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the only mortal sin is giving up.
Sep 10, 2025
I have just committed the mortal sin of laughing in the Members' Library. No-one around here has done that for a while.
The works of the righteous would be mortal sins if they would not be feared as mortal sins by the righteous themselves out of pious fear of God.
Venial sin becomes mortal sin when one approves it as an end. . .
Without sanctifying grace it is not possible to refrain long from mortal sin.
Fear is the mortal enemy of creativity, innovation, and happiness.
The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life.
Sometimes mortals can be more horrible than monsters.
Saint Teresa, as the Roman Rota attests, never fell into any mortal sin; but still Our Lord showed her the place prepared for her in Hell; not because she deserved Hell, but because, had she not risen from the state of lukewarmness in which she lived, she would in the end have lost the grace of God and been damned.
O momentary grace of mortal men, Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!
If readers like The Thorn and the Blossom, which I would call literary fantasy, I think they would like books such as Elizabeth Hand's Mortal Love, Catherynne Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen.
In India, I found a race of mortals living upon the Earth, but not adhering to it, inhabiting cities, but not being fixed to them, possessing everything, but possessed by nothing.
How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.
I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves?
While the soul is in mortal sin, nothing can profit it; none of its good works merit an eternal reward, since they do not proceed from God as their first principle, and by Him alone is our virtue real virtue.
"Ultimate reality" is the highest, deepest, eternal, unchangeable, source and ground of everything we see, touch, and experience with our five senses. It's that which gives being and meaning to everything finite, mortal, changeable. It's also that toward which we creatures look and live - whether we know it or not - our telos; our goal and purpose.
There is an old saying which, from its truth, has become proverbial, that friendships should be immortal, enmities mortal.
And in that far distant day when the gods become wholly beautiful, or we at last are shown how beautiful they always were, this will happen more and more. For mortals, as you said, will become more and more jealous. And mother and wife and child and friend will all be in league to keep a soul from being united with the Divine Nature.
Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another s.
Say, heavenly pow'rs, where shall we find such love? Which of ye will be mortal to redeem Man's mortal crime, and just th' unjust to save.
The genuinely significant creation, whether an idea, or a work of art, or a scientific discovery, is most likely to be seen at first as erroneous, bad, or foolish. Later it may be seen as obvious, something self-evident to all. Only still later does it receive its final evaluation as a creative contribution. It seems clear no contemporary mortal can satisfactorily evaluate a creative product at the time it is formed, and this statement is increasingly true the greater the novelty of the creation.
Dreams surely are difficult, confusing, and not everything in them is brought to pass for mankind. For fleeting dreams have two gates: one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those which pass through the one of sawn ivory are deceptive, bringing tidings which come to nought, but those which issue from the one of polished horn bring true results when a mortal sees them.
Now that our sexual experience is increasingly available to us as a subject for contemplation, we have to extend our language to express our new consciousness until we have as many words for sexuality as the Eskimo has for snow, that pervasive, beautiful, and mortal climate in which we all live.
In the hysterical technocracy of modern music, sorrow is sent to the back of the class where it sits, pissing its pants in mortal terror.
Everybody in this life has their challenges and difficulties. That is part of our mortal test. The reason for some of these trials cannot be readily understood except on the basis of faith and hope because there is often a larger purpose which we do not always understand. Peace comes through hope.
Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. Now nature tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people.
"It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals," said he, "to be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel."
Of all the heavenly gifts that mortal men command What trusty treasure in the world can countervail a friend? What sweeter solace shall befall than one to find Upon whose breast thou may'st repose the secrets of thy mind
Egeria! sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast.
Sweet is the day of sacred rest; No mortal cares shall seize my breast; O may my heart in tune be found Like David's harp of solemn sound.
Comparatively, we are so much quicker to return favors and to pay our debts to mortals - and we should be responsive and grateful. But what of Him who gave us mortal life itself, who will ere long give us all immortality, and who proffers to the faithful the greatest gift of all, eternal life? We are poor bookkeepers, indeed!
Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary.
How many of us will be saved the pain of seeing the most important things in our lives disappearing from one moment to the next? I don't just mean people, but our ideas and dreams too: we might survive a day, a week, a few years, but we're all condemned to lose. Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive the mortal blow. The perfect crime - for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or where the guilty parties are to be found...they too are the victims of the reality they created.
Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive a mortal blow. The perfect crime--for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or where the guilty parties are to be found.
Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment.
When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow that is not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short truce, which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his arms for a new encounter.
Ah, race of mortal men, How as a thing of nought I count ye, though ye live; For who is there of men That more of blessing knows, Than just a little while To seem to prosper well, And, having seemed, to fall?
The spirit, if it could be seen with mortal eyes, would appear in bodily shape like a full-grown person with individual endowments that make it a counter-part of the body in which it [resides,] "that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual." (D&C 77:2.) It was that which came from God and entered at birth into the infant body prepared by its mortal parents. The spirit was of the "Lord from heaven." The physical body was "of the earth, earthy," (2 Cor. 15:47) or in other words, composed of the elements of which the things in the physical world are composed.
Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.
The saying of John Peale Bishop is worth recalling, that the South excelled in two things which the French deem essential to civilization: a code of manners and a native cuisine. Both are apt to suffer when life is regarded as a means to something else. Efficiency and charm are mortal enemies, and Southern charm indubitably derives from a carelessness about the efficient aspects of life.
Every rock is spoon by the Word. Every time I touch a stone, I am touching the Voice of God. Every cell of me is crafted by that artistry. My life is His breath. But we mortals grow numb. We want to feel more. And so we add MSG to our earthly brands of holiness.
Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot.
Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge....wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.
Consider how august a privilege it is, when angels are present, and archangels throng around, when cherubim and seraphim encircle with their blaze the throne, that a mortal may approach with unrestrained confidence, and converse with heaven's dread Sovereign! O, what honor was ever conferred like this?
If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?
Elegance? It may seem odd to non-scientists, but there is an aesthetic in software as there is in every other area of intellectual endeavour. Truly great programmers are like great poets or great mathematicians - they can achieve in a few lines what lesser mortals can only approach in three volumes
To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.
I acknowledge the Roman Church to be our mother church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions...Let [the Papists] assure themselves, that, as I am a friend of their persons, if they be good subjects, so am I a vowed enemy, and do denounce mortal war to their errors.
I have seen a place-its name is Eternal Hatred It is built in the deepest abyss of the stones of mortal sin. Pride was the first stone-this was seen in Lucifer.
We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.