In this article we’ll make a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotations on sin (Hindi: पाप, Bengali: পাপ)
- Can we ever commit any sin? Impossible!’—such a faith is needed. Such a faith makes men of us, makes gods of us.[Source]
- Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind.[Source]
- Doing good to others is virtue (Dharma); injuring others is sin. Strength and manliness are virtue; weakness and cowardice are sin. Independence is virtue; dependence is sin. Loving others is virtue; hating others is sin. Faith in God and in one’s own Self is virtue; doubt is sin. Knowledge of oneness is virtue; seeing diversity is sin. The different scriptures only show the means of attaining virtue.[Source]
- Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life.[Source]
- Fear is the greatest sin my religion teaches.[Source]
- He alone is a sinner who sees a sinner in another man.[Source]
- He is the man, the woman, the cow, the dog — in all animals, in the sin and in the sinner. He is the Sannyâsin, He is in the ruler, He is everywhere.[Source]
- If there is sin, this is the only sin — to say that you are weak, or others are weak.[Source]
- It is not fitting that you think yourself a sinner.[Source]
- Jealousy is a terrible, horrible sin; it enters a man so mysteriously.[Source]
- Know that talking ill of others in private is a sin. You must wholly avoid it.[Source]
- Our religion teaches that anger is a great sin, even if it is “righteous”.[Source]
- . . . Really, there is no greater sin than cowardice; cowards are never saved — that is sure. I can stand everything else but not that.[Source]
- Sin may be said to be the feeling of every kind of weakness. From this weakness spring jealousy, malice, and so forth. Hence weakness is sin.[Source]
- Stand and die in your own strength, if there is any sin in the world, it is weakness; avoid all weakness, for weakness is sin, weakness is death.[Source]
- The first veil to vanish is ignorance; and when that is gone, sin goes.[Source]
- The greatest sin is fear.[Source]
- The greatest sin is to think yourself weak.[Source]
- The poor are God’s representatives; anyone that suffers is His representative. Without giving, he who eats and enjoys eating, enjoys sin.[Source]
- The root of evil is in the illusion that we are bodies. This, if any, is the original sin.[Source]
- The seeing of many is the great sin of all the world. See all as Self and love all; let all idea of separateness go. . . .[Source]
- The Vedanta recognises no sin, it only recognises error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta, is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.[Source]
- The Vedanta takes the opposite position, and says, “You are pure and perfect, and what you call sin does not belong to you.”[Source]
- The whole world is full of God and not of sin.[Source]
- The word sin, although originally a very good word, has got a certain flavour about it that frightens me. Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark. Take the hands away and there is light; the light exists always for us, the self-effulgent nature of the human soul.[Source]
- Those that tell us that there is sin and sorrow and death in the world are terrible.[Source]
- To me, the thought of oneself as low and humble is a sin and ignorance.[Source]
- Useless wrangling is a great sin.[Source]
- Vedanta believes in only one sin, only one in the world, and it is this: the moment you think you are a sinner or anybody is a sinner, that is sin. From that follows every other mistake or what is usually called sin.[Source]
- Vedanta knows no sin. There are mistakes but no sin; and in the long run everything is going to be all right.[Source]
- Vedanta proposes no sin nor sinner. No God to be afraid of. He is the one being of whom we shall never be afraid, because He is our own Self.[Source]
- What we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness.
- Will sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness?[Source]