Vices are character traits. Sins are specific acts of commission or omission. Once Judaism and Christianity adopted the concepts o...f vice and virtue from the Greek and Roman moralists, vices were often called sins and sins vices. The seven deadly "sins" are also called the deadly "vices," which is more accurate. They are basic, perhaps universal human tendencies, from which sins result. The vice of anger spawns the sin of violence against others and the vice of greed gives birth to the sin of theft.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing i...n the Christian religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the great triumphs of the nineteenth century was to limit the connotation of the word "immoral" in such a way that, for pra...ctical purposes, only those were immoral who drank too much or made too copious love. Those who indulged in any or all of the other deadly sins could look down in righteous indignation on the lascivious and the gluttonous.... In the name of all lechers and boozers I most solemnly protest against the invidious distinction made to our prejudice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The seven deadly sins.... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstone...s from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is this love that more than all the cursed deadly or any other of its great movers so moves the soul and soul what is this so...ul that more than by any of its great movers is by love so moved?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most important fact about our shopping malls, as distinct from the ordinary shopping centers where we go for our groceries, is... that we do not need most of what they sell, not even for our pleasure or entertainment, not really even for a sensation of luxury. Little in them is essential to our survival, our work, or our play, and the same is true of the boutiques that multiply on our streets.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love has meaning only insofar as it includes the idea of its continuance. Even what we rather glibly call a love affair, if it com...es to an end, may continue as a memory that is pleasing in our lives; we can renew the sense of privilege and reward of having been allowed such intimacy and sharing. But Lust dies at the next dawn, and when it returns in the evening, to search where it may, it is with its own past erased. Love wants to enjoy in other ways the human being whom it has enjoyed in bed; it looks forward to having breakfast. But in the morning Lust is always furtive. It dresses as mechanically as it undressed and heads straight for the door, to return to its own solitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The foundation of humility is truth. The humble man sees himself as he is. If his depreciation of himself were untrue,... it would... not be praiseworthy, and would be a form of hypocrisy, which is one of the evils of Pride. The man who is falsely humble, we know from our own experience, is one who is falsely proud.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is still a great deal of legalism in the Old Testament idea of sin. The emphasis in the Sermon on the Mount is very differen...t from that in the commandments that Moses brought down from Sinai. The commandments have been translated into beatitudes. "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth," is not a sentence one could read in the Old Testament without a jolt, but by the time we reach it in the New Testament, we have been prepared for it. It is set in the context of the rest of Christ's life and teaching. Without that example the sentence carries little conviction because there is no evidence that the meek do or ever will inherit the earth. We have been turned away from a concern merely with our outward acts, to contemplate what lies most deep in our innermost selves, hidden from all but ourselves and God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »