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The Fall Quotes

Browse 23 quotes about The Fall.

The Fall Quotes

“I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death.”

PhilosophyExistentialismAlbert CamusThe Fall
Author:Albert Camus
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“Pure as th’expanse of heav’n; I thither went With unexperienced thought, and laid me down On the green bank, to look into the clear Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky. As I bent down to look, just opposite, A shape within the wat’ry gleam appeared Bending to look on me, I started back, It started back, but pleased I soon returned, Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks Of sympathy and love; there I had fixed Mine eyes till now and pined with vain desire, Had not a voice thus warned me-”

DesireBeautyVanityEveParadise LostThe Fall
Author:John Milton
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“The story of the Fall tells us in mythical language that "original sin" is not simply a stigma arbitrarily making good pleasures seem guilty, but a basic inauthenticity, a kind of predisposition to bad faith in our understanding of ourselves and of the world. It implies a determined willfulness in trying to make things be other than they are in order that we may be able to make them subserve, at any moment, to our individual desire for pleasure or for power. But since things do not obey our arbitrary impulsions, and since we cannot make the world correspond to and confirm the image of it dictated by our needs and illusions, our willfulness is inseparable from error and from suffering. Hence, Buddhism says, deluded life itself is in a state of Dukkha, and every movement of desire tends to bear ultimate fruit in pain rather than lasting joy, in hate rather than love, in destruction rather than creation. (Let us note in passing that when technological skill seems in fact to give man almost absolute power in manipulating the world, this fact is no way reverses his original condition of brokenness and error but only makes it all the more obvious. We who live in the age of the H-bomb and the extermination camp have reason to reflect on this, though such reflection is a bit unpopular.)”

ChristianityCreationBuddhismZenCatholicismOriginal SinThe FallThomas MertonH Bomb
Book:Zen and the Birds of Appetite
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“So spake our mother Eve, and Adam heard Well pleased, but answered not; for now too nigh Th' Archangel stood, and from the other hill To their fixed station, all in bright array The Cherubim descended; on the ground Gliding meteorous, as ev'ning mist Ris'n from a river o'er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel Homeward returning. High in front advanced, The brandished sword of God before them blazed Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat, And vapour as the Libyan air adust, Began to parch that temperate clime; whereat In either and the hast'ning angel caught Our ling'ring parents, and to th' eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast To the subjected plain; then disappeared. They looking back, all th' eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.”

GodHeavenSatanParadiseAdamAngelsEdenEveThe BibleThe Fall
Book:Paradise lost
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“Sin, the Fall, salvation, grace, election-how is it that they loom so large in the vocabulary of a movement which should have been Platonist, should have been theocentric? It is due, I think, to the overmastering influence of one man, St. Augustine. A Platonist if ever there was one, yet Fenelon quarried no material from him in writing the Maximes des saints. St. Augustine was a man in whom the moral struggle had become inextricably entwined with the search for God; further, he had to enter the lists against the great heresy of Pelagius, which sought to by-pass the mystery of redemption. Consequently, the doctrine of grace became a major preoccupation with him, and he darkened in, perhaps too unsparingly, the outlines of St. Paul's world-picture. Moreover, he sought to pluck the heart out of a mystery by his theory of the two rival delectations. If you avoided sin, it was only because conscious love for God then and there neutralized the attraction of it; your decision was made on a balance of motives. Exaggerated now from this angle, now from that, St. Augustine's theology has provided, ever since, the dogmatic background of revivalism.”

SinAugustineThe FallPlatonism
Book:Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion
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“When Adam and Eve bit into the fruit, therefore, they weren’t just violating some arbitrary command, “Don’t eat the fruit.” They were doing something much sadder and much more serious. They were rejecting God’s authority over them and declaring their independence from him. Adam and Eve wanted to be, as the Serpent promised them, “like God,” so both of them seized on what they thought was an opportunity to shed the vice-regency and take the crown itself. In all the universe, there was only one thing God had not placed under Adam’s feet—God himself. Yet Adam decided this arrangement was not good enough for him, and so he rebelled.”

