Anne Rice Quotes

I am not what I ought to be! Ah! how imperfect and deficient! - I am not what I wish to be! I 'abhor what is evil,' and I would 'cleave to what is good!' - I am not what I hope to be! Soon, soon, I shall put off mortality: and with mortality all sin and imperfection! Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was - a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the Apostle, and acknowledge; By the grace of God, I am what I am!

There is good and there is bad in every human heart, and it is the struggle of life to conquer the bad with the good.

The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.

Repentance is but want of power to sin.

We take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience... It is true, terrors of conscience cast us down; and yet without terrors of conscience we cannot be raised up again.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Men are not born saints with special gifts and privileges. They fight against the world, the flesh and the devil, and as they conquer, the spirit of Jesus begins to shine through with more clarity.

O God, make me good, but not yet.

'Tis no sin to be tempted, but to be overcome.

It struck me, sharp and hard, that I had been given so many chances to save my soul that my entire life had been constructed around these chances! That was my nature - going from temptation to temptation, not to sin, but to be redeemed.

A saint is a sinner who never gave up.

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame.

In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

I decided to take God and organized religion seriously, and to reject the secular life which in my teens had looked attractive because it allowed me to act in any way that I wanted.

I can remember the night I became a Christian. And man, this weight came off of me and all that kind of stuff. What I didn't realize was, that was just the beginning - of a huge journey.

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.

Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.

People have to realize that just because you're a Christian, it doesn't mean that you're perfect, because every once in a while everyone stumbles. Living by faith is about when you do mess up, getting back up, brushing yourself off, and keep trying to improve where you mess up or where you have temptation.

Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

Then I proceeded to Williamsburg, where I found all well. I went to the capitol where I sent for the wench to clean my room and when I came I kissed her and felt her, for which God forgive me.... About 10 o’clock I went to my lodgings. I had good health but wicked thoughts, God forgive me.