2930 "eald and eges-full ond-slyht āgeaf, "ābrēot brim-wīsan, brȳd āhēorde, "gomela īo-meowlan golde berofene, "Onelan mōdor and Ōhtheres, "and þā folgode feorh-genīðlan 2935 "oð þæt hī oðēodon earfoðlīce "in Hrefnes-holt hlāford-lēase. "Besæt þā sin-herge sweorda lāfe "wundum wērge, wēan oft gehēt "earmre teohhe andlonge niht: 2940 "cwæð hē on mergenne mēces ecgum "gētan wolde, sume on galg-trēowum "fuglum tō gamene. Frōfor eft gelamp "sārig-mōdum somod ǣr-dæge, "syððan hīe Hygelāces ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... and his face showed it. So Jehovah said to Cain, "Why are you angry and why do you scowl? If you do what is right and good, will not your offering be accepted? But if you do wrong, sin crouches like a wild beast at the door and the desire to sin will overcome you; but you should ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... that they will rather die than eat or drink of any thing forbidden by their law. Such meats and drinks as their law allows, they use only in moderation, to satisfy nature, not to please their appetites, hating gluttony, and esteeming drunkenness a sin, as it really is, or a second madness; and indeed their language has only one word, mest, for a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... propensities of country-places, which, so long as they are not poisoned by envy or ill-will, have a respectable and picturesque side to them,—an undoubted leave to be, as probably has almost everything, which obstinately and always insists on being, except sin!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... racing, even of the horses. "It's the anger of God," Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently. "This gambling and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes, Allis, that I do not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to the sin of racing. No good can come of it—no good has ever come of it—nothing but disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is wasted. There never can be ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... swaggering gait is in tragic contrast with their lack of any valuable personal quality. It is in these same castles of despair that we find the strongest examples of the opposite physiognomy, in good people who think they have committed "the unpardonable sin" and are lost forever, who crouch and cringe and slink from notice, and are unable to speak aloud or look us in the eye.... We ourselves know how the barometer of our self-esteem and confidence rises and falls from one day to another through causes ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... as the minutes passed. If his paper had been full of anything but "Bronchial Troches" and "Spalding's Prepared Glue," he would have found more profitable employment; but it wasn't, and with the usual readiness of idle souls he fell into evil ways, and permitted curiosity, that feminine sin, to enter in and take possession of his manly mind. A great desire seized him to discover what book his pretty neighbor; but a cover hid the name, and he was too distant to catch it on the fluttering leaves. Presently a stout Emerald-Islander, with her wardrobe oozing out of ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... mean,' the other replied more gravely, 'that what a man thinks, and makes with thinking, is the real thing. It's in the heart that sin is first real. The act is the least important end of it— grave only because it is the inevitable result of the thinking. Action is merely delayed thinking, after all. Don't think ghosts and bogeys, I always say to children, or ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Stefania. She came weeping before him and mourning her lord, and was beautiful in her grief, and knew it, as many women do. And the young Emperor saw her, and pitied her, and loved her, and took her to his heart in sin, and though he repented daily, he daily fell again, while the woman offered up her body and her soul to be revenged for the fierce man she had loved. So it came to pass, at last, that she found her opportunity against him, and poured poison into his cup, and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... What sin didst thou commit, or whom offend? That doomed thee to a carnal cell so gross That scarce a hint of what thou really art Has ever reached the world,—who couldst transcend In matchless music, purged of all thy dross, The great Beethoven or ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... faultful gentleman whose life found wrong expression. There be some to whom are given inheritance of evil nature. Then how dare we, who know not the measure of their temptation, make ourselves judges of their sin? ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... happy inspiration. Had Weir stated the whole category of Sorenson's and Burkhardt's crimes, including murder and dynamiting, he could not have struck so shrewdly as in naming the sin of cattle-stealing. For this was a cattle country and even the most ignorant Mexican grasped ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... noticed; my parishioners are in the best possible health, thank God! and they live to be very old. I have barely two or three marriages in a year, and as many burials, so that, you see, one must fill up one's time somehow to escape the sin of idleness. Every man must have a hobby. Mine is ornithology; and yours, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which separated himself and his wife from all that went on in the village. He had the same mirthful, social temperament which she had: the thoughtless, childish, pleasure-loving quality, which they had in common, had been the root of their sin; and was now the instrument of their suffering. Stronger people could have borne up better; worse people might have found a certain evil solace in evil ways and with evil associates: but Jim and Sally were incapable of any such course; they were simply two utterly ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... answer his letters; that he was sorry he had written them, but might on similar provocations recur to the same vengeance." On another occasion he said, "Lady B.'s first idea is what is due to herself. I wish she thought a little more of what is due to others. My besetting sin is a want of that self-respect which she has in excess. When I have broken out, on slight provocation, into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and increased my mauvaise humeur." To Lady Blessington ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... spade. After digging for half an hour, he came back, nigh speechless to the laird, who had regarded him musingly. "I canna find him, sir," said John.