A Quote by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Revenge is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Quote Topics

Common Passion Revenge Sin

Quote Author

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
English - Writer
May 25, 1803 - January 18, 1873

Revenge is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed. The savage deems it noble;but the religion of Christ, which is the sublime civilizer, emphatically condemns it. Why? Because religion ever seeks to ennoble man; and nothing so debases him as revenge.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

It has been said that the sin of ingratitude is more serious than the sin of revenge. With revenge, we return evil for evil, but with ingratitude, we return evil for good.

W. Eugene Hansen

Christianity has ever been the enemy of human love; it has forever cursed and expelled and crucified the one passion which sweetens and smiles on human life, which makes the desert blossom as the rose, and which glorifies the common things and common ways of earth. It made of this, the angel of life, a shape of sin and darkness ... Even in the unions which it reluctantly permitted, it degraded and dwarfed the passion which it could not entirely exclude, and permitted it coarsely to exist for the mere necessity of procreation.

Ouida

Simply coming to the perpetrator and delivering the message is Nozick's definition of revenge. And in that sense, Adi is exacting revenge. When people ask, "Does Adi want revenge?" - they mean violent revenge. But in Nozick's formulation, it is revenge. That is the essence of revenge.

Errol Morris

Sometime in the coming century, people will rack their brains pondering how nations with tremendous scientific and intellectual achievements could have given uninstructed and untrained men and women the right to vote equally uninstructed and untrained people into responsible positions.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important

Ogden Nash

There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children, but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion there would be neither mathematics nor natural science.

Albert Einstein

I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end.

Ishmael Beah

Rash, angry words, and spoken out of season, When passion has usurp'd the throne of reason, Have ruin'd many. Passion is unjust, And for an idle, transitory gust Of gratified revenge, dooms us to pay With long repentance at a later day.

Theognis of Megara

I named my first album 'The Sound of Revenge' because I wanted to get revenge on everyone who doubted me. But when I finally got revenge, I didn't enjoy it.

Chamillionaire

It would seem that the ingratitude, whereby a subsequent sin causes the return of sins previously forgiven, is a special sin. For, the giving of thanks belongs to counter passion, which is a necessary condition of justice. But justice is a special virtue. Therefore this ingratitude is a special sin. Thanksgiving is a special virtue. But ingratitude is opposed to thanksgiving. Therefore ingratitude is a special sin.

Thomas Aquinas

No sin, especially no great sin, is just a harm done to the individual who commits it. I believe myself that the future of the human race is bound up with that idea. The soul that is conscious of a grievous sin is conscious of a great harm done to the community - to someone else. That common hurt should now be forgiven.