Besetting Sin Quotes

#1. Constancy, far from being a virtue, seems often to be the besetting sin of the human race, daughter of laziness and self-sufficiency, sister of sleep, the cause of most wars and practically all persecutions.

Freya Stark

#2. Self-pity is the hens' besetting sin," remarked Mr. Payton. "Foolish fowl. How they came to achieve anything as perfect as the egg I do not know! I cannot fathom.

Elizabeth Enright

#3. You can use whatever term you want: besetting sin, shadow side, strength and weakness. The very thing that makes you you, that makes you great, that makes you different from everyone else is also the thing that, unchecked, will ruin you. For me, it's lust for life. It's energy, curiosity, hunger.

Shauna Niequist

#4. Bryony began laughing, with a great deal of bitterness to be sure, but still, laughter. That had always been her great gift and her besetting sin, that even in the darkest and most somber times, she had the urge to laugh.

T. Kingfisher

#5. But every one has a besetting sin to which he returns.

Jean De La Fontaine

#6. I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one spending my life making the same mistake over and over again or if that's simply human. Do we all tend toward a single besetting sin?

Karen Joy Fowler

#7. Everyone has his besetting sin.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#8. You ask a lot of questions, don't you?"
"My brother always says curiosity is my besetting sin.

Cassandra Clare

#9. Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.

Alfred North Whitehead

#10. Without a sincere and diligent effort in every area of obedience, there will be no sucessful mortification of any one besetting sin.

John Owen

#11. Spot the first risings of your besetting sin and kill it, till it is no more.

John Piper

#12. Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation.

Thomas Paine

#13. Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

Samuel Butler

#14. Theon swept his cloak off its peg and over his shoulders. "Fathers are like that," he admitted as he pinned the folds with a silver clasp. "Tell him he should be pleased. As many times as I've fucked you, you're likely with child. It's not every man who has the honor of raising a king's bastard.

George R R Martin

#15. The sculptor starts with a block of stone and imagines the creation within. The writer takes the reader's imagination and fashions his creation from without.

Mark A. Morris

#16. I feel like someone ripped out my heart and smashed it with bricks. It hurts. I hurt. And I'd gladly take your hurt too if it meant that you'd be okay. I'd do anything for you.

J. Sterling

#17. The love you liberate in your work is the love you keep.

Elbert Hubbard

#18. An ability to believe in things that weren't true was a powerful tool.

Stephen Baxter

#19. To someone who grows up by the stockyards, that smell just smells like air. You don't know what a younger person might someday think of you, and whatever stench we still breathe in without noticing.

Laura Moriarty

#20. As adults, we can develop and change our opinions. In childhood, we establish the truth of our hearts.

Sherry Turkle

#21. I had gone to all the big stories of the '80s, which was one of the most fertile times in American journalism, around the world and here as well.

Tom Brokaw

#22. As a child, I was always interested in building things. Instead of buying candy, I would purchase nails, which I used to construct things out of scrap wood. My mother always claimed that my spending my money on nails instead of on candy was why I was so skinny as a kid.

Robert H. Grubbs

#23. I am a normal guy.

Vagit Alekperov

#24. Mathematics is the language of size.

Lancelot Hogben

#25. There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.

Joseph Addison

#26. Prayer is the surest remedy against the devil and besetting sins.

J.C. Ryle

#27. A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered. It doesn't help if you're a soldier. The effect is the same.

Paula McLain