Aaron Hill Quotes

As a boy, I once saw a cart of melons that sorely tempted me. I sneaked up to the cart and stole a melon. I went into the alley to devour it, but no sooner had I set my teeth into it, than I paused, a strange feeling coming over me. I came to a quick conclusion. Firmly, I walked up to that cart, replaced the melon - and took a ripe one.

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion.

There is some consensus: There's obsession, there's never satiety, and there's always remorse. For me, the big thing is that you're always breaking a promise - for example, you promise yourself you're just going to have coffee with a man, then before you know it, you're in bed together.

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

For years I've been interested in a fundamental question concerning what I call the psychology of evil: Why is it that good people do evil deeds? I've been interested in that question since I was a little kid. Growing up in the ghetto in the South Bronx, I had lots of friends who I thought were good kids, but for one reason or another they ended up in serious trouble. They went to jail, they took drugs, or they did terrible things to other people. My whole upbringing was focused on trying to understand what could have made them go wrong.

Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.

It's easy to explain away evil. We have a free choice, and our greatest blessing is also our greatest curse, because I don't always make good choices. Other people make bad choices. I make bad choices. And sometimes we hurt other people. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.

The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Everyone deals with temptation. It's just there.

I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.

I don't believe anyone is good or bad. It's about the choices we make, about how we deal with situations.

Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.

Men who are addicted to the passions are like the torch-carrier running against the wind; his hands are sure to be burned.

You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter;but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! What a world!

Conscience gets a lot of credit that really belongs to cowardice.

There are things you can't walk away from. Not if you want to live with yourself afterward.

Tis not for us to warn a wilful sinner; We stay him not, but let him run his course, Till by misfortunes rous'd, his conscience wakes, And prompts him to appease th' offended gods.

The lowest standards of ethics of which a right-thinking man can possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to shoot his fellow men. In youth he may have learned the command, 'Thou shalt not kill,' but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters manhood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through his neighbor's heart - and this, unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred, and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his ruler gives the word.

Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.

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.

Nothing in the world is so incontinent as a man's accursed appetite.

The Human moral keyboard is limited ... there's nothing you can play on it that hasn't been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.

Temptation is not a sin but playing with temptation invites sin.