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Sinful   Listen
adjective
Sinful  adj.  Tainted with, or full of, sin; wicked; iniquitous; criminal; unholy; as, sinful men; sinful thoughts. "Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sinful" Quotes from Famous Books



... sinful," observed Mary Percival. "We have much to be thankful for; at least we are independent, and if we are ever to repay the kindness of our uncle and aunt, who must feel their change of condition so much more than we do, it must be by cheerfulness and content. I have ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... to heaven and the child's salvation; but the day came when Archie spoke. It was 1801, and Archie was seven, and beyond his years for curiosity and logic, when he brought the case up openly. If judging were sinful and forbidden, how came papa to be a judge? to have that sin for a trade? to bear the name ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... distinguishing yourselves from the sinful on earth, you will be gloriously distinguished from them ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... "They know the righteousness of God," and are "haters of God" on account of his purity; and their worshipping of idols does not proceed from ignorance of God, from an intellectual inability to know God, but from "corruption of heart," and a voluntary choice of, and a "pleasure" in, the sinful practices accompanying idol worship. Therefore, argues the Apostle, they are "without excuse." The whole drift and aim of the argument of Paul is, not to show that the heathen were, by their depravity, incapacitated to know God, but that because they knew God and knew his righteous law, therefore ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... experience. From his youth upwards he had been trained with every weapon in the chapel armoury, and yet he now found himself as powerless as the merest novice to prevent the very sinful occupation of dwelling upon every attitude of Pauline, and outlining every one of her limbs. Do what he might, her image was for ever before his eyes, and reconstructed itself after every attempt to abolish it, just as a reflected image in ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... knew, and he would have straightened himself, but her hands sprang to meet each other round his neck, and her face was close to his. But the vision of his own sinful mother rose in ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... think each thoughtless youth Contained of wickedness a skinful, And burnt to teach the awful truth, That walking out on Sunday's sinful. ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... weapon a staff, their garments the leather coat, their provisions pieces of moldy bread, and their path fifteen hundred miles of sands, across the desert. To such an end had come a disobedient and sinful generation! ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... shrill and quivering and just out of tune, so that it jarred every nerve in Maggie's body, "Thou seest what we are, miserable sinners not worthy of Thy care or goodness, sunk deep in the mire of evil living and evil 'abits, nevertheless, oh God, we, knowing Thy loving 'eart towards Thy sinful servants, do pray Thee that Thou wilt give us Thy blessing before we leave this Thy 'ouse this night; a new contrite 'eart is what we beg of Thee, that we may go out into this evil world taught by Thee to search out our ways and improve our thoughts, caring for nothing but Thee, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... defended its changes from English custom under three heads: (1) That things, inexpedient but not utterly unlawful in England, became under changed conditions sinful in New England. (2) Things tolerated in England, because unremovable, were shameful in the new land where they were removable. (3) Many things, upon mature deliberation and tried by Scripture, were found to be sinful. But: "We profess unfeignedly ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... marble, to fashion by keen, driving blows the fair statue; the fine, piercing instrument, "the little diamond-pointed ill," it is that traces the forms of beauty on the hard onyx. There had been sorrow in the tale of my friend, temptation at least, if not sinful yielding, labor and pain, which had broken down the fair mind itself,—but it had all created a gracious form for the memory to dwell on, an undying association with the "Tancredi," as beautiful, instructive, and joy-giving as the "Divino Amore" of Raphael, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... idleness, of a horror of suffering, and often given to Judas in mediaeval times, is significant of treason and envy. Orange: of which Frederic Portal speaks as the revelation of Divine Love, the communion of God with man, mingling the blood of Love to the sinful hue of yellow, may be taken to bear a worse meaning with the idea of falsehood and torment; and, especially when it verges on red, expresses the defeat of a soul over-ridden by its sins, hatred of Love, contempt of Grace, the end ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... vulgarities,—their bad taste would torture me; their want of refinement would act upon my nature like a blister. But I am not proud, I uphold my dignity, I respect myself and my family, but with sinful, unholy pride I ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... are we from the delicate sensibility to evil of Santa Teresa, or the keenness of spiritual vision which enabled the man of God to see the white dove beneath the soiled feathers of the sinful woman. The difference is not as that between the taste of a peasant and that of an artist, but as that between a corpse and a living man. It is evident that we have suffered death, albeit we ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... me for that is past, I will offend no more, In this most vile and sinful cast, Which I ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... many of them taken advantage of the indulgence, were prepared to resist the measures of their more violent brethren, who proposed a declaration in which they should give testimony against the warrants and instructions for indulgence as sinful and unlawful acts. This delicate question had been passed over in silence in the first draught of the manifestos which they intended to publish, of the reasons of their gathering in arms; but it had been stirred anew during Balfour's absence, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the night and day, When the Fairy King has power, That I sunk down in a sinful fray, And 'twixt life and death was snatched away To the joyless ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... and wept. An eloquent panegyric was preached by a Dominican Father. The peroration was an appeal to the assembled thousands to kneel and implore the blessing of the saint on the city and on themselves. Few sent a more fervent appeal than the poor, sinful girls who shunned the gaze of the crowd. The prayer of Charles was heard, and God, who works wonders in the least of his works, brought about the conversion of this child of predestination in a manner as ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... But, you see, I don't want to dress up in my best clothes every day, and sit in the big parlor, with my hands crossed before me in idleness, all day long. It seems like a sinful wasting of time, in one like me, who for cooking, washing and ironing, or scrubbing, sweeping, and dusting, hasn't her betters in this univarsal world!" said ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... seem that what you say ought to be true, and yet I have always half-feared God—that is, when I thought about him at all. I have been taught that he was to be served; that he was a jealous God; that he was angry with the sinful, and that the prayers of the wicked were an abomination. I am sure the Bible says the latter is true, or something ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... silence occasioned by various hindrances, I sit down to answer your inestimable favour by the late dear Mr. White, who I hope is rejoicing, far above the troubles and trials of this frail sinful state. All the books mentioned in your truly condescending and affectionate letter, came safe, and were distributed according to your humane directions. You can scarcely conceive, much less than I describe, the gratitude excited by so seasonably and precious a supply of the means of knowledge and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... Dick. You see I do not fear to speak as I think, and such a course as you purpose pursuing seems to me both mean and sinful. Running away—stealing out of your father's house like a thief in the night; try to picture it fully, clearly to yourself, and then let me hear your verdict once again. You talk of always having longed for a sailor's life; you speak about ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... and a lieutenant in our English navy paid sixpence uniformly for a handsome dinner; sixpence, I mean, apiece. But two months later came a golden blockhead, who instructed the people that it was "sinful" to charge less than three shillings. In Wales, meantime, I suffered grievously from want of books; and fancying, in my profound ignorance of the world, that I could borrow money upon my own expectations, or, at ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... seemed to have a weakness; who had entered the lists against even Lady Augusta, and had come off victorious; who had been mock-worldly, and coquettish, and daring; who had made open onslaught upon eligible Philistines; who had angled prettily and with sinful success for ineligible Bohemians! What did it mean? And where was Donne? Certainly he was never to be seen at Bloomsbury Place or in its vicinity in ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... grimace behind his hand, which I fancy he did not mean his father to see. Then, he went on, "'They say' that Mr Whitefield is so fanatical and extravagant in preaching against worldliness, that he counts it sinful to smell to a rose, or to eat ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... peculiar to Christians. He who goes downward often puts forth as much force to kill a noble nature as another does to annihilate a sinful one. There was something in this letter so keen, so searching, so self-revealing, that it brought on one of those interior crises in which a man is convulsed with the struggle of two natures, the godlike and the demoniac, and from which he must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... to become a merchant," he said in a low voice. "My father is a pious preacher, and hates and detests warfare; he says it is sinful for men to raise their weapons against their brethren, as though they were wild beasts, against which you cannot defend yourself but by killing them. My mother, in former days, became familiar with the horrors of war; she fears, therefore, lest her only son should fall prey to them, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense; But felt through all this fleshy dress, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... third scene," he went on to say, "the time when Mme. Fauvel, having Madeleine for an adviser, judged us at our true value. Oh! you need not flatter yourself that she did not fear and despise us both. If she did not hate you, Raoul, it was because a mother's heart always forgives a sinful child. A mother can despise and worship her son ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... you want for a long while—but take care of it; for there is no saying but you may require it. And now, Edward, call your brother and sisters to me, that I may bid them farewell. I am, as we all are, sinful, but I trust in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ. Edward, I have done my duty toward you, as well as I have been able; but promise me one thing—that you will read the Bible and prayers every morning and evening, as I ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... sway'd by sinful beauty's destiny, Finds her tyrannic power must now expire, Who meant to kindle Goltho in her eye, But to her breast has brought ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... saith [3921]Plutarch, "from the midst of a feast" before he was drunk, "the longer he had lived, the worse he would have been," et quo vita longior, (Ambrose thinks) culpa numerosior, more sinful, more to answer he would have had. If he was naught, thou mayst be glad he is gone; if good, be glad thou hadst such a son. Or art thou sure he was good? It may be he was an hypocrite, as many are, and howsoever he spake thee fair, peradventure he prayed, amongst the rest ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Tira Blake came to be told of Laura's trouble, and the reasons of it, that sage and prudent friend gave counsel that cheered her like a cordial, telling her it would be sinful to marry a man whom she disliked so heartily, and that in such a matter no one had the right to demand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... neighbours. But in the example of that little child of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ the Lord, God was saying to men, "Acquaint yourselves with Me, and be at peace." God is not selfish; it is our selfishness which has made us unlike God. God so loved the sinful world, that He gave His only- begotten Son for it. Is that an action like ours? The Son of God so obeyed His Father, and so loved this world, that He made Himself of no reputation, and took on Him the likeness of ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... sake of guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the time Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk The last five years and better. It ain't ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... then, to-night Let us assay our plot; which, if it speed, Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed, And lawful meaning in a lawful act; Where both not sin, and yet a sinful ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... never! Life and death, ruin and salvation, corruption and purity, are perhaps in the balance together, and the scale of your destiny may hang on a single word of yours. Speak out, boy! Tell these fellows that unseemly words wound your conscience; tell them that they are ruinous, sinful, damnable; speak out and save yourself and the rest. Virtue is strong and beautiful, Eric, and vice is downcast in her awful presence. Lose your purity of heart, Eric, and you have lost a jewel which ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... apprehension. She knew he was very religious, and stretched her comprehension to imagine what he might be like. She thought of Bossuet's sermons walking about under a Protestant coat, and felt vaguely alarmed and sinful in his presence, as she used to when entering under the shadows of a cathedral. In her the religious sentiment, though vague, was strong. Nothing in the character of Burr had ever awakened so much disapprobation as his occasional sneers at religion. On such occasions she always reproved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... good become death to me? Far be it! But sin, that it might appear sin, working death to me by that which is good, that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... stars, and any pernicious derangement of the constellation would only entail destruction upon the family he had founded. In this way it was that Wolfgang's union with Julia seemed to the old man like a sinful crime, committed against the ordinances of the Power which had stood by him in all his worldly undertakings; and any means that might be employed for Julia's ruin he would have regarded as justified for the same reason, for Julia had, he conceived, ranged herself against him like some demoniacal ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... and satin." Opposite the platform, over the north door of the cathedral, was a great crucifix—a famous image, in those days called the Rood of Northen; and at the foot of it, inside a rail, a fire was burning, with the sinful books, the Tracts and Testaments, ranged round it in baskets, waiting for the execution ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... she said, 'you are so good, it makes me feel what a sinful woman I am! I don't mean that I ever gave in for a moment to that nonsense of poor Ida's which was her only bit of excuse. No one that had ever been a mother could, you know; but I won't say that I did not grumble at ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, was invited to dine with Stephen Collins, a typical Quaker, and was amazed at the feast set before him. From that time his diary records one after another of these "sinful feasts," as he calls them. But the sin at which he thus looks askance never seems to have withheld him from a generous indulgence. "Drank Madeira at a great rate," he says on one occasion, "and took no harm from it." Madeira obtained in the trade with Spain was the popular drink even ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... give account for our talents. Now, to allow the talent of beauty, for instance, to degenerate into what it is likely to do in your case, Verena, is distinctly wicked. To allow you to sink when you might rise is sinful. To allow you to be selfish when you might be unselfish is also wrong. Your talents, and the talents of Pauline, and the talents of your other sisters must be cultivated and brought to the fore. I want ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... This sinful compliance of Dougal's angered the Bailie so much that he cried to the soldiers to take Dougal away, because now he deserved hanging for ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... Tom for the number of prostrate figures, redolent of bad rum, lying outside on the path in the early morning, showing by the scarcity of their attire that they had been "gone through" by thieving natives, expressed the opinion that Tom was either going mad, or "was getting consairned" about his sinful soul. ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... is useless to quibble about this, seeking to explain away plain things: the truth remains that "Siegfried" is a glorification of one view of life, "Parsifal" of its direct opposite and flat contradiction; and anyone who accepts the one view must needs loathe the other as sinful. To me the "Siegfried" view of life commends itself; and I unhesitatingly assert the sinfulness of the "Parsifal" view. The two operas invite comparison; for at the outset their heroes seem to be the same man. Siegfried and Parsifal are both untaught fools; each has his understanding partly enlightened ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world."' So read the Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled voice, for his heart misgave him that all was not quite right between us and our sister—or say our sister in Law—Poor Law—and that we sometimes read these words in an awful manner, over our Sister ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... [Greek] (a fitting decency), but also [Greek] (a stately gravity), a kind of venerable majesty, suitable to that high rank which we bear of God's friends and children; adorning our holy profession, and guarding us from all impressions of sinful vanity. Wherefore we should not let ourselves be transported into any excessive pitch of lightness, inconsistent with or prejudicial to our Christian state and business. Gravity and modesty are the senses of piety, which being once slighted, sin ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... I understand love. Do you think she has read my play, or that she wants to see it? Oh, she is so good, so self-sacrificing and considerate, but to go out with me for a night's fun she would regard as sinful. Once I treated her to champagne, you know, and instead of feeling happy over it, she picked up the wine list to see what it cost. And when she read the price, she wept—wept because Marion was in need of new stockings. It is beautiful, of course: it is touching, if you please. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... a wanion to ye!" said Raoul. "Will you think of your own old sinful carcass, when you should be saving your sweet young mistress from shame and oppression?—And for thy ill tongue, and worse practices, his lordship knows they are bred ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... days and added years would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast—at her, the child of honourable parents—at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman—at her, who had once been innocent—as the figure, the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... commencement of the downfall of the Church of England to rent charges, and the commutation of clergymen's incomes. Since Judas, there had never been, to her thinking, a traitor so base, or an apostate so sinful, as Colenso; and yet, of the nature of Colenso's teaching she was as ignorant as the towers of the cathedral ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... torment: He sold them not to us, that Lord Omnipotent. Therefore Saint Peter the apostle doth say That Jesu's curse hath all they Which God their Saviour do buy or sell, Or they for any money do take or tell. Sinful priests giveth the sinners example bad; Their children sitteth by other men's fires, I have heard; And some haunteth women's company, With unclean life, as lusts of lechery These be with ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... the loins of our minds, and resolve to seek a baptism of love from the Holy Ghost, that we may be perfected in love; that we may love God first, and all else in Him, ascending from our failures to a more complete conformity to the love wherewith He has loved us; embracing the sinful and erring in the compass of our compassion, as we embrace the Divine and Eternal in the compass of our ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... the conflict may be reversed; there are people who apparently are very disreputable, and who do not take the slightest pains to limit their sexual pleasures. But looked at from all sides this is only a sinful attitude, adopted, God knows for what grounds, because in them, back of this, there is a soul, which is kept just as much in the subconsciousness as the immoral nature is kept in the subconscious of moral men. (It is best for men to avoid extremes as far as ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... the pursuit of the external is sinful, but it is unsatisfying, while the soul that has caught a glimpse of that wonderful ecstasy of Illumination, has found that ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... inn, in a solitary village, am I set by myself, to amuse my brooding fancy as I may. Solitary confinement, you know, is Howard's favourite idea of reclaiming sinners; so let me consider by what fatality it happens, that I have so long been exceeding sinful as to neglect the correspondence of the most valued friend I have on earth. To tell you that I have been in poor health will not be excuse enough, though it is true. I am afraid that I am about to suffer for the follies of my youth. My medical friends ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... chemically analyze them to be sure they are not reflected light alone, from her own imagination. That frightsome word to many, "old maid," ought not to exercise any influence over her firmly balanced mind; better far, however, lead a single life, than form a sinful alliance, that can only result in misery and wretchedness. Some of the purest and best women that ever lived, have belonged to that much decried, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... Prechln of Buslar, no wonder if God had smitten him for his pride and arrogance, as it is said (Luke i. 51), 'He scatters such as are proud of heart,' for, though her feudal vassal, he had refused to do her homage; therefore here was no witch-work, but only God's work, testifying against sinful haughtiness and pride. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... friendless; but I never sought revenge on the Indians, though Mordecai did. I'm glad that you're going to preach among them. I couldn't do it, with such memories as mine, perhaps; but I'm glad you can, 'n' I hope that you will go and do them good. Heaven bless those who seek to do good in this sinful world—" ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... sake he abandoned me,—you whom he was going to marry,—you with whom he hoped to enjoy long happy years, and a happiness not furtive and sinful like ours, but a legitimate, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... excitement, the bar'foot onclothed trooth is that his snorin' falls nothin' short of bein' sinful. Boggs has plenty of countenance when he brings them snores to ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... love, which Julia had long waited most anxiously for. Most eloquently did Mr. Wilmot pour out the whole tide of his affection for the beautiful but sinful girl, who, in a very becoming and appropriate manner, murmured an acknowledgment of requited love. Thus the two ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... extreme grace of the movement, which neither their rough clothes, the uneven floor, nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the second time, still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him, he started up as if to plant himself in their way, then checked himself, ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... turning over the leaves of her volume, rustling them to and fro with uncertain fingers, until among the earlier pages she found one which had reference to this picture. She reads it close to the old gentleman's ear: it is a record merely of sinful thought which never was embodied in an act, but, while Memory is reading, Conscience unveils her face and strikes a dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith. Though not a death-blow, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... would not punish her if she had done wrong in His sight. Surely, if she lived henceforth in fear of Him, He would let her keep this priceless love which had come to her! And it was impossible that He should regard it as an inordinate and sinful affection—since it had filled her life with light. As the wife of Hugh Chiltern she sought a blessing. Would God withhold it? He would not, she was sure, if they lived a sober and a righteous life. He would take that into account, for He ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... for winning the world. You can never make men angry by saying to them, 'We have found tho Messias.' You cannot irritate people, or provoke them into a controversial opposition when you say, 'Brother, let me tell you my experience. I was dark, sad, sinful, weak, solitary, miserable; and I got light, gladness, pardon, strength, companionship, and a joyful hope. I was blind—you remember me when my eyes were dark, and I sat begging outside the Temple; I was blind, now I see—look ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... capital punishment. Les Diables Froids personifies the impassible artist. It is a page torn from the book of hell. Rops had read Dante; he knew the meaning of the lines: "As the rill that runs from Bulicame to be portioned out amid the sinful women"; and more than once he explored the frozen circles of Gehenna. Victor Hugo was much stirred by the design, Le Pendu, which depicts a man's corpse swinging under a huge bell in some vast and immemorial, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses. Puritanism in this the twentieth century is as much the enemy of freedom and beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock. It repudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; but being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions, Puritanism is itself the creator of the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... time a friend of mine prevailed on me to go To see the dazzling splendors of a sinful ballet show, And after we had reveled in the saltatory sights We sought a neighboring cafe for more tangible delights; When I demanded of my friend what viands he preferred, He quoth: "A large cold bottle and a small ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... fondly. Ugly, heartless, sinful, she might be to others; but to him she had been a double mother. "I'll never forget you," he ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... self to deny;" never for one moment in which he can say, "I do not need to deny self." No, this fellowship with the cross of Christ will be an unceasing denial of self every hour and every moment by the grace of God. There is no place where there is full deliverance from the power of this sinful self. We are to be crucified with Christ Jesus. We are to live with Him as those who have never been baptized into His death. Think of that! Christ had no sinful self, but He had a self and that self He actually gave up unto death. In Gethsemane He said, "Father, not ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray

... a sinful thought, and he crossed himself. Then a little bird sang among the bushes, and the old Minnesong came ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... not reject "the doctrines of grace," but the corruptions by which they have been dishonoured. They maintain, that on the absolute predestinarian scheme, there is no room for grace, such as the Gospel exhibits to the sinful and the lost; and that their own views are not only more accordant with the justice, but with the unmerited and infinite mercy of God. They ascribe all true holiness ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out as certain is that those terrible passions which turned his youth upside down, nevermore play any part in his life. From the moment he fell on his knees under the fig-tree at Milan, his sinful heart is a dead heart. He has been freed from almost all the weaknesses of the old nature, not only from its vices and carnal affections, but from its most pardonable lapses—save, perhaps, some old sediment ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves, Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... me of which, poor thing, she went off into tears; so that I prayed to be delivered from such happiness. It's the miserable story of an American girl born neither to submit basely nor to rebel crookedly marrying a shining sinful Frenchman who believes a woman must do one or the other of those things. The lightest of US have a ballast that they can't imagine, and the poorest a moral imagination that they don't require. She was romantic and perverse—she thought the world she ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... sir; it is absolutely requisite, and not at all sinful. There is one language for the pulpit, and another for on board ship, and, in either situation, a man must make use of those terms most likely to produce the necessary effect upon his listeners. Whether ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... the King only the city Gebal escapes for the King. Behold the city Simyra is subjected. He has smitten the city Ullaza.(182) The captains of both have gone into exile. Behold this sin Aziru wrought. Sinful are his strivings against her ... he has smitten all the lands of Ham (Am), lands of the King; and now he has despatched his men to destroy all the lands of Ham; and the King of the land of the Hittites, and the king of the land ...
— Egyptian Literature

... this Giuditta Astarita know what Matilde had said and done? It was not natural, and not natural meant supernatural—supernatural meant the possibility of communication, and she had loved the dead man with all her big, sinful soul. ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... all who ask may have it;—and that it bids me to part from him, and to see him no more. We met in the prison for the last time—at least for years to come. It may be, in years hence, when—when our knees and our tears and our contrition have changed our sinful hearts, sir, and wrought our pardon, we may meet again—but not now. After what has passed, I could not bear to see him. I wish him well, sir; but I wish him farewell, too; and if he has that—that regard towards us which he speaks of, I beseech ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... simple but pregnant warnings. They awakened but little response from the English government save cavils and teasing reminders that Wesel had been the cradle of German Calvinism, the Rhenish Geneva, and that it was sinful to leave it longer in the hands of Spain. As if the Advocate had not proved to demonstration that to stock hands for a new deal at that moment was to give ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... situation and the further horrors that might be mine aboard this accursed pirate ship, I nevertheless knew great content for that, with every plunge and roll of the vessel, I was so much the nearer Nombre de Dios town where lay prisoned my enemy, Richard Brandon; thus I made of my sinful lust for vengeance a comfort to my present miseries, and plotting my enemy's destruction, found therein ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... if that young girl has taken to evil ways. If going to meeting three times every Sabbath day, and knowing the catechism by heart, and reading of good books, and the best of daily advice, and all needful discipline, could have corrected her sinful nature, she would never have run away from a home where she enjoyed all these privileges. It's that Indian blood, Cousin Silence. It's a great mercy you and I have n't got any of it in our veins! What can you expect of children that come from heathens and savages? You ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of life, who sell human beings for money in order to buy quiet or esteem for themselves. If a Judas stands in the way of honest people, lying in wait to betray them, I should be a Judas myself if I did not destroy him. It's sinful, you say? And do they, these masters of life, do they have the right to keep soldiers and executioners, public houses and prisons, places of penal servitude, and all that vile abomination by which ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... of making up, next. To my mind, of course I may be wrong, but to my mind the staying up late nights ain't half as bad as getting up in the morning. Of course, I don't know who or what this old wop is that made this crack, but if he thinks we spend most of our time in sinful idleness he'd better copper his bet. All we do is rehearse all morning, matinee all afternoon, performance all evening and travel all night. The rest of the time we have to ourselves, and he thinks we frivol. Why, he ain't wise to ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... wonder how he pictured to himself the image of God; I wonder, nay, I know, how he felt as he submitted his whole man—body, soul, and spirit—to the renewing of the Holy Ghost. And did he begin and continue to die more and more unto sin, till he died altogether to this sinful world, and live more and more unto righteousness, till he went to live with Knox, and Rutherford, and Hume, and his father and mother in the ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... everlasting remembrance. (4.) As to the last part of the objection, it must be granted, that in foro homines, their actions and attainments cannot now be pled upon, but in foro Dei, that which was lawful from the beginning cannot afterwards be made sinful[21] or void; and the longer they have been buried under the ashes of neglect and apostacy, the more need have they to be raised up and revived. It is usual for men to keep that well which was left them by their fathers, and for us either to oppose or industriously conceal any part of these ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... whole."—Brit. Gram. and Buchanan's cor. "And the princes offered for the dedicating of the altar."—Numb. cor. "Boasting is not only a telling of lies, but also of many unseemly truths."—Sheffield cor. "We freely confess that the forbearing of prayer in the wicked is sinful."—Barclay cor. "For the revealing of a secret, there is no remedy."—G. Brown. "He turned all his thoughts to the composing of laws for the good of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... doing that which they conscientiously believe is required at their hands; casting out their names as evil-doers for honestly endeavoring to support one of the most dignified testimonies ever given to the Society of Friends to hold up before a sinful world. These reflections pained me deeply; for all the convictions of my soul, and all my early religious recollections, bind me fast to the principles of Friends; and I cannot but mourn to see how the world has shorn them of their strength. I spent nearly ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... conduct themselves in such a manner as to secure a happy development of their offspring! Puny, deformed, and feeble-minded infants are daily ushered into the world because of a want of knowledge, or a sinful neglect of those special measures imperatively demanded in the ordering of the daily life, by the changed state of the system consequent upon pregnancy. We shall therefore point out those laws which cannot be infringed with impunity, and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... wise and worthy knight; Of gentle manners, as of generous race, Bless'd with much sense, more riches, and some grace: Yet, led astray by Venus' soft delights, He scarce could rule some idle appetites: For long ago, let priests say what they could, Weak sinful laymen were ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... on the persecutions because it saw in Christianity that which threatened its own existence. The Christians declined to support the state religion; they even condemned it unsparingly as sinful and idolatrous. The Christians, moreover, would not worship the genius, or guardian spirit of the emperor, and would not burn incense before his statue, which stood in every town. Such a refusal to take what was really an oath of allegiance was regarded ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... most rudely driven From this low orb (our sinful seat) to Heaven, While filial piety can please the ear, Thy name will still occur for ever dear: This very spot now humaniz'd shall crave From all a tear of pity on thy grave. O flow'r of flow'rs! which we shall see no more, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various

... us, Oh Lord, And search the ground Of every sinful heart! (Uncle Ben stopped to think). What 'eer of sin In us be found ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... by by Moulang's pipes bearing in his breast the sweets of sin, by Wine's antiques, in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by Carroll's dusky ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... frail and sinful to be vindictive toward even the worst criminals. We owe much to the good Providence of God, ordaining for us a lot more favorable to virtue. We all had that within us, that might have been pushed to the same excess. Perhaps we should have fallen as he did, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... heart Sarah could not but allow that her mother was in the right, especially when it occurred to her that Lauritz and Henrietta were no longer children, and that sinful affections might take the place ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... death for fear of dying; when at last he would have made an effort to eat, it was too late, and he must die." On the 2nd of July, 1461, he asked what day it was, and was told that it was St. Magdalen's day. "Ah!" said he, "I do laud my God, and thank Him for that it hath pleased Him that the most sinful man in the world should die on the sinful woman's day! Dampmartin," said he to the count of that name, who was leaning over his bed, "I do beseech you that after my death you will serve so far as you can the little lord, my son Charles." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... people often take but one step in sinful indulgence [Poor Jane!], but they fall into soul-destroying sins. They can do it by a single act of sin. [The heinous act of picking a flower!] They do it; but the act leads to another, and they fall into the gulf of Perdition, unless ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... therefore pray you to pity his sinful soul, exasperated by the severities he has already undergone. Oh, sir! the wicked are more to be pitied than the good; and the good can endure trials that wreck the wicked. I would rather see a righteous ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... most sinful period have of course smothered all that is historical in prodigies, and this wretched taste long appeared to the Germans as wisdom; whilst they despised the (certainly superficial) but still sensible English researches of Sir W. Jones and Co., as philistering! One ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... like at Bro. Paul (& of course he has not had the benefits of an Education like you, A. W.) but I want to tell you that when I looked out of the port & saw nothing but green grass where houses & trees & mtns. ought to have been, I remembered that I was a backslider & sinful man. However, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... he. "To rob is sinful, to disturb the excogitations of philosophers is blasphemous. I found it necessary to shoot one of your sort recently—and why ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... disappeared before the furious charge of his passions, and after a short struggle she surrendered herself to the lawless power of a guilty and ambitious love. Wishes, hopes, and designs, which two years before, she would have shuddered at, as not only sinful but derogatory to female delicacy, she now embraced with ardor, and naught seemed dreadful to her but disappointment. The prolonged life of Lord Mar cost her many tears, for the master-passions of her nature, which she had ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... Assuming by her magic skill A fresh and fresh disguise, She tried a thousand shapes at will, Then vanished from their eyes. When Gadhi's son of high renown Still saw the stony rain pour down Upon each princely warrior's head, With words of wisdom thus he said: "Enough of mercy, Rama, lest This sinful evil-working pest, Disturber of each holy rite, Repair by magic arts her might. Without delay the fiend should die, For, see, the twilight hour is nigh. And at the joints of night and day Such giant foes are hard to slay." ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... delightful it would be, and how helpful towards our faith in a blessed futurity, if the dying could disappear like vanishing bubbles, leaving, perhaps, a sweet fragrance diffused for a minute or two throughout the death-chamber. This would be the odor of sanctity! And if sometimes the evaporation of a sinful soul should leave an odor not so delightful, a breeze through the open windows would soon waft ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... abandonment, horrible crimes, and deteriorating schools. After hundreds of billions of dollars in poverty programs, the plight of the poor grows more painful. But the waste in dollars and cents pales before the most tragic loss: the sinful waste of human spirit and potential. We can ignore this terrible truth no longer. As Franklin Roosevelt warned 51 years ago, standing before this Chamber, he said, "Welfare is a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... added: "Ah, sire, what a land is this! I have been assured that the greatest service I could render to my husband would be to burn all his writings, to give all his pictures to the flames; that the more we burn on earth of that which is sinful or leads to sin, the less we shall burn in hell!"—Oeuvres Posthumes, vol. xii., p. 316.] But, sire, why should we speak of death? why disquiet the laughing spirits of the Greeks and Romans, who now inhabit this their newest temple by discoursing ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... and exploitation in the Middle Ages. Whether one believes in the existence of an angel of repentance or not, the view that life with all its happenings is an education, which gradually teaches men, if they are willing to accept it, how to cease to be sinful, was a great lesson for the second century, and I do not doubt that it had much to do with producing in the next century a Church which, in spite of persecution, ultimately won the assent of the best part of the Roman world. Though the form in which Hermas presented ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... of his life and character, and his very death was caused by the intense earnestness of his desire to use aright the talents which God had entrusted to him. O! such a death of one so young yet so fit to die is far happier than the longest and most prosperous of sinful lives. Be sobered but not saddened by it. It is a proof of God's merciful and tender love that this one of your schoolfellows was taken in the clear and quiet dawn of a noble and holy life, and not ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... daring and sinful woman prepared a bed for herself in the lonely tower beside the child. She also brought with her a formidable dagger, and thus she awaited what the night might bring forth. At midnight the female figure dressed ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... iron grating above which the Blessed Sacrament was adored by two kneeling angels, whose lilac wings were folded over thin rose-coloured backs. Except these two figures, of which the execution was truly sinful, the rest was at least veiled by shadow, and was not too afflicting to the eyes. The chapel was dim, and always at the time of the offices, a young sacristan-sister, tall and pale, and rather bent, entered like a shadow, and each time that she passed ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... sinful, to feel toward Mrs. Grayson as I do. Yes, sir; the Bible tells me it is very sinful; but I have been so miserable, I could not help hating her. But I will try to do so no more. I will ask God to help ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... with a scraping sound, from the table, an arm-chair covered with cushions, devoted to the princess's use; she sank into it; Katya in pouring out the tea handed her first a cup emblazoned with a heraldic crest. The old lady put some honey in her cup (she considered it both sinful and extravagant to drink tea with sugar in it, though she never spent a farthing herself on anything), and suddenly asked in a hoarse voice, 'And what ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... the whole of life which a freely creative art provides. We wish to penetrate sympathetically all of our existence; nothing human shall remain foreign to us; we would enter into it all; there is no region of the grotesque, the infernal, or the sinful from which we would be shut out. In comparison with the sublimity of this demand for the complete appreciation of life, the warnings of a rigorous moralism seem timorous, and the sanctuary of purity in which it would have ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... at the avowal—I held her in my arms, locked in a close embrace: I pressed her to my bosom, and covered with countless kisses those dear lips which murmured in reply soft protestations of love. My sight became confused by the delicious intoxication of her eyes. Heavens! is it sinful to revel again in such happiness, to recall once more those rapturous moments with intense delight? Charlotte! Charlotte! I am lost! My senses are bewildered, my recollection is confused, mine eyes are bathed in tears—I am ill; and yet I am well—I wish ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... the way; but because I stopped to earn sixpence by chopping wood, lo! when Sabbath came I was still twelve miles away, and durst not profane the Sabbath by walking. So I lingered that Friday night in a village, thanking God I had at least the money for a bed, though it was sinful even to touch my money. And all next day, I know not why, the street-boys called me a Goy (heathen) and a fox—'Goy-Fox, Goy-Fox!'—and they let off fireworks in my face. So I had to wander in the woods around, keeping within the Sabbath ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... work, and I warrant thee not to forget the oven door. But again: Who hath set thee thy work? When this hard mistress of thine betook thee to her house, did not God see it? did not He order it? If so be, then every her order to thee (that is not sinful, understand thou) is God's order. Seek then, in the doing thereof, not to please her, ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt

... no, my King, my faithful.. Ah, no.. no.. The Princess Goneril is right; she judges me: A sinful woman cannot steadily gaze reply To the cool, baffling looks of virgin untried force. She stands beside that crumbling mother in her hate, And, though we know so well—she and I, O we know— That she could love no mother nor partake in anguish, Yet she is flouted when the King forsakes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... its own, still farther back,—he all the while giving grave assent, as if he listened to her contrivance: he was only listening to the music of a sweet voice that somehow charmed his ear, and thanking God in his heart that such music was bestowed upon a sinful world, and praying that he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... like any thought of pain in connection with that life. Yes surely, more or less, according to one's state, and dying gradually into perfect peace. Growth of holiness does not come to sinful man here or there but through pain, the tender blessed pain of God's purification, the pain of self-reproach, the ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... wise efforts of Mrs. Bunyan to reclaim her husband, were attended by the Divine blessing, and soon led to many resolutions, on his part, to curb his sinful propensities and to promote an outward reformation; his first effort was regularly to attend ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... rude after what he had done for her; then it occurred to her that her aunt and the governor's wife had intentions concerning herself and Rostov—their looks and words at times seemed to confirm this supposition—then she told herself that only she, with her sinful nature, could think this of them: they could not forget that situated as she was, while still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking would be an insult to her and to her father's memory. Assuming that she did go down ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... be worsted until it comes to the Saints being hurled from heaven and the proud Lucifer recovering heaven. Therefore let Chark, who reviles me so outrageously, be in better conceit with me, if I have preferred to trust this poor sinful soul of mine, which Christ has bought so dearly, rather to a safe way, a sure way, a royal road, than to Calvin's rocks or woodland thickets, there ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... I go once again among days, animals, Rocks and thousands of eyes and sounds— The most foreign one. I had to lose you... Your sinful body, Mary, was so lovely— Now I once again in vain look among days, animals, Rocks and sounds for a trace of you. Now I also know: I had to lose you... I did not find ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... sinful tie that binds you to that man; he does not love you, and it should be broken,—for this slavery will wear away the life now grown so dear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... bitterness grew passing sweet, Touched by the mystic tree; so by the grace Of Thine own Tree, O Christ, our sinful race Regains its lost ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius



Words linked to "Sinful" :   sinfulness, over-the-top, unrighteous, unholy, ungodly, iniquitous



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