Herman Melville Quotes

It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.

The doctrine of original sin claims that all men sinned in Adam; but whether they did or whether it is merely a fact that all men sin does not basically affect the problem of suffering.

I am a big sinner.

The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex.

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable." "Because you are not fit to go there," I answered. "All sinners would be miserable in heaven.

My faith reminds me that we all are sinners.

There is no man who does not sin.

There is no such thing as a saint without a past or a sinner without a future.

What people fail to understand coughing up sin and confessing it and giving it to the only one that can remove it, for crying out loud, we're all sinners.

We're all sinners, every one of us. We've all done things we wish we hadn't.

I repent daily my sins, my faults, and my shortcomings.

I know I'm a sinner.

Whoever hates his sins will stop sinning; and whoever confesses them will receive remission. A man can not abandon the habit of sin if he does not first gain enmity toward sin, nor can he receive remission of sin without confession of sin. For the confession of sin is the cause of true humility.

If thou wouldst be justified, acknowledge thine injustice. He that confesses his sin, begins his journey toward salvation. He that is sorry for it, mends his pace. He that forsakes it, is at his journey's end.

We are all afflicted by original sin; people succumbing to temptations to do and to be.

Ah. My story. Are you certain you wish to hear it? It is long, unlikely, and remarkably unedifying -- shameful, even, to come from a minister's lips. Blasphemous, too, properly regarded.

When I repent, here is where it starts. I try to name my sin as honestly and as specifically as possible. Here is what repenting is not. It is not excusing my sin, minimizing my sin, it's not rationalizing my sin ... Repentance is getting painfully honest with God.

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin-a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.

Sometimes when I've gone out and murdered somebody I go and confess and stuff. And then God loves me again.

Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.

Everybody is a sinner before God. And I think we magnify it today because we have television, and we have so many other technologies that make what happens in some other part of the world in our living room.

Sins are timeless. Sins are an everyday reality for every one. Sin has been in existence since the beginning of man, since Adam and Eve. It will always be pertinent.

I have committed many sins in my life. This precise sin-the sin against poets-is without absolution.

I have committed the worst of sins one can commit... I have not been happy.