—"'Deed," said the laird, very coolly, "I wad ha' wondered if ye had, for it's ten years sin' I ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all to be recognized is the danger of idealism. It is the one besetting sin of the human race. It means the fall into automatism, mechanism, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked about the sin of gluttony or excess. We talk about the Problem of Drink—as if drink could be a problem. When people have come to call the problem of human intemperance the Problem of Drink, and to talk about curing it by attacking the drink ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... variety of shape and size that Letters can be twisted into, is to be found. Do shew his part of it to Mr. R. some day. If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition so queerly character'd of a contrite sinner. G. was born I verily think without original sin, but chuses to have a conscience, as every Christian Gentleman should have. His dear old face is insusceptible of the twist they call a sneer, yet he is apprehensive of being suspected of that ugly appearance. When he makes a compliment, he thinks he has given an affront. A name is personality. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and meditating always on the thought of Christ, she should have seemed to take the sacrament from His hands, to pace the chapel in communion with Him, to meet Him in the form of priest and beggar, to hear Him speaking to her as a friend. Once when the anguish of sin had plagued her with disturbing dreams, Christ came and gave her His own heart in exchange for hers. When lost in admiration before the cross at Pisa, she saw His five wounds stream with blood—five crimson rays smote her, passed into her soul, and left their marks upon her ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... be a flabby fellow, and lymphatically yellow, that will matter not a mite. If you take yourself in hand, in a way you'll understand, to become a Son of Light. On your crassness superimposing the peculiar art of glosing in sleek phrases about Sin. If you aim to be a Shocker, carnal theories to cocker is the best way to begin. And every one will say, As you worm your wicked way, "If that's allowable for him which were criminal in me, What a very emancipated kind of youth this kind ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... schemes which are to attract the nautical Hercules to choose the austere virtue and neglect the rollicking and easy-going vice. Beautiful on paper, admirable in reports, pathetic in speeches,—all pictorial with anchors and cables and polar stars, with the light-house of Duty and the shoals of Sin. But meanwhile the character of the merchant-marine is daily deteriorating. More is done for the sailor now by fifty times than was done fifty years ago; yet who will compare the crews of 1858 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... that Brother Tom Pratt, a prominent member, had back-slided, and that nothing could be done there in a spiritual way until he was reclaimed. He was a large, fair, goat-lipped man with a long straw beard hanging under his chin, and he was said to be mightily gifted in prayer. But his besetting sin was strong drink, and he had recently been drunk. The simplicity with which William went about reclaiming him as a part of the preparation for the coming revival seemed to ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... all great and good men must be—is at times lifted up with joy by catching some faint gleam of the almighty purpose that underlies it. So it was with the Son of Man in His darkest hours; the Spirit that enabled Him to compass out the measure of the world's suffering and sin enabled Him also, knowing their purposes, to gaze beyond them; and thus it is, too, with those deep-hearted children of His race, who partake, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... you never committed a willful wrong in your life," she gravely replied. "It was a sad mistake to go away from your home and parents, as you did; but there is no intent to sin to be laid to your charge—your soul shines, like a beacon light, through these dear eyes, and I am sure it is as pure and lovely as your face ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Quaker, "that ye be more ready with words than with deeds. I pray thee"—this to the sober one—"take off these garments of sin. We be peaceful traders, and cannot abide the thought ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... East a gilded knight, named Orpheus, who was possessed of immense wealth, and had everything that heart can wish. He had taken to wife his own sister, Euridice, who did not, however, bear him any children. This he regarded as the punishment of his sin in having wedded his own sister, and was instant in prayer to God both by day and by night, that the curse might be taken from him. One night when he was buried in a deep sleep, there came to him a certain winged messenger, named Phoebus, who touched his feet, which were very hot, and said: ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... moaned the senora. "Thou art changed much! Me, I would not be hard on Mees Combs, though her sin is clear. Who am I to judge? Nay, even I try to forget that me she has also despoiled; that she took a corner of our back yard, and plants corn in it to this day! I am all for forgiving. But the saints are not so easy!" ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... first few years of his time, he wrote now and then, complaining bitterly of his fate; but for five-and-twenty years I've never had a line from him. I can't doubt that he's dead. Poor Joseph!—poor boy!—poor boy! The misery of all this killed my mother. Mr. Henry Dunbar committed a great sin when he tempted that lad to wrong; and many a cruel sorrow arose out of that sin, perhaps to lie heavy at his door some day or other, sooner or later, sooner or later. I'm an old man, and I've seen a good deal of the ways of this world, and I've ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to be, ashamed of it, and indignantly resentful at being suspected of the immorality. The negro, on the other hand, is only terribly afraid of being punished, and on being forgiven feels immediately purified and free from sin. He has, in fact, no moral principle, and his code of honesty is comprised in a conversation I overheard this winter. Our youngest child seemed to have a vague, indefinite fear of rogues, and a very imperfect idea of what a rogue might be, and was always asking questions on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... See him with hands out-stretcht upon the cross; Immense compassion in his bosom glows; He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn: What matchless mercy in the Son of God! When the whole human race by sin had fall'n, He deign'd to die that they might rise again, And share with him in the sublimest skies, Life without death, and glory without end. Improve your privileges while they stay, Ye pupils, and ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... minus some consid'able an acre; Give wut they need, an' we shell git 'fore long A nation all one piece, rich, peacefle, strong; Make 'em Amerikin, an' they'll begin To love their country ez they loved their sin; Let 'em stay Southun, an' you 've kep' a sore Ready to fester ez it done afore. No mortle man can boast of perfic' vision, But the one moleblin' thing is Indecision, An' th' ain't no futur' for the man nor state Thet out of j-u-s-t ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... along the end of the island, we had designs on the "Lone Cypress" for a sort of novel sensation. We approached the hoary old sentinel carefully, for it would be a sin to even bark its shaggy sides; and, dropping a rope over a projecting broken "knee," we enjoyed a striking object lesson on the effects of erosion. In several feet of water, and nearly three hundred feet from land, our houseboat was ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... numerous and indispensable; and that the display of a particular excellence, however good in itself, was by no means conclusive as to character; in short, that we perhaps as often meet with a favorite principle as with a besetting sin. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... practised eyes, afforded a certain indication as to their route. Again putting their horses to their speed, with compressed lips and eyes directed to the trail before them, Carson and the Indian warrior dashed on, feeling confident, that, if the rascal escaped with his ill-gotten booty, the sin would not be laid upon their shoulders. The trail led down the Green River. This fact made Carson conclude that California was the destination aimed at in the deserter's calculations. Kit and his Indian brave had accomplished about ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... says the giant; "but if you spare my life I'll give you that club; and as long as you keep from sin, you'll win every battle you ever fight ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... would, to disclosures that he might have made; but only in general terms. He denied most strongly that it was any part of the Catholic Religion to give or receive indulgences for murder or for any other sin; and he ended by committing his soul into the hands of Jesus Christ, by whose merits and passion he hoped to be saved. His voice was thin, but very clear for so old a man; and the crowd listened to him with respect and attention. I think all those Catholic deaths and the speeches ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... blemish! A little more of strength and purpose against that fault! If only this besetting hardness had not been the spoiler of his life, that great heedlessness, that fatal procrastination, this too frequent sin! Oh! but for this or that which marred the fair and well rounded character! But for this we should have been full of hope: there was so much on the better side, that we should have been full of trust, and even of confidence. But, now, what are we to think? ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... evening service those who wished to follow Christ were asked to remain to an inquiry meeting, and eight remained, and in their own language some expressed very clearly a desire to follow Christ and a consciousness of their own sin and weakness. ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various
... knew nothing about the sin; but she did think that an uncle who was a baronet threw a certain reflected glory or brightness over them. Sir Francis might be that very suspicious character, a black sheep; he might be landless, with the exception of that ruined tenement in the North; nevertheless, Nan ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... to hold office again, but he was still the great leader of a great party, as determined as ever that at no cost should there be a stain on his public honour. He consulted with his closest friends, among them his wife. As the sin was now five years old—and the woman a derelict—Mrs. Hamilton found it easier to forgive than an unconfessed liaison with the most remarkable woman of her time. Although she anticipated the mortification of the exposure quite as keenly as her husband, she cherished his good name no less tenderly, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... there might be greater beauty. You did not reck of that. To you the heart was the seat of the emotions. I formulated the circulation of the blood. You gave charms and indulgences to the world; I gave it medicine and surgery. To you, famine and pestilence were acts of providence and punishment of sin: I made the world a granary and drained its cities. To you the mass of the people were poor lost wretches who would be rewarded in paradise or baked in hell. You could offer them no earthly happiness of decency. Forsooth, beggars as well as kings were of ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... several days at the hut; and the good missionary ministered not only, as he had promised, to the physical ailments of the sufferer, but to his spiritual necessities likewise, pointing out to him the great truth that though the all-pure God hates the sin He loves the sinner, and would have all men, though by nature His enemies, reconciled to Him, according to His own appointed way, through simple faith in the all-perfect, all-sufficient atonement for sin which His dear Son Jesus Christ ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... controversial purposes, a certain degree of caution will be necessary. The context of the passage, and the date and the authorship of the original work, may all need to be taken into account; while it must also be borne in mind that the religious terms, such as "heaven" and "sin," which have to be employed in English, do not always correspond exactly ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... after the lapse of nearly a century, had cast him forth from her bosom. There, once more beneath the sunlight, amid a ribald crew of a later generation which had still preserved the memory of his sin, lay the body of the more than parricide, whom "excellent spices" had thus preserved from corruption, only to be the mark of scorn ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to your mither's bow'r, Think neither sin nor shame; An' ye tak twa o' your mither's marys, To ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... me in this way? What right have I given her to be my advisor, because I go to her husband's church? Mr Maguire is my friend, and it might have come to that, that he should be my husband. Is there any sin in that, that ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... will do us good, for we may then use it for the transport of our supplies, and it is now too low. We do not know much what is ahead of us, but we hear of Tartar troops farther on; and at Tung-chow it is said that a large army is collected under Sang-ko-lin-sin himself (their great general). I am now enjoying the life of a camp; writing to you seated on my portmanteau, with my desk on my only chair. It is perhaps better than my hothouse ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... seeking admission to the presence of the Queen. She was not afraid even of that royal lady's penetrating eye. Shiftiness, poverty, debts, modes of getting money that were, perhaps, equivocal, help too lightly accepted, all these are bad enough; but they are not in a woman the unpardonable sin. And a caprice in English society was always possible. The young beauty of Bice might attract the eye of some one whose notice would throw down all obstacles; or it might touch the heart of some woman who was so high placed as to be able to defy prejudice. And after that, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... whom did not enter the church at all, he laid aside the text he had prepared and spoke to his people directly and very simply of that most dramatic episode in history, when Christ said to the crowd in the streets, "Let him who is without sin cast ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... appeared to me than anything else, and I give it a fair trial, having never le mal de mer. But I acquit it of this sin now; for the interest of a chase, in reasonably good weather, is quite equal to that of a horse-race, which is a thing I delight in. Even Mr. John Effingham can look radiant under ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the three years when the true Light was shining in the darkness. It was in the time of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilatus was propraetor of Palestine, that our Lord Jesus Christ spent three years in teaching and working miracles; then was crucified and slain by wicked hands, that the sin of mankind might be redeemed. Then He rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven, leaving His Apostles to make known what he had ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... forbearance would dissipate, as a steady wind will blow away gnats. The trouble with all of us is, we make too much of trifles. We nurse them, and feed them, and magnify them, until from gnats they grow to be buzzards with their beaks in our hearts. Not for one sin, nor seven sins, nor seventy sins, forsake the friend you chose from all the world to make your own. A good woman will save anything but a liar, and God's grace is adequate, in time, for even him. I say unto wives, be large-hearted, wide in your charity, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... ye are decaving me the sin is all yer own. If ye be honest an' true men, follow my advice and all will be well. I live just two miles up the road, the first white frame house on the left hand side of the road, with a barn in front of it. ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... heart and it grew ever heavier. It was a sin against Rudy, a sin against God; suddenly she stood forsaken. Her clothes were torn by the thorns; her hair had grown grey; she looked up in her sorrow and she saw Rudy on the edge of the rock. She stretched her arms towards him, but she ventured neither to call, nor to implore ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Hasan's wife besought pardon of him saying, "Blame me not for my sin; and indeed I crave mercy of Allah Almighty." Quoth Hasan (and indeed his heart ached for her), "'Twas not thou that wast in fault; nay, the fault was mine and mine only, for I fared forth and left thee with one who knew not thy rank, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... all my life. Much sorrow and pain and heavy disappointment, when I was young, did some great harm to me which I have never recovered since. I have lived always in fear of others, and doubt of myself; and this has made me guilty of a great sin towards you. Forgive me before I die! I suspected the guilt that was preparing—I foreboded the shame that was to come—they hid it from others' eyes; but, from the first, they could not hide ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... can with his finger Hide his scar, it is so little; Little sin a day to linger, Wise ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... children was ill with scarlet fever. The young people of the Universalist society were going to give some amateur theatricals at the Town Hall some time in August, and the minister at the Orthodox meeting-house had already preached a sermon upon the sin of theater going. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... 'tis a sin, methinks, to lose so much good booty. That coffer, now—Ha!" With the cry the archer leapt out through the tapestried doorway. Came the ring of steel, a heavy fall, and thereafter a shriek that rang and echoed far and near ere it sank to a silence ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... affairs is more unjust than that those things which are most righteously done, should be perverted by the slanders of malicious men, and that one should bear the reproach of sin where he has rather deserved the hope of honour. Many things are done with singleness of eye, the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doth, the lump is uncorrupted by leaven, nor is the garment woven of wool and linen; and yet by the trickery of ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... continue for ever. It was soothing, beautiful, appropriate. "Forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask," said the first collect of the day. "Grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger," said the third collect. "Fulfil now," said the prayer, "the desires and petitions of Thy servants, as may be most expedient for them." Announced the nervous young curate ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... and holy man, shocked at the infirmity and want of propriety exhibited by the unfortunate girl, was very severe in his censures, and informed her that there was no way left for her but by penance and mortification to endeavour to wipe away her sin. He condemned her, therefore, to take up her abode in that solitary cottage, far away from all human habitation, to spend her life in prayer and lamentation, and to endeavour, by voluntary affliction, to win her ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... cliff scenery in Ireland. From Limerick or Galway the county may be explored. On the journey by rail from Limerick, beyond Long Pavement, we come on a fine view of Cratloe woods. An ancient saint referred to Cratloe as "a pleasant seclusion from sin"; but in later times it became a haunt of rapparees, and its thick foliage provided what Spenser would call "a meet house for rebels." In later times Freney, a noted highwayman, whose exploits delighted the Irish peasant, here found ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... beautiful to behold, and had gayety and grace and a daring wit, such rumours but fixed public attention upon him and made him the topic of the hour. He was not of the build or stateliness of Lord Roxholm, and much younger, but was as much older than his years in sin as the other was in unusual acquirement. He was a slender and exquisitely built youth, with perfect features, melting blue eyes, and rich fair hair which, being so beautiful, he disdained to conceal with ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... time to Satan's teaching on the origin of sin, he emerged from the school with a heavy bundle of opinions on his back, and failed to find the Old Way. After wandering and stumbling about on this summit of human learning, he finally found the Broad Highway whereon he could carry his vain ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... thinking about her when, as a matter of fact, you weren't thinking about her or about anyone but this young man you've gotten so taken up with. Karen believes you care for her something in the same way she does for you, and it's a sin and a shame, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott spoke with no vehemence at all of tone or look, but with decision, "a sin and a shame to let that child ruin her ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... he called Royson's own interests, but I knew better'n that. It don't suit his book for our dandy second mate to be sparkin' the owner's granddaughter abaft the lantern. You take my tip, Tagg, that other woman, Mrs. Haxton, is as mean as, sin, an' she blew the gaff to-night when she dropped on ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy |
