"Sinfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Reformation, by rehabilitating sex as natural, indirectly tended to substitute in popular feeling towards sex the opprobrium of sinfulness by the opprobrium of animality. Henceforth the sexual impulse must be disguised or adorned to become respectably human. This may be illustrated by a passage in Pepys's Diary in the seventeenth century. On the morning after the wedding day ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... moderately. The inhabitants boast themselves black in the face about everything in the city. They made me believe that the whole earth began here originally, and that it was also the point of departure for the sea. It did wash their walls on the southern side once upon a time; but the sinfulness of the people compelled it to retire ages ago, and it has since enjoyed a purer moral atmosphere ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... longer! Mother! Tihon! I have sinned against God and against you! Did I not swear to you I would not set eyes on anyone when you were away! You remember! you remember! And do you know what I have done in my sinfulness? The first night I went out ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... benevolent one. I had a desire to shield your sister from the woebegone lecture she would have been sure to receive on the sinfulness of her course. If he had found her playing cards, what would have ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... 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 to which ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "Be strong, having your reins, or your loins girded about." 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, ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... meeting last night was that he brung 'em a message from Elishyah, Sam says, the Elishyah that was to come. And the message was that the time was not ripe fur him to reveal himself as Elishyah unto the eyes of all men, fur they had been too much sinfulness and wickedness and walking into the ways of evil, right amongst that very congregation, and disobedience of the bishop, which was their guide. And he had sent 'em word, Elishyah had, that the bishop was his trusted servant, ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... 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 remedy to ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... a 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
... the Salvation of others, you must yourselves be the subject of the Spirit's operations within you. Not only as the great Revealer must the Holy Ghost make Divine things real to you, but as a purifying flame He must change your nature, purging away the natural corruption and sinfulness of your heart. ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... Christ, I have done. As a Southerner, I have felt it was my duty to address you. I have endeavoured to set before you the exceeding sinfulness of slavery, and to point you to the example of those noble women who have been raised up in the church to effect great revolutions, and to suffer for the truth's sake. I have appealed to your sympathies as women, to your sense ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... 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, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... authority, antagonism was not 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 ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to come down until he should have spoken the truth of his life. And ever he put a cheat upon himself by confessing in general terms his exceeding vileness and sinfulness. One night in early May, driven by remorse, and still indulging in the mockery of repentance, the minister sought the scaffold, where Hester Prynne had stood. The town was all asleep. There was no peril of discovery. And yet his vigil was surprised by Hester ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... give you an extra task or two," he said, taking up her Latin grammar, "I will give you twice the usual lesson in this. Then, not as a punishment, but for your good, I want you to search out all the texts you can find in God's Holy Word about the sinfulness of anger and pride and the duty of confessing our faults, not only to him, but to those whom we have ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... As to the sinfulness of tampering with a girl's affections by what in slang is called 'spooning,' it was purely absurd to think of it. You might as well say that playing sixpenny whist made a man a gambler. And then, as to the spooning, it was partie egale, the lady was no worse off than the gentleman. If there ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... is contained in this opinion, though obscured by being stated with exaggeration, inasmuch as the fact is overlooked that doubts may be of many different kinds. Sinfulness cannot, for example, be imputed to the mere scepticism of inquiry, the healthy critical investigation of methods or results; nor to the scepticism of despair, which, hopeless of finding truth, takes up a reactionary ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... wood. He carried a book in his hand, and sat down close by the stream, under the shade of an old beech tree. And as he read, the tears streamed from his eyes, and his sighs indicated a burdened spirit. Indeed, his heart was very sad. He was oppressed by the consciousness of the great sinfulness of his life and heart against the holy and benevolent God. He remembered the early instructions he had received at home and in the Sabbath-school. He recalled the precious privileges he had enjoyed, and he remembered, with anguish and shame, ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... one 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Buddhists of 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 ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... 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 ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... it abuseth men's wit, training it to wanton sinfulness and lustful love; for indeed that is the principal, if not the only abuse I can hear alleged. They say the comedies rather teach than reprehend amorous conceits. They say the lyric is larded with passionate sonnets. The elegiac weeps the want of his mistress. And that even to the heroical, Cupid ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Prophets? Even so the Devil becomes an Unclean Spirit, a Drinking Spirit, a Swearing Spirit, a Worldly Spirit, a Passionate Spirit, a Revengeful Spirit, and the like in the Hearts of those that are already too much of such a Spirit; and thus they become improv'd in Sinfulness. Yea, the Devil will put good men upon doing ill. Thus we read in 1 Chron. 21.1. Satan provoked David to number Israel. And so the Devil provokes men that are Eminent in Holiness unto such things as may become eminently Pernicious; he provokes ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... 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
... 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 ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... the man would be who, having been trained under refined and Christian influences, should commit a similar theft; but I do not see the application of your argument, for your question did not refer to the relative depth of guilt, but to the sinfulness or innocence of a certain dastardly act for ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... when it came to giving himself to Maisie his conscience developed a sudden sense of guiltiness. For Jerrold was essentially faithful; only his fidelity was all for Anne. His marrying Maisie had been a sin against Anne, its sinfulness disguised because he had had no pleasure in it. The thought of going back to Maisie after Anne revolted him; the thought of Anne having to share him with Maisie revolted him. Nobody, he said to himself, was ever less ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... moral blindness? It sometimes requires suffering to teach the nature of sin. A child does not know that fire is dangerous until it burns itself. Her suffering must have opened her eyes to the 'exceeding sinfulness of sin.' For her own sake I hope it is so. As for myself, it does not matter. I have ceased to regard her with any other feeling than pity and charity. And although she would become a saint I could never love her again," he said to himself one night, after passing an evening with ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the ladies' work has been peculiarly blest; and their reward is rich in 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 ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... mercenary; every bit of her fawning! Would you believe it? I give her ten shillings a week, besides all that goes down of my pats of butter and rolls, and I overheard the jade saying to the laundress that 'I could not last long; and she 'd—EXPECTATIONS!' Ah, Mr. Dale, when one thinks of the sinfulness there is in this life! But I'll not think of it. No, I'll not. Let us change the subject. You were asking my doctor's name. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... introduced in his wild but beautiful poem of "Thalaba," the vampyre corse of the Arabian maid Oneiza, who is represented as having returned from the grave for the purpose of tormenting him she best loved whilst in existence. But this cannot be supposed to have resulted from the sinfulness of her life, she being pourtrayed throughout the whole of the tale as a complete type of purity and innocence. The veracious Tournefort gives a long account in his travels of several astonishing cases of vampyrism, to which he pretends to have been an eyewitness; and ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... her great hopes indeed for her sake. When my wife and I went to see her as she lay sick, she told us how grieved and ashamed she was of her past life, but said she had a hope, through grace, that her dear sister's Saviour would be her Saviour too, for she saw her own sinfulness, felt her own helplessness, and only wished to cast herself upon Christ as her hope ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... against our human nature, Crying to God in all the polling places To heal our everlasting sinfulness And make us sages with ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... over sin works in true disciples a similar conquest. Christians label any unchristlikeness sin, and they vastly darken the world with a new sense of its evil, and are themselves most painfully aware of their own sinfulness. Jesus' conscience has creative power, and reproduces its sensitiveness in theirs; they are born into a life of new sympathies and obligations and penitences. By His faith, and supremely by His cross, He ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... 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)
... in Scripture seems often to lie between two extremes. It is emphatically so in regard to this question. What a paradox it is that side by side in the Epistle of John we should have the strongest affirmation of the Christian's sinfulness: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"; and the strongest affirmation of his sinlessness: "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... exactly. I not only know, but deeply feel, that I am a great sinner; sometimes my sinfulness appears too great to be forgiven. The trouble with me is procrastination. I cannot look back to the time when I did not feel that I ought to be a Christian, but I have always put off the subject, thinking I ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... particular, the pastor of the church to which I have just referred—a sincere, fearless, but perhaps not fully enlightened man—seized gladly upon the occasion of York's liberality to attempt to reunite the former partners. He preached an earnest sermon on the abstract sinfulness of discord and rancor. But the excellent sermons of the Rev. Mr. Daws were directed to an ideal congregation that did not exist at Sandy Bar,—a congregation of beings of unmixed vices and virtues, of single impulses, and perfectly logical motives, of preternatural simplicity, of childlike ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... loving greeting on my arrival here yesterday evening. I am troubled at your account of yourself.... What things these bodies of ours are! I sometimes think that, when we lay them down in the earth, we shall have taken leave of all our sinfulness; and yet there are sins of the soul that do not lodge in the flesh, though the greater proportion of our sins, I think, do: and when I reflect how little control we have over our physical circumstances, what with inherited ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost." "In the place where my name is recorded, there will I accept." "In every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him." Oh, comforting thought, when I am convinced of my own sinfulness, and restless and disquieted wander about in distress, and lie down in sorrow, there is One who hears the stammered entreaty, and smiles a pardon to my agonized cry, "God be merciful to me a sinner." When in my daily ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... woman made a pathetic appeal for her husband's life. She deplored the sinfulness which had resulted in the tragedy. She took on herself the blame for it all. She had sent one man to his death, and her husband stood in peril of a shameful death on the gallows. But it was in the power of Mabel to save him. On her knees she pleaded for his life; she pleaded to be ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... customs. I have left off my native rites and my native thoughts, and am now thinking how I may untie the cords of the devil, and so loosen them that they may fall off together with all sin. Christ is near, perhaps beholding my sinfulness; he looks into the hearts of men. It is well for me to grieve in the morning, in the evening, and at night, that my ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... 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. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... 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 the preacher we ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... turned on the value of the sacred volume, and the sinfulness of those who withhold it from perishing and dejected sinners. After some time, the hostess inquired, "Pray, sir, can you tell us if any thing extraordinary is passing in the world? We are shut out from all intercourse; but we have an impression that God is ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... take the blessed thought for ourselves, that Jesus Christ is our friend because He is the friend of sinners, and we are sinners. Degrees of sinfulness vary, but the fact is invariable. The universality of sinfulness makes the universality of Christ's love the more wonderful and blessed. If He did not love sinners, there would be none for Him to love. We may be His enemies, or may neglect all His beseechings; but He is still ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of them would be an additional pleasure to be derived from them; and so I added to the intellectual recreation they afforded me the more sensational excitement of what I called "a blaze;" a proceeding of which the dangerous sinfulness was severely demonstrated to me by ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... decrees, and subsequently brings into existence? and is it not maintained that he decreed from all eternity, and brings to pass whatever occurs? Either sin has not come to pass, or God is the author of it. It is useless to say that God has brought to pass the act, but not the sinfulness. The sinfulness has come to pass. It is useless to say that sin is man's, and not God's act. Man does nothing but what God has decreed, and, in some infallible way leads him to do. "God's power," says Dr. Chalmers, "gives birth to every purpose; ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... 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 ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... to read, that the petitioners, inhabitants of South Weymouth, in the State of Massachusetts, "impressed with the sinfulness of slavery, and keenly aggrieved by its existence in a part of ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... would attempt to portray, if I could. But it must have been worn to understand its torturing character! Suffice it to say that, for months past, according to this standard, I had not made a good confession at all! And now, filled with remorse for my past sacrilegious sinfulness, I resolved on making a new general confession to the religieux alluded to. But this confessor's scrupulosity exceeded everything I had, hitherto, encountered. He told me some things were mortal sins, which I had never before imagined could be such: and thus threw so many fetters around my conscience, ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... overcome for us every one of our four terrible foes—Sin, Sickness, Sorrow, Satan. He has borne our Sin, and we may lay all, even down to our sinfulness itself, on Him. "I have overcome for thee." He has borne our sickness, and we may detach ourselves from our old infirmities and rise into His glorious life and strength. He has borne our sorrows, and we must not even carry a care, but rejoice evermore, and even glory in tribulations also. ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... sick people, to bring back joy to a few darkened homes by the restoring of their dead, to formulate a system of moral and ethical teachings, to start a wave of kindliness and a ministry of mercy and love; he had come to save a lost world, to lift men up out of sinfulness ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... of fact. And then he wondered why they were so patient of constraint? Why had they not risen long ago and obliterated the pretensions of those arrogant, indolent larvae peopling the angular apertures of the honey cells—those larvae of whom, by birth and wealth, sinfulness and uselessness, he was ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... living, and one of the bailies of Crail. Nor is it to be debated that the scene was such as ought not to have been seen in a Christian land; but in those days the blasphemous progeny of the Roman harlot were bold with the audacious sinfulness of their parent, and set little store by the fear of God or the contempt of man. It was a sore trial and a struggle in the bosom of my grandfather that day to think of making a show of homage and service towards the mitred Belial and high priest of the abominations ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... congregation if they would not leave the responses to a paid choir. "Lor, bless yer," as Betsy Jane Ward would say, a choir will sing, anything put before them if it is set to music; and they think no more of getting through all that sad business about personal sinfulness, agonising repentance, and a general craving for forgiveness, than the odd woman did when she used to kiss her cow and say it was delicious. There was once a period when all Parish Church goers made open confession ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... weary 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
