“Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?”
“As to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, do yet cleave to them with a somewhat immoderate attachment, they have discovered by the pain of losing these things how much they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of their own making.”
“Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate the the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin.”
“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he comes involved in it, the more disastrous his isolation.”
“Maybe there is a law after all. Of nature. Like gravity. An unwritten axiom that governs out emotional dealings. What you do comes back to you in twice the force. We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by them.”
“Usury was a sin, according to Christian teachings. Apparently, though, while lending money was sinful, borrowing was not, so many of these same Christians availed themselves of the Jewish money-lenders’ services, with the result that they were deeply in debt to them.”
“I knew that in doing so I was committing a sin- a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it- if such a thing were possible- even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the most Merciful and most Terrible God.”
″...if I die tonight I’m in a state of sin for stealing and I could go straight to hell stuffed with fish and chips but it’s Saturday and if the priests are still in the confession boxes I can clear my soul after my feed.”
″ ‘They mean,’ he said sadly, ′ that you must weep with me for my sins, because I have no tears, and pray with me for my soul, because I have no faith, and then, if you have always been sweet, and good, and gentle, the angel of death will have mercy on me.′ ”
“For my part, if a man must needs be a knave I would have him a debonair knave... It makes your sin no worse, as I conceive, to do it a la mode, and stylishly.”
“The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.
And He will say, ‘Come to me! I have already forgiven thee once.... I have forgiven thee once.... Thy sins which are many are forgiven thee for thou hast loved much....’
“What, the priest? I don’t want him. You haven’t got a rouble to spare. I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have suffered.... And if He won’t forgive me, I don’t care!”
“I did confess, but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins.”