GodChristSinMankindRebellionAdam And EveThe Fall
Book:What Is the Gospel?
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“We are not only contingent beings, dependent on the love and will of a Creator whom we cannot know experientially except in so far as he reveals to us our personal relationship with him as his sons - we are also sinners who have FREELY REPUDIATED this relationship. We have rebelled against him. The spirit of rebellious refusal persists in our heart even when we try to return to him. Much could be said, at this point, about all the subtlety and ingenuity of religious egoism which is one of the worst and most ineradicable forms of self-deception. Sometimes one feels that a well-intentioned and inculpable atheist is in many ways better off - and gives more glory to God - than some people whose bigoted complacency and inhumanity to others are signs of the most obvious selfishness! Hence we not only need to recover an awareness of our creaturehood; we also must repair the injury done to truth and to love by this repudiation, this infidelity. But how? Humanly speaking, there is no way in which we can do this.”

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Book:Contemplative Prayer
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“Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and that he became degenerate by disobedience? No. The real truth is, and the history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the pendulum of a clock have swung forward and backward, but after all, man, like the hands, has gone steadily on. Man is growing grander. He is not degenerating. Nations and individuals fail and die, and make room for higher forms. The intellectual horizon of the world widens as the centuries pass. Ideals grow grander and purer; the difference between justice and mercy becomes less and less; liberty enlarges, and love intensifies as the years sweep on. The ages of force and fear, of cruelty and wrong, are behind us and the real Eden is beyond. It is said that a desire for knowledge lost us the Eden of the past; but whether that is true or not, it will certainly give us the Eden of the future.”

TruthPastFallForceFearGrowthJusticePerfectFuturePureIdealsMercyIntellectInnocentCrueltyObedienceClockHorizonDieEdenGarden Of EdenFall Of ManGrandThe FallAdvancedDegeneratePendulum
Book:Some Mistakes of Moses
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“Fortune, because of whom all good leaves us, was thereupon born, and was complicit in the whole affair. She did this because of her fickleness. And I believe her to be the daughter of the devil because I do not find any writing or text—not prose, not verse—that says or proves that God, who makes all good, beneficial works out of nothing, ever formed or loved Fortune. So I believe that the devil made her, so that she would undo all good and put man in servitude, because there is no shame, damage, or misfortune that does not come to man because of Fortune (may all remember that!). And she does even greater harm to the best than to the worst, night and day. Her disruptive influence will not be short-lived; rather, her control will last until Judgment Day”

GodDisasterTheologyMisfortuneJudgement DayThe FallFortune Favors The Wicked
Book:The Book of the Mutability of Fortune (Volume 52)
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“Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18). From the beginning God purposed to glorify Himself “in the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end” (Eph. 3:21). To this end, He created the world, and formed man. His all-wise plan was not defeated when man fell, for in the Lamb “slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) we behold the Fall anticipated. Now will God’s purpose be thwarted by the wickedness of men since the Fall, as is clear from the words of the psalmist, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee: the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain” (Ps. 76:10).”

SinGod S PlanThe FallThe Problem Of EvilThe Sovereignty Of GodArthur W Pink
Book:The Sovereignty of God
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“The American people spend thousands of dollars to propagate the doctrines of the fall of man, the creation of the world out of nothing in six days by a personal God, vicarious atonement, absolution from sin by the shedding of innocent blood. This is the Christianity offered to the poor and illiterate of India... Christianity has percolated through the layers of dogmatism and bigotry, of intolerance and superstition, of damnation and hell fire. It takes on itself the quality of these layers and imparts them to those that are received within its folds.”

PoorChristianityCreationIndiaBigotryIntoleranceSuperstitionGenesisAmericanDamnationIlliterateDogmatismFall Of ManThe FallJainismHellfireInnocent BloodPersonal GodSix Day CreationVicarious Atonement
Book:The Monist
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“The closer we get—the more I let you in…the more dangerous this gets. We’re just pawns in this game, and I wasn’t playing before. I was just a piece to move about the board, but I am playing now. Don’t you get it? You’re what everyone wants! But I’m not going to let them win.”

LoveRomanceGamesProtectionPawnsForbidden LoveThe FallPost ApocFighting The SystemIn Between SeasonsThe Fall SeriesFeeling Protective
Book:In Between Seasons
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