Many afflictions will not cloud and obstruct peace of mind so much as one sin: therefore, if you would walk cheerfully, be most careful to walk holily. All the winds about the earth make not an earthquake, but only that within.—Archbishop Leighton.
Think not for wrongs like these unscourged to live;
Long may ye sin, and long may Heaven forgive;
But when ye least expect, in sorrow's day,
Vengeance shall fall more heavy for delay.
—Churchill.
Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the farther on we go, the more we have to come back.—Barrow.
Other men's sins are before our eyes, our own are behind our back.—Seneca.
Take steadily some one sin, which seems to stand out before thee, to root it out, by God's grace, and every fibre of it. Purpose strongly, by the grace and strength of God, wholly to sacrifice this sin or sinful inclination to the love of God, to spare it not, until thou leave of it none remaining, neither root nor branch.—E.B. Pusey.
Cast out thy Jonah—every sleeping and secure sin that brings a tempest upon thy ship, vexation to thy spirit.—Reynolds.
Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the whole world. Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used; kill it before it kills you; and though it brings you to the grave, as it did your head, it shall not be able to keep you there. You love not death; love not the cause of death.—Baxter.
Sincerity.—I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent."—Holmes.
If the show of any thing be good for any thing, I am sure sincerity is better; for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to?—Tillotson.
The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.—Lowell.