Robert Herrick Quotes

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.

The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up.

The fall of man is written in too legible characters not to be understood: Those that deny it, by their denying, prove it.

No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on.

Those who would extirpate evil from the world know little of human nature. As well might punch be palatable without souring as existence agreeable without care.

If all the animals and man had been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there had been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement ... collapsed like a house of cards.

Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it.

It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.

Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.

What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against mans fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.

Why attack God? He may be as miserable as we are.

Love never comes without wounds; faith never comes without failure.

Christ has no velvet crosses.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows, Help us to see That without the dust the rainbow Would not be.

God wrote a book on suffering, and its name is Jesus.

The Christian has a great advantage over other men, not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world.

To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.

The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.

Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

Original sin is the proclivity to say "my will be done" instead of "thy will be done."

That so called "original sin" does not know any racial discrimination.