... declared that bodily pains are provoked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but that they are often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. St. Niles and St. Gregory of Tours gave examples to show the sinfulness of resorting to medicine instead of trusting to ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... sons, friends and followers, as Muchukunda and Mandhatri and king Marutta, as the gods through power of asceticism and the celestial Rishis also, had all obtained fame, so wilt thou also obtain great celebrity. The sons of Dhritarashtra, on the other hand, enslaved by sinfulness and ignorance, will, without doubt, be soon exterminated ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... behind that veil of 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 of strength may still be required; both are therefore entirely ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... from that," said Mrs. Clarke, looking at the now buttered toast. "If my mother-in-law and my husband had any psychological faculty they would never have mistaken my unconventionality, which I shall never give up, for common, and indeed very vulgar, sinfulness." ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... 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 International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... particular sins of which he was guilty, so far as he specifies them, were profane swearing, from which he suddenly ceased at a woman's reproof, and certain sports, innocent enough in themselves, which the prevailing Puritan rigor severely condemned. What, then, of that vague and exceeding sinfulness of which he so bitterly accuses and repents himself? It was that vision of sin, however disproportionate, which a deeply wounded and graciously healed spirit often has, in looking back upon the past from that theological standpoint whence all want of conformity to the perfect law of God ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... womanish; even in her indifference she preferred straightforward, honest damnation to the soft self-deceptions of feminine religiosity. Ah! If she could have been a Roman Catholic, genuine and convinced—with what ardour would she have cast herself down before the confessional, and whispered her sinfulness to the mysterious face within; and with what ecstasy would she have received the absolution—that cleansing bath of the soul! Then—she could have recommenced!... But she was not a Roman Catholic. She could no more become a Roman Catholic than she could become the queen of some ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... 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, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... 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 ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... you." The remembrance of the rigorous account which we are to give to God, made him often burst into the most pathetic expressions of holy fear. But humility was his distinguishing virtue, and he always expressed, both in words and actions, the deepest sentiments of his own nothingness, sinfulness, miseries, and pride. He often admired how perfectly the saints saw their own imperfections, and that they were dust, worms, and unworthy ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and tell you how happy you are all, for I don't reckon you're much wickeder than you are friendly on the average. I keep a-hearing about murdering and stealing and whiskey boating and such things. They're signs of the world's sinfulness. We talk a heap about such things; they're real, of course, and we cayn't escape them. At the same time, look ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... brethren in commemorating the Saviour as he desired his friends and brethren to remember him by the rite of the last supper. Until then, the Christian communion was but for a favored few. Mr. Hale believed that the greater the sinfulness of the individual soul the greater the need and the greater the title to be taken into the fellowship and the brotherhood of the Saviour of souls. So, without polemical discussion, or any heat of controversy, he set the example which has been so widely followed. This meant a great ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... propriety, is the limit of profit, or of gain, which will justify it as a necessity. But with all that has been written on this subject in the passing centuries, the advocates of the "lie of necessity" have had to contend with the moral sense of the world as to the sinfulness of lying, and with the fact that lying is not merely a violation of a social duty, but is contrary to the demands of the very nature of God, and of the nature of man as formed in the image of God. And it has been the practice of such ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... over body formed no part of his theory of things. Such an idea would have been incomprehensible to a Greek in Plato's time. Their consciences were not over active. They were not burdened with a sense of sinfulness. Their aspirations were decidedly finite; and they believed in securing the maximum completeness of this terrestrial life. Consequently they never set the physical below the intellectual. To return to our author, they never, in their statues, subordinated symmetry to ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... just because I cannot forget what I have been, that I come here to make amends for past neglect and sinfulness. I have a debt there, sir"—and she pointed solemnly towards the sky—"which must be paid. I have been an unfaithful steward, and must be reconciled to my good master ere I die. You may trust me. You know my income and my means. It is trifling; comparatively ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various |
