This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I have unlearned contempt.—It is a sin that is engendered earliest in the soul, and doth beset it like a poison-worm, feeding on all its beauty.
Sin |
By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.
Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux, sometimes Nicholas Desperaux or Nicolas Boileau
It is the sin which we have not committed which seems the most monstrous.
Sin |
For it is not ordained for the Spiritual Man that, finding his high realm, he shall enter altogether there, and pass out of the vision of mankind. It is true that he dwells in heaven, but he also dwells on earth. He has angels and archangels, the hosts of the just made perfect, for his familiar friends, but he has at the same time found a new kinship with the prone children of men, who stumble and sin in the dark. Finding sinlessness, he finds also that the world’s sin and shame are his, not to share, but to atone; finding kinship with angels, he likewise finds his part in the toil of angels, the toil for the redemption of the world.
Angels | Children | Man | Redemption | Shame | Sin | Time | Vision |
Accept the long night patiently, quietly, humbly, and resignedly as intended for your true good. It is not a punishment for sin committed but an instrument of annihilating egoism.
Punishment | Sin |
Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.
Pearl Bailey, fully Pearl Mae Bailey
The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that.
Sin |
Thou wilt not chronicle our sand-like sins; for sin is small, and mean, and barren. Good Only is great, and generous, and fruitful. Number the mountains, not the sands, O God!
Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz
It is possible for a person to correct the world, while the evil continues to cling to him. The Besht revealed this thing [to Menahem Mendel of Bar]: that one must descend to Gehinnom on behalf of G-d, may He be blessed. And this is alluded to in the gemara [Talmudic aphorism], ‘Greater is a sin for its own sake [than a mitzvah for its own sake.’
Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz
Nothing, great and small, could exist were it not for His help. We find that all the obstacles [to observing the] prohibitions, or even thoughts, are from the Almighty alone. And without His ‘help,’ I would become a meshumad [apostate]. But if you ignore this principle, you may think that you are ‘something’ and value yourself as a man of virtue [a sheiner yid]. [You say to yourself,] ‘I went away from sin and I am clean of sin.’ But the result is that G-d leaves him, for every haughty-hearted person is an abomination to G-d, and he and I cannot live [in the same place]. Then he finds himself in the grasp of his Urge and be caught in its trap and do whatever it tempts him to do. And [R. Pinhas] said that all this is because of the compassion of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His great kindness which is continuously over the soul, he is seduced in order to fail through a [small] thing in order to remind him that without the help of G-d he is worth nothing. [If] he does not remember through a small thing, he would stumble in a great thing until he comes to … [unclear] the belief in his own power … Then he must break himself very much, until he knows that he himself becomes nothing and very small, and then he becomes a vessel prepared to accept help and assistance from G-d, may He be blessed.
Belief | Compassion | Kindness | Man | Nothing | Order | Power | Sin | Virtue | Virtue | Worth | Blessed | Think | Value |
Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet Which brought from heaven the news and prince of peace. Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat; To cry for vengeance sin doth never cease; In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears, Nor let his eye see sin but through my tears.
Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz
Every sin is linked to a reason, good or bad—with the sole exception of vanity, which needs no reason to grow and grow. If someone finds it necessary to honor me, that means he is more humble than I. Which means he is better and saintlier than I. Which means that I should honor him. But then, why is he honoring me?
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Rabban Gamaliel the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince said: “Great is study of the Torah when combined with a worldly occupation, for toil in them both puts sin out of mind. All study of the Torah which is not supplemented by work is destined to prove futile and causes sin. Let all who occupy themselves with communal affairs do so for Heaven's sake, for then the merit of their fathers sustains them and their righteousness endures forever. And as for you, G-d will then say: I count you worthy of great reward as if you had done it all yourselves. Be careful in your relations with the government; for they draw no man close to themselves except for their own interests. They appear as friends when it is to their advantage, but they do not stand by a man in his time of stress… Do His will as if it was your will that He may do your will as if it was His will. Make your will of no effect before His will that He may make the will of others of no effect before your will.”
Man | Merit | Reward | Righteousness | Sin | Study | Time | Will | Work | Torah | Friends |
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa said: “He in whom the fear of sin takes precedence of wisdom, his wisdom will endure; but he in whom wisdom takes precedence of his fear of sin, his wisdom will not endure… He whose works exceed his wisdom, his wisdom endures; but he whose wisdom exceeds his works, his wisdom will not endure…He who in whom fellow people find no delight, in him the G-d finds no pleasure.”
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Any controversy waged in the service of God shall in the end be of lasting worth, but any that is not shall in the end lead to no permanent result. Which controversy was an example of being waged in the service of G-d? Such was the controversy of Hillel and Shammai. And which was not for G-d? Such was the controversy of Korah and all his company. Whoever leads the masses in the right path will not come to any sin, but whoever leads the masses astray will not be able to repent for all the wrong he commits. Thus Moses was virtuous and he led the masses in the right path, and their merit is ascribed to him, as it is written (Deuteronomy 33:21) He executed the justice of the Lord, and His ordinances for Israel. But Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, sinned and caused the multitude to sin, and so the sin of the masses is ascribed to him as it is written (I Kings 15:30) Because of the sins of Jeroboam that he committed and that he caused Israel to commit.
Controversy | Example | God | Justice | Merit | Right | Service | Sin | Will | Wrong | God |
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
Original sin is not only the violation of a positive command … but … attempts … to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man with only a sense of the master-slave relationship.
Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
Babies dead without baptism go to Limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but neither do they suffer, because, having original sin alone, they do not deserve paradise, but neither do they merit hell or purgatory.
David Swing, aka Professor Swing
Yesterday contains all the battlefields in which freedom was gradually wrought out from many threads all dipped in blood. Yesterday contains the experiment and the failure of all despotisms. Yesterday con tains the onset and defeat of every form of sin and vice. Yesterday holds the ashes of all beauty, and of all life except that of the soul with God. Yesterday is full of past usefulness and of its ways and means, full of tears and their causes and cures. In that shadowy domain there stands the cross, and there is the Saviour dying for the vast myriads of a race. God has not without reason thrown such an immense history behind His children of to-day. It must be that out of the world that has been there is always flowing down to those who are living a stream of wisdom and character that bears onward to a sacred destiny.
Character | Children | Defeat | Experiment | Failure | Freedom | God | History | Life | Life | Reason | Sacred | Sin | Soul | Tears | Usefulness | Wisdom | World | Failure | God |