One leak will sink a ship, and one sin will destroy a sinner. John Bunyan, A Pilgrim's Progress
I waive the quantum o’ the sin;
The hazard of concealing;
But och! it hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling! Robert Burns
Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure. Lord Byron, Don Juan
5The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity. George Bernard Shaw, The Devil’s Disciple, 1901
Keep up appearances; there lies the test;
The world will give thee credit for the rest.
Outward be fair, however foul within;
Sin if thou wilt, but then in secret sin. Charles Churchill, 1731-64, Night
The sinner is at the heart of Christianity ... No one is as competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. No one, except a saint. Charles Peguy
There’s only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook, 1962
Sins become more subtle as you grow older. You commit sins of despair rather than lust. Piers Paul Read, Daily Telegraph 3rd October 1990
My Hell-Hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which man’s polluting Sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure, till cramm’d and gorg’d, nigh burst
With suck’t and glutted offal, at one sling of thy victorious arm. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book X 630-634
Augustine came to believe that all humans inherit sin from the sin of Adam and Eve, and that sexual desire is an appetite at the base of physical body rather than the soul. And that the sexual act is the way that sin is transmitted from one generation to the next. It means that you and I are so corrupted by sin, there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves from Hell. Only God can do that by His grace. And there is no reason why he shouldn’t make completely random decisions as to who to send to Heaven and who to leave in Hell. We have no say in the matter because we are nothing but corruption. Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, BBC 2009
So for Augustine all sex is intrinsically evil and sinful ... All children are born into sin. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Sex and the Church I: From Pleasure to Sin, BBC 2015
I had arrived at the conclusion that the Plymouth Brethren were an exceptionally detestable crew. I wanted sin. A supreme spiritual sin. But hadn’t the slightest idea how to go about it. Aleister Crowley, diary entry
Is it moral for example to tell children – to tell anybody – that their sins can be forgiven them because of a human sacrifice in which they had no say; in which if they had had any children say, they would want it stopped. Christopher Hitchens, Freedom From Religion Foundation, 2007
I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There’s no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man’s debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
There is a central paradox at the core of religion. The three great monotheisms teach people to think abjectly of themselves, as miserable and guilty sinners prostrate before an angry and jealous god ... The message is one of continual submission, gratitude and fear. Life itself is a poor thing: an interval in which to prepare for the hereafter or the coming – or second coming – of the Messiah. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great pp73-74
I have to accept that I am responsible for the flogging and mocking and crucifixion, in which I had no say and no part, and agree that every time I decline this responsibility, or that I sin in word or deed, I am intensifying the agony of it. Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had no part, the sin of Adam. ibid. p209
Urging humans to be superhumans, on pain of death and torture, is the urging of terrible self-abasement at their repeated and inevitable failure to keep the rules. ibid. p213
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. James Hogg, novel 1824
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end? Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1889
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ. Martin Luther
I always claim the mission workers came out too early to catch any sinners on this part of Broadway. At such an hour the sinners are still in bed resting up from their sinning of the night before, so they will be in good shape for more sinning a little later on. Damon Runyan, The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown
Repentance is but want of power to sin. John Dryden
In a closed society where everybody’s guilty the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. Hunter S Thompson
There is no sin except stupidity. Oscar Wilde
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
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. Oscar Wilde
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Oscar Wilde
Charity creates a multitude of sins. Oscar Wilde
I would rather die than do something which I know to be a sin, or to be against God’s will. Joan of Arc
Ignorance is not innocence but sin. Robert Browning
All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions. Reinhold Niebuhr
’Tis no sin to cheat the devil. Daniel Defoe
Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action. Cyril Connolly
Really to sin you have to be serious about it. Henrik Ibsen
Doubt as sin – Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature – is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
The only sin is the sin of being born. Samuel Beckett
The only sin is mediocrity. Martha Graham
There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men’s sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Before I knowed it, I was saying out loud, The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath