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Sinning   /sˈɪnɪŋ/   Listen
Sinning

adjective
1.
Transgressing a moral or divine law.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sinning" Quotes from Famous Books



... speak like a Pharisee. One of the fathers, as amiable as he was austere, has said: 'Turn your eyes on yourself and take care not to judge the doings of others. Judging others is an idle labour; usually one is erring, often sinning, by so doing, but by examining and judging oneself your labour will always be fruit-bearing.' It is written, 'Thou shalt not be afraid of the judgment of men,' and the Apostle Paul said that he did not trouble ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... her as a wounded bird to shelter, dropped upon a stool beside her and rested my cheek against her knee, my hand in a grasp that was close and loving, and—or so I fancied—monitory. My heart retorted upon writhing conscience that she was worth sinning for. I added, dogged and desperate, that I would do it again, if she needed ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... strove the neighborhood to please With manners wondrous winning; And never follow'd wicked ways— Unless when she was sinning. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... Enclosure? For this is the principal Comforts of Marriage, You must eat tho' a hundred have spit in your Porridg. If at night you're inactive, or fail in performing, Enter Thunder and Lightning, and Blood-shed, next Morning; Lust's the Bone of your Shanks, O dear Mr. Horner: This comes of your sinning with Crape in a Corner. Then to make up the Breach all your Strength you must rally, And labour and sweat like a Slave in a Gaily; And still you must charge—O blessed Condition!— Tho' you know, to your cost, you've no more Ammunition: Till ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... which one feels the impulse to enter a tacit protest against too gross an appetite for pure aesthetics in this starving and sinning world. One turns half away, musingly, from certain beautiful useless things. But the healthier state of mind surely is to lay no tax on any really intelligent manifestation of the curious, and exquisite. Intelligence hangs together ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... helplessly at the worthless will which she still held. A young girl tittered softly. Sylvia turned towards the sound. "There is no occasion to laugh," said she, "at one who thought she was sinning, and has had the taste of sin in her soul, even though she was not doing wrong. The ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... other men. This holy history of Bharata hath been composed by the sacred and illustrious Vyasa. Veda-knowing Brahmanas and other persons who with reverence and without malice hear it recited, earn great religious merits and conquer the heavens. Though sinning, they are not disregarded by any one. Here occurs a sloka, 'This (Bharata) is equal unto the Vedas: it is holy and excellent. It bestoweth wealth, fame, and life. Therefore, it should be listened to by men with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... set, in his vices there was a degree of refinement, less of the brute, more of the devil; he did not err from impulse, but when opportunity presented itself, he considered whether the pleasure were worth the sinning, and if he thought it was, he sinned. He was more admired than liked among his young companions; and those in authority over him were quite uncertain whether he would turn out a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... remembered, however, that her selfishness was not the cultivated and ingrained selfishness of a long life, but that of an uneducated, that is undeveloped nature. Her being had not degenerated by sinning against light known as light; it had not been consciously enlightened at all; it had scarcely as yet begun to grow. It was not lying dead, only unawaked. I would not be understood to imply that she was nowise to blame—but ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... like reflections in a mirror, Or empty bubbles on a river, The striving world passed by. What seemed to others worth the winning Thro' strong desire or hate of sinning Brought ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson

... surprisings, Hands all wants and looks all wonder At all things the heavens under, Tiny scorns of smiled reprovings That have more of love than lovings, Mischiefs done with such a winning Archness, that we prize such sinning, Breakings dire of plates and glasses, Graspings small at all that passes, Pullings off of all that's able To be caught from tray or table; Silences—small meditations, Deep as thoughts of cares for nations, Breaking into wisest speeches In a tongue ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... promised more than he could perform. The very fact of the lady (of rank) not coming forward, but leaving the prosecution in the hands of the trustees, was a proof that the accused was more sinned against than sinning. And so on and so forth. It was all in the Weekly Times. I walked up to the Galleria Mazzini one fine evening and sat in the Orpheum reading the latest performance of my successful brother. But the Italian paper which first told me about it dealt with the incident from ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... particular difficulties, I observed how far they might lead a man, and how far different they were from the principles which to this day are in use; I judg'd, that I could not keep them hid without highly sinning against the Law, which obligeth us to procure, as much as in us lies, the general good of all men. For they made it appear to me, that it was possible to attain to points of knowledge, which may be very profitable for this life: and that in stead of this speculative ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes

... her, and she acknowledged it. These poor creatures had a right to their own personal freedom, and she thought it would be doing God and humanity a service if she could help them to obtain that freedom. She did not know that in doing thus she would be sinning against the laws of her country, (!) and perhaps she would not have cared much if she had, for she was one of those independent souls that dare to acknowledge the ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various

... evil mock him all about, And all the forces of embattled wrong, There are so many devils to cast out— Save God be with him, how shall Man be strong? With his own heart at war, to weakness prone, And all the honeyed ways of joyous sinning, How in this welter shall he hold his own, And, single-handed, e'er have hopes of winning? How shall he fight ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... said John, taking the sinning girl by the arm and leading her solemnly to the oven, which was opened to receive the cake; "look here, if you let that cake burn while the inkosikaas (lady chieftain) is away, when I come back ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... foot upon this planet has there been a time when conscience, the judge, has praised a David when sinning against what he believed to be the law of right; never once has it condemned a Daniel in doing what he believed to be right. In this sense conscience is, indeed, infallible and is the very voice ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... woman. A soldier can get on very well without a wife, and I shall always regard myself now as one of those useless but common animals who are called "not marrying men." I shall never marry. I shall always carry your picture in my heart, and shall not think that I am sinning against you or any one else when I do so after ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... against their Master. Could not God have created only angels of the good kind? If God could create angels who have not sinned, could He not create men sinless, or those who would never abuse their liberty by doing evil. If the chosen ones are incapable of sinning in heaven, could not God have made sinless ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... mind; for I want to get a new effect from the old notion, and it would be all the stronger from familiar association with the name. I want to show that the wages of sin is more sinning, which is the very ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... well established; though Constantius, followed his father's wise example, is deferring his baptism until the last possible moment: he partly knows the weakness of his nature, and desires to have license for a little pleasant sinning until the end, with the certainty of a glorious resurrection to follow in despite of it.—Dismiss your kindly apprehensions; God was good to Constantius; no untimely accident cut him off unbaptized; his plan worked excellently, and providing an Arian heretic may go to heaven, in heaven he is to this ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... feeling of inequality, nothing of the attitude of the woman who has always been securely placed within reverence and affections, to the woman who has gone off the rails, even though she be more sinned against than sinning. Mrs. Wade met her so to speak on equal grounds. There was no indication in her manner of the woman who had stepped down from her place among ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... As a prophecy it opens the loftiest vision, beyond which none is possible, of the final transformation of this world into the kingdom in which God's will shall be perfectly done, and of the final deliverance from, all evil of the struggling, sinning, sorrowing souls of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... never imagined that they began to do it so early in the game. He no longer felt guilty that he had deceived Honey, for had n't her confession that she had deceived him about putting that money in the bank made them co-sinners? And one does n't feel so sinful when sinning against another sinner! ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... your mental hurt just as easily as she could undress your screaming baby, find the criminal pin and re-dress it for you; and every member of every Church and every disciple of every creed could have fought a pitched battle at her feet and left her unmoved, so long as the sick and sinning crept to her for help and children, rich or poor, in silks or rags, rushed at her coming ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... sinned." By mentioning men, he excludes the animals; he excludes all who have not sinned: according to a sound rule of logic which lawyers know well. What St Paul meant, I believe, is most probably this: that Adam, by sinning, lost his heavenly birthright; and put on the carnal and fleshly likeness of the animals, instead of the likeness of God in which he was created; and therefore, sowing to the flesh, of the flesh reaped corruption; and became subject to death even as ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... foot, as though it had been some foul and loathsome thing. Thus perished, in her thirty-sixth year, Isabella de' Medici, wife of Paolo Giordano d'Orsini—as sinful as she was lovely, but much more sinned against than sinning after all. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... was established there should fall upon the sinning pair the wrath of an outraged heaven, and he, Eben Tollman, in whom every feeling of the heart had turned to the gall of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us, and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy, for the first ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... poverty—and to no end. And now he had found his release in a blessed activity, which, if he was to neglect nothing, would entirely absorb him. What then was the meaning of this inward admonition, that seemed to tell him that he was sinning against his duty? ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... a man more sinned against than sinning, whose misfortunes arose from his wife Margery's cruelty, which began the very morning ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... There was a Local Board election approaching at Keighley, and some new-made acquaintances led me, as it were, to contract the prevailing political fever; and, as events turned, it was not meet that I should do so. My sinning friends were Bill Spink, better known as "Old Bung;" "Porky Bill," Jonas Moore, and others. I struggled hard for the particular party which I favoured, writing "squibs" and all kinds of doggerel, until I became literally saturated ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... me, Thou hast been rightly informed. Never- the-less seeing now thou inquirest diligently into all things, I will manifest this also unto thee; yet not so as to give any occasion of sinning, either to those who shall hereafter believe, or to those who have already believed in ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... and my sinning, Move my friend to speak to me, By his words of kindness winning, Never as an enemy. Who reproves in love and sadness Is like him, in days of gladness, Who pours balsam over me That by Jordan ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt

... their diseases eat into their strength; that when too much desire and greediness of vice hath made the body unfit, or unprofitable, it is yet gladded with the sight and spectacle of it in others; and for want of ability to be an actor, is content to be a witness. It enjoys the pleasure of sinning in beholding others sin, as in dining, drinking, drabbing, &c. Nay, when it cannot do all these, it is offended with his own narrowness, that excludes it from the universal delights of mankind, and oftentimes dies of a melancholy, that ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... himself; yea, and in the thoughts of others also, upon the highest and better ground by far. The Publican was a notorious sinner: the Pharisee was a reputed righteous man. The Publican was a sinner out of the ordinary way of sinning; and the Pharisee was a man for righteousness in a singular way also. The Publican pursued his villanies, and the Pharisee pursued his righteousness; and yet they both met in the temple to pray: yea, the Pharisee stuck to, and boasted in, the law of ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... the fathers visited upon their children, for I was no longer in doubt but that the murderer, Pedro Ortez, was the sinning ancestor of my old-time friend. Even in his presence my thoughts flew to Agnes; had she not spoken of her grandsire as being such a man? The stiffening body at my side was speedily forgotten in the music ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... there is a part of the commandments too often skipped flippantly over. Many a clergyman would be horrified if asked to do any labor on the seventh day; but would be equally horrified if accused of sinning by attending to a foreign business, thereby neglecting to do all his labor ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... persecuted, and always will to the end of the chapter. But what was to be done with his high mightiness, the Dutch governor? Well, they decided that it was not lawful to put him into the stocks; but that it was lawful to deprive him of the means of sinning. So one of the elders swapped horses with him, and when he started on the Sabbath, the critter was so lame after he went a mile, he had to ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... up in me; I am sure that, in spite of my good intentions, if I found myself in the presence of a certain person, whose sight troubles me, I should send religion to the devil, I should return eagerly to my vomit; I only hold on because I am not tempted, I am no better than when I was sinning. You will admit that I am in a wretched state to enter a ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... Majesty might be blessed with a long and a prosperous reign, and that his throne, and the throne of his posterity, might be established in righteousness. O madam, if ever ye kend what it was to sorrow for and with a sinning and a suffering creature, whose mind is sae tossed that she can be neither ca'd fit to live or die, have some compassion on our misery!—Save an honest house from dishonour, and an unhappy girl, not eighteen years of age, from an early and dreadful death! Alas! it is not when ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... think a while about our thoughts. Do you know it is a fact that a man, seated quietly in an easy chair on his front porch on a summer evening, may be sinning against God and man? Yes, it's true, for, as he sits there in the silence, he can hate another man with a bitter hatred; he can plan to rob him or burn his house or slander him or even take his life. And the worst ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... carriages pass this way to the tavern, as I suppose, from New York. It is a common thing with some to come here on Saturday and return on Monday, to spend this blessed day in pastime. You would not, I know, exchange situation's with them; you would rather be suffering than sinning. ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... fearlessly, proudly down to the gates infernal, his should go. For a moment he fancied he was there already, treading down the tempest of flame, hugging the fiery hurricane to his breast. He wondered whether in ages gone, all the countless years of sinning in which men had sold and lost and flung their souls away, any man had ever so cheated Satan, had ever bartered his soul for so great ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... the most rigid economy of space some reference must be made to the attitude of Lois Kirkwood's sisters toward her as a sinning woman. Their amazement had yielded at once to righteous indignation. It was enough that she had sinned against Heaven; but that she should have brought shame upon them all and placed half the continent between herself and the scene and consequences of her iniquity, leaving her ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... course, found plenty of amusement in the superstitions and sacred animals of Egypt. But he sometimes takes a poet's liberty, and when he tells us that man's was almost the only flesh that they ate without sinning, we need not believe him to the letter. He gives a lively picture of a fight which he saw between the citizens of two towns. The towns of Ombos and Tentyra, though about a hundred miles apart, had a long-standing quarrel about their gods. At Ombos they worshipped the crocodile and ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... did, rebelling against God, and the wages of such sin is death. Understand distinctly that, as baptised people, you belong to God; if you sin, you sin against Jesus Christ; if you repent truly, God will pardon you for Christ's sake; if you go on sinning, you will be lost. If you say, I will not be confirmed, because then I shall be free to do as I like, you will be committing deadly sin, and saying ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... doubted for the fraction of a second that his guest was a criminal, and in every sense a desperate one, but, just as instinctively, he felt certain that no matter what the horror he had run from, he was more sinned against than sinning. Every line in the boy's fragile, pathetic figure went straight to the older man's heart. It came to him, almost joyously, that there had been premonition in his strange mood of longing for a son. As an end to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the duty of a Christian woman is to withdraw a sinning woman from an evil path, rather than push her along it; but when a woman has advanced upon that path as far as Madame de Rochefide, it is not the hand of man, but that of God, which recalls such a sinner; she needs ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... demon.... What a fool! How is it that death has been escaped? And you have run away. Doubtless a pregnancy has followed. After putting his daughter to death Tamiya Dono will surely hunt out Densuke. Or perhaps keep O'Mino San until he catches the interloper. Sinning together, both will die together. Ah! To cross the Sanzu no Kawa, to climb the Shide no Yama, with the demon as company: terrific! It is terrific! And what has become of her? Why fall into such a trap, with a woman old and ugly? Her riches ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... was sent of God to seek and save the lost. Here are the records of the compassionate expressions that fell from his lips as he proclaimed his message as the Son of God. Whatever other opinion men may have of Christ, all must confess that in his words to and about sinning and sorrowing and suffering men and women, he displayed a love and sympathy such as earth had never known before, and such as it has known since, in kind, only in the devoted followers of Christ. To have the memory ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett

... it," quoth Aunt Joyce, something drily. "She counts a miracle should have been wrought for her to hinder her from sinning, and that since it were not, there can be no blame laid ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... maid Elaine, Won by the mellow voice before she looked, Lifted her eyes, and read his lineaments. The great and guilty love he bare the Queen, In battle with the love he bare his lord, Had marred his face, and marked it ere his time. Another sinning on such heights with one, The flower of all the west and all the world, Had been the sleeker for it: but in him His mood was often like a fiend, and rose And drove him into wastes and solitudes For agony, who was yet a living soul. Marred as he ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... all the Godhead to reveal. Let us then put off our shoes, and draw near, and bow the head, and kiss those feet that bear for ever the scars of our victory. In those feet we clasp the safety of our suffering, our sinning brotherhood. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... came in uncomfortable collision were great sinners, while I was a meek and faultless saint. I know the contrary. There were errors and failings on both sides. I may sometimes think 'I was more sinned against than sinning,' but at other times I am ashamed and confounded at my great and grievous errors. God forgive me. I was dreadfully tried at times by my brethren; but my brethren were tried by me at other times past all endurance. God only knows which was ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... marquis. Many called him a devoted son, filled with the spirit of heroic self-sacrifice. Many others affirmed that he was a hypocrite and a villain, addicted to drinking, gambling, and other vices and even cited times, places, and occasions of his sinning. ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... groundless. Of course Charlie Phillips had not stolen the four hundred dollars. Had not he, Jed Winslow, loudly proclaimed to Ruth Armstrong that he knew her brother to be a fine young man, one who had been imprudent, it is true, but much more sinned against than sinning and who would henceforth, so he was willing to swear, be absolutely upright and honest? Of course the fact that a sum of money was missing from the Orham National Bank, where Phillips was employed, did not necessarily imply that ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... pluck thence But could not, — nay! But needs must suck At the great wound, and could not pluck My lips away till I had drawn All venom out. — Ah, fearful pawn! For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... few moments. Should she throw herself on her knees, and cry out to him, "Oh, Rex, Rex, my darling! I am not guilty! Listen to me, my love. Hear my pleading—listen to my prayer! I am more sinned against than sinning. My life has been as pure as an angel's—take me back to your heart, ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... had so bewitched the old beau, that he really believed she was sinning for the first time for his sake, and that he had inspired such a passion as had led her to this breach of duty. She told him that the wretch Marneffe had neglected her after they had been three days married, and for the most odious ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... one rib," went on the minister, "and how readily and kindly would God have disposed of the first sinning Eve and under the pleasant sleep of the man, Adam, extracted another rib out of which he would have constructed another and yet more beautiful woman. Some of us are finding it impossible to keep order in our families, and until ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... the way, my dear Valentin Pavlich. It means that we shall now have a very pleasant love-affair, without sinning against God, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... place, and, in some degree, a restitution of fame was made to the manes of the departed. In Westminster he was always odious. Westminster, which had adopted him, never forgave him. But in other districts it came to be said of him that he had been more sinned against than sinning; and that, but for the jealousy of the old stagers in the mercantile world, he would have done very wonderful things. Marylebone, which is always merciful, took him up quite with affection, and would have ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... people, some certain steps of ours, in such a War, may not be follow'd with our appearing so and so for a while among them in the Visions of our afflicted Forlorns! And, Who can certainly say, what other Degrees or Methods of sinning, besides that of a Diabolical Compact, may give the Devils advantage to act in the Shape of them that have miscarried? Besides what may happen for a while, to try the Patience of the Vertuous. May ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... one's doctrine of human nature! Never believe that the sinning self is the true self. Your real personality is the potential good in you. The moment that good springs into life you have a right to say: "Now I know what I was {147} made for. I have come to life. I have discovered myself." ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... Prithee tell us of the reason Why you mope at home to-day Surely smiling is not sinning; Leave, your quilling, leave your spinning; What is all your store of linen, If your heart is never gay? Come away, come away! Never yet did sad beginning Make the task of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... sodomy even when the culprit owns the animal. How does the law obtain the right to punish an act which does no harm to any one, nor to society, nor even to an animal? It is evidently a vestige of religious mysticism, something like punishment for sinning against the Holy Ghost. The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, they say, caused the wrath of God, who destroyed these towns for this reason. According to the legend, sodomy was a vice of the inhabitants; is this why it is punished at the present day? But the masturbation of Onan, according ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... with which she was wont to declare herself 'his little daughter.' He had not the courage to hazard his position by espousing her cause or undertaking her escape. He felt that she had been more sinned against than sinning, in having been forced into a vow of perpetual virginity when she had already made another vow which her loving nature had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... garden was ripe, yellow, and fit for use, while that of his neighbours was green, and food for the worm. The Caddoques, and the other Indians, might have seen enough of the rewards bestowed upon goodness, in the person of Sakechak, to have made them leave off their wickedness. But no, they kept on sinning, until the Great Being deemed them unfit longer to live upon the earth which he ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... convention was held on the 22d of February, and on the day before I sent a telegram peremptorily refusing to stand as a candidate; and I soon afterward formally committed myself to the Liberal Republican movement. I could not aid in the re-election of Grant without sinning against decency and my own self-respect. I deplored the fact, but there was no other alternative. If it had been morally possible, I would have supported him gladly. I had no personal grievances to complain of, and most sincerely regretted the necessity which compelled my withdrawal from political ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... now, uncle Josiah? and a falling? And is everybody a sinning and a falling jest because that one man eat one apple, and fell out of an apple-tree? Say, is it right, uncle Josiah, for you and me, and everybody that is on the earth, to keep a falling, and keep a falling, and bein' ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... don't remember your sinning. I have a shocking bad memory for trifles; but I think I should remember that—if you ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... felt the same sort of pain when awakened suddenly to the fact that words we have spoken easily may not, by our utmost efforts, be recalled, though we would gladly give our life itself to have them back. If suffering can atone for sin, Dorothy bought her indulgence within one hour after sinning. But suffering cannot atone for sin; it is only a part ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... sinning In the midnight banquet halls, Forgetful of that sentence traced On proud Belshazzar's walls. On that night, so dark and dismal, Unillumed by faintest ray, Might be seen the lonely pilgrim Wending on ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... eyes cast backward on his own life path, feels that he has not fought the good fight in vain. His gentle heart throbs in sympathy, filled with an infinite compassion for the lonely Natalie de Santos. Sinned against and sinning. A free lance, with only her love for her child to hallow and redeem her. Her own plans, founded in guile, have all miscarried. Blood stains the gold bestowed on her by Philip Hardin's death. Her life has been a stormy ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... infliction, but by privative, or the taking away gifts, and blessings, and graces from us, which God, not having promised to give, was neither naturally, nor by covenant, obliged to give,—it is certain he could not be obliged to continue that to the sons of a sinning father, which to an innocent father he was ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... offered to him for a girl as I was that was ever offered for any one and he would not accept the whole world of money, on account of the one that had loved me and cared for me, for he well knew that after all of those prayers that he would be sinning; and he would not have had my mother sold away from her children if his brother would have let him know it in time. He went away to attend court and to his surprise found that my mother was sold. He came home at once to let us know of it, ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold

... treated with the greatest tenderness. Usually she is more sinned against than sinning; but she carries all the blame which belongs not only to the man but also to society, which has been guilty of supine acquiescence in the surrender ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan

... abiding by her laws in their own homes, though they made so free with her name in their discourses. They cannot bear to be detected in any relaxation, or any departure from their principles: but, poor men, they lead a Tantalus life of it in consequence, and when they do get a chance of sinning without being found out, they drink down pleasure by the bucketful. Depend on it, if some one would make them a present of Gyges's ring of invisibility, or Hades's cap, they would cut the acquaintance of toil without further ceremony, and elbow ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... was. But I think when any one gets coupled up with a man in the past so unfortunately as you have done she ought to become his wife if she can, even if she were not the sinning party." ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... Philbrick was not a scoundrel and all of us aiders and abetters of his iniquities, we knew the men there would never be satisfied with the statement from any of us or Mr. Tomlinson, who had been talking to them for two hours that morning. Poor things, they are much more sinned against than sinning. They came flocking over so closely upon Mr. G.'s heels as to get here nearly as soon as he did, and the session of the Court began by the examination of John Major before tea, the others crowding about the door and filling the piazza, quiet and orderly, but eager listeners. Not a single ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... in, iniquity will surely be its fruit. Sin begets sin, and is its own punishment. What fruit have we of doing wrong? 'Lies'; that is, unfulfilled expectations of unrealised satisfaction. No man gets the good that he aimed at in sinning, or he gets something more that spoils it. At last the deceitfulness of sin will be found out, but we may be sure of it now. The root of all Israel's sin was the root of ours; namely, trust in self, and consequent neglect of God. The first half of verse ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... and, when I solely consult my inclination, you impute to me a service. The liberty of action you prescribe is rather a necessity for me than a constraint little exercised in formal rules, I shall scarcely incur the risk of sinning against good taste by any undue use of them; my ideas, drawn rather from within than from reading or from an intimate experience with the world, will not disown their origin; they would rather incur any reproach than that of a sectarian bias, and would prefer to succumb by their innate feebleness ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... that these Colossians were risen with Jesus Christ? Because they had given up sin and were leading holy lives? That cannot be. The Epistle for this day says the very opposite. It does not say, "You are risen, because you have left off sinning." It says, "You must leave off sinning, because you are risen." Was it then on account of any experiences, or inward feeling of theirs? Not at all. He says that these Colossians had been baptized, and that they had believed in God's work ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... my concern and your concern," replied the young man solemnly, "both yours and mine. Your race, your country, is sinning against ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... still unstained by any sin, he could yet have within him the will to sin; the second, that in which he might have suffered change had he chosen to abide steadfastly in the commands of God, for then it could have been further granted him not only not to sin or wish to sin, but to be incapable of sinning or of the will to transgress. The third state is the state after sin, into which man needs must be pursued by death and sin and the sinful will. Now the points of extreme divergence between these states ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... right in his home. One of his sons who had now become of age had built a sort of philosophy of life on his father's teaching. He had reasoned something like this: "Since Father sins, and Mother sins, and the preacher sins, and everybody else sins, and nobody can keep from sinning, then it follows that one is not responsible for the sins he commits whether they be large or small, few or many. Then why not have a good time in this life? Why not go the full length into sinful pleasure?" And go the full length he did. He had become involved in one criminal scrape after ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison

... like heaven, that the music is celestial, and that it is Charley's arm that is clasping her close. Will she ever waltz with him again, she wonders, and she feels, feels in her inmost heart, that she is sinning against her affianced husband in waltzing with him now. But it is so delicious—what a pity most of the delicious things of earth should be wrong. If it could only last forever—forever! And while ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... whose thoughts are brightest light, Whose love runs always clear, To whose kind wisdom sinning souls Amidst their ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... been all they might have been left to their own devices, but they went farther. The day of judgment, they declared, was at hand. A letter had been addressed from Jerusalem by the Creator to his sinning creatures, and it was their mission to spread this through Europe. They preached, confessed, and forgave sins, declared that the blood shed in their flagellations had a share with the blood of Christ in atoning for sin, that their penances were a substitute for ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... had said it in so many words he understood that, sinless or sinning, Ursula de Vesc was to be sacrificed to some state advantage; he understood, too, that neither Commines nor the King cared greatly whether she was innocent or guilty, and that but for his sake Commines would have given her ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... virtuous were rewarded and the vicious punished, he would only have transferred the problem to another issue. The judge might be justified, but the creator would be condemned. How can it be just to place a being where he is certain to sin, and then to damn him for sinning? That is the problem to which no answer can be given; and which already implies a confusion of ideas. We apply the conception of justice in a sphere where it is not applicable, and naturally fail to get any ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... words which their uncle had spoken that morning, they expressed their regret that he should be so grieved; but they were strong in assurances to their mother that she had been sinned against, and was not sinning. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... place with only the gutter to land in at last, and—well, she landed. But she isn't all bad. I used to feel about girls like her just as most good people still feel, but I've come to see there's many of them who are more sinned against than sinning. The men who make and keep them what they are go ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... ends to serve in resisting measures advanced by the Kansans, yet, to his credit be it said that he did always hold firmly to the notion that tribes like the Cherokee were more sinned against than sinning. The government had been the first to shirk responsibility and to violate sacred obligations. It had failed to give the protection guaranteed by treaties and it was not ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... there is and can be no sin is fairly deducible from the supposition that man is not a free agent, it does not depend upon that supposition. Let it be admitted, for the purpose of the argument, that man is a free agent, and capable of sinning, notwithstanding all his actions were predetermined, and what is the state of the case? Still he has not sinned. He has done nothing but what God freely willed and ordained he should do. The perfect obedience of Christ consisted in his doing in all respects the will of the Father. Either, ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... potter's vessel? None can stand Against the mighty power of His hand. Be therefore wise, ye kings, instructed be, Ye rulers of the earth, and henceforth see Ye serve the Lord in fear, and stand in awe Of sinning any more against His law, His royal law of liberty: to do To others as you'd have them do to you. Oh stoop, ye mighty monarchs, and let none Reject His government, but kiss the Son While's wrath is but a little kindled, lest His anger burn, and you that have transgressed His law so oft, ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... casts him into prison. The inexperienced youth, believing the full extent of his guilt has been blazoned to the world, and frightened beyond his wits by armed men and clank of chains, protests with tears and sighs that he is more sinned against than sinning. It is the old story of Adam improved upon—he not only damns the woman, but denies ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... CLAIR is a type of a Tenderloin grafter in New York, who, after all, has been more sinned against than sinning; who, having been imposed upon, deceived, ill-treated and bulldozed by the type of men who prey on women in New York, has turned the tables, and with her charm and her beauty has gone out to make the same ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... sphere. She no more understood me than I understand the works of a watch. She looked upon me as a discontented, rebellious, bad child, possessed of evil spirits, which wanted trouncing out of me; and she would have felt that she was sinning had she humoured me in any way, so after cooling I did not blame her for her letters. She was doing her duty according to her lights. Again, it was this way, grannie did not come to my rescue on this occasion on account of her attitude towards my father. The Bossiers ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... woman.' The Adjutant smiled upon him, told him he had only to follow God and things would soon improve. She fostered the desire to make home again with his family and his own bits of furniture about him, and helped him to get rooms. During Wellman's years of sinning, whenever he had seen the word God in print, he had dropped the paper or book as though it were hot; now he opened his mother's Bible and found it to be a library of delight; and his spare time, between work and the meetings, was spent in ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... simplest mention of him. Truly, Miss MacDowlas beheld her reprobate nephew in a new light, surrounded by a halo of innocent romance and unselfish tenderness. This poor little soul, who was breaking her heart for his sake, showed him sinned against but never sinning, unfortunate but never to blame, showed him honest, sweet of nature, true, and faultless. Where were his faults in the eyes of his first and last love? The simple, whimsical stories of their loves ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... sinning and consequently wretched Gabrielle was now importunate for the divorce, that she might be lawfully married to the king. But the children already born could not be legitimated, and Sully so clearly unfolded ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... boy who reads this cannot swim, let him feel that he is sinning against himself, and neglecting a great duty, till he can plunge without a trace of nervousness into deep water, and make his way upon the surface easily and well. Fortunately for Ralph Darley, he was quite at home in the water, and the strong ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... me to return, do you wish to see me again, Emily?" he asked. "Oh! how can you ask it?" "Emily, I have been known to you under a cloud of mystery, a solitary being, without a friend or acquaintance in the world, an outcast apparently from society—either sinned against or sinning—without fortune, without pretensions; and with all these disadvantages to contend with, how can I suppose that I am indebted to anything but your pity for the kindness which you have shown to me?" "Pity! pity you! Oh, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... We are all sinners, and we all die in proportion to our sinning. That's true enough; but there is also the blessed privilege of repentance to consider. Let me finish the quotation: 'The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... violations of the laws of God and man? These are practical questions. Some temporize with sin and say, "Let us lead outwardly correct lives, but within certain bounds we will do as we please"; hence arises the practice of secret sinning. ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... Scarlet Letter it was shown that the moral law forces evildoers to pay the last farthing of the debt of sinning. In The Marble Faun the effect of sin in developing character is emphasized, and Donatello, the thoughtless creature of the woods is portrayed in his stages of growth after his moral nature has first been ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... deeply felt. Posterity, however, has found reason to doubt the justice of the accusation, and to confess that John Law was neither knave nor madman, but one more deceived than deceiving, more sinned against than sinning. He was thoroughly acquainted with the philosophy and true principles of credit. He understood the monetary question better than any man of his day; and if his system fell with a crash so tremendous, it was not so much his ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... sinning, Emmy; and as long as I am in torment, I may hope for grace. We talked of the irony. It ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... inherent principle of order to keep them together, or on an elephant, tortoise, or even the mighty shoulders of a son of the earth, they may escape, who dare to brave the consequence without any breach of duty, without sinning against ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... copious, complex, and of intensely Oriental character. That portion of it directly connected with our subject may be stated in few words. They taught that all souls pre existed in a world of pure light, but, sinning through the instigation and craft of demons, they fell, were mixed with darkness and matter, and bound in bodies. Through sensual lusts and ignorance, they were doomed to suffer after death in hell for various periods, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger



Words linked to "Sinning" :   actual sin, deadly sin, mortal sin, original sin, evildoing, venial sin, fall, transgression, offending



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