"7 DEADLY SINS

Wealth without work

Pleasure without conscience

Science without humanity

Knowledge without character

Politics without principle

Commerce without morality

Worship without sacrifice."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories)

"Hate the sin, love the sinner."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"There is no sin except stupidity."
— Oscar Wilde

"To err is human - but it feels divine."
— Mae West

"We can only know God well when we know our own sin. And those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified Him but have glorified themselves."
— Blaise Pascal

"I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying."
— Nelson Mandela

"He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret."
— Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain)

"The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.
"
— Paula Poundstone

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints."
— Billy Joel

"You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
— C.S. Lewis

"The only sin is the sin of being born"
— Samuel Beckett

"Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly."
— Martin Luther

"In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin."
— Dean Koontz

"When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

"Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner."
— Oscar Wilde

"Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our lives."
— Rebecca Pippert (Out of the Salt Shaker)

"No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from. "
— George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)

"The eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate, it is immutable."
— Patrick Henry

"The only sin is mediocrity."
— Martha Graham

"23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in[a] Christ Jesus our Lord."
— Romans 6:23

"Be it sin or no, I hate the man!"
— Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)

"It is the business of a virtuous clergy to censure vice in every appearance of it."
— Patrick Henry

"Sethe's crime was staggering and her pride outstripped even that; but she could not countenance the possibility of sin moving on in the house, unleashed and sassy."
— Toni Morrison (Beloved)

"...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)

"The greater evil who is in-
When both in wayward paths are straying?
The poor sinner for the pain
Or he who pays for the sin?"
— Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

"The main thing between you and God is not so much your sins; it's your damnable good works. "
— John Gerstner

"Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin."
— Bruce Chatwin (What Am I Doing Here?)

"They all have tired mouths
and bright seamless souls.
And a longing (as for sin)
sometimes haunts their dreams.

They are almost all alike;
in God's gardens they keep still,
like many, many intervals
in his might and melody.

Only when they spread their wings
are they wakers of a wind:
as if God with his broad sculptor-
hands leafed through the pages
in the dark book of the beginning."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (The Book of Images)

"Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God "sending us" to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud. "
— C.S. Lewis

"[W]as verabscheuenswerter sei, die Zeichen der Sünde oder die des Alter."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest"
— Alfred De Musset (Lorenzaccio)

"In his life Christ is an example showing
us how to live in his death he is a sacrifice satisfying our sins in his resurrection a conqueror in his ascension a king in his intercession a high priest."
— Martin Luther

"Die Sache mit dem Sündenbock funktionierte wirklich, als noch religiöse Kraft dahinterstand. Man lud dem Ziegenbock die Sünden der Stadt auf und trieb ihn hinaus, und die Stadt war gereinigt. Es funktionierte, weil alle, einschließlich der Götter, wussten, wie das Ritual zu verstehen war. Dann starben die Götter, und plötzlich musste man die Stadt ohne göttliche Hilfe reinigen. Statt Symbolen waren richtige Taten gefragt. Der Zensor war geboren, im römischen Sinn. Wachsamkeit hieß die Parole: Die Wachsamkeit aller allen gegenüber. Reinigung wurde ersetzt durch Säuberungsaktionen."
— J.M. Coetzee (Schande)

"Sin makes us moral quadriplegics."
— Paul David Tripp (Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change)

"We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice."
— Rebecca Pippert

"We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice."
— Rebecca Pippert

"“Manifest in this trade (commercial sale of indulgences via bankers) at the same time was a pernicious tendency in the Roman Catholic system, for the trade in indulgences was not an excess or an abuse but the direct consequence of the nomistic degradation of the gospel. That the Reformation started with Luther’s protest against this traffic in indulgences proves its religious origin and evangelical character. At issue here was nothing less than the essential character of the gospel, the core of Christianity, the nature of true piety. And Luther was the man who, guided by experience in the life of his own soul, again made people understand the original and true meaning of the gospel of Christ. Like the “righteousness of God,” so the term “penitence” had been for him one of the most bitter words of Holy Scripture. But when from Romans 1:17 he learned to know a “righteousness by faith,” he also learned “the true manner of penitence.” He then understood that the repentance demanded in Matthew 4:17 had nothing to do with the works of satisfaction required in the Roman institution of confession, but consisted in “a change of mind in true interior contrition” and with all its benefits was itself a fruit of grace. In the first seven of his ninety-five theses and further in his sermon on “Indulgences and Grace” (February 1518), the sermon on “Penitence” (March 1518), and the sermon on the “Sacrament of Penance” (1519), he set forth this meaning of repentance or conversion and developed the glorious thought that the most important part of penitence consists not in private confession (which cannot be found in Scripture) nor in satisfaction (for God forgives sins freely) but in true sorrow over sin, in a solemn resolve to bear the cross of Christ, in a new life, and in the word of absolution, that is, the word of the grace of God in Christ. The penitent arrives at forgiveness of sins, not by making amends (satisfaction) and priestly absolution, but by trusting the word of God, by believing in God’s grace. It is not the sacrament but faith that justifies. In that way Luther came to again put sin and grace in the center of the Christian doctrine of salvation. The forgiveness of sins, that is, justification, does not depend on repentance, which always remains incomplete, but rests in God’s promise and becomes ours by faith alone.”"
— Herman Bavinck

"We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice."
— Rebecca Pippert

"We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice."
— Rebecca Pippert