Gradual Corruption Quotes

When Satan cannot get a great sin in he will let a little one in, like the thief who goes and finds shutters all coated with iron and bolted inside. At last he sees a little window in a chamber. He cannot get in, so he puts a little boy in, that he may go round and open the back door. So the devil has always his little sins to carry about with him to go and open back doors for him, and we let one in and say, 'O, it is only a little one.' Yes, but how that little one becomes the ruin of the entire man!

For nothing is evil in the beginning.

No one every suddenly became depraved.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

No one ever became thoroughly bad in one step.

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.

If we mix only a moderate minority share of turds with the raisins each year, probably no one will recognize what will ultimately become a very large collection of turds.

No man becomes bad all at once.

Small crimes always precede great ones. Never have we seen timid innocence pass suddenly to extreme licentiousness.

Wickedness comes to its height by degrees. He that dares say of a less sin, Is it not a little one? will ere long say of a greater, Tush, God regards it not!

No one becomes depraved all at once.

People always think there's this huge hundred-foot-high barrier that separates doing good from doing bad. But there's not. There's nothing. There's not even a little anthill. You just take one baby step in any direction and you're already there. You've doing something awful. And your life is changed forever.

Vice, like virtue, Grows in small steps, and no true innocence Can ever fall at once to deepest guilt.

No one ever suddenly became depraved.

No man ever became very wicked all at once.

Evil comes up softly like a flower.

The Steps to Folly as well as Sin are gradual, and almost imperceptible, and when we are once on the Decline, we go down without taking notice on't.

Sin rarely seems sin at first beginnings.

The small man thinks that small acts of goodness are of no benefit, and does not do them; and that small deeds of evil do no harm, and does not refrain from them. Hence, his wickedness becomes so great that it cannot be concealed, and his guilt so great that it cannot be pardoned.

There is a method in man's wickedness; it grows up by degrees.

A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.

We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor

Crime like virtue has its degrees; and timid innocence was never known to blossom suddenly into extreme license.

No one ever became extremely wicked suddenly.