It's a stage we all go through; it takes a certain amount of living to strike the strange balance between the two errors either of regarding ourselves as unforgivable or as not needing forgiveness.

Flawed genius is better than flawless talent.

We must show sympathy with sinners, but not with their sins.

Never forget as you enter your inner sanctuary that your whole relationship with God depends on what you think of sin and of yourself as a redeemed sinner.

It is pride that made redemption needful; it is from our pride we need above everything to be redeemed.

Is there such depravity in man as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?

God does not will that any of us should ever sin. Yet his will is accomplished in spite of our sins, and even through our sins.

What's wrong with the world? It's easy to probe the ills of the nation, the Church, and the planet and come up with a grave diagnosis... But it takes all the strength we can muster to stand at Mass and honestly say, 'I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do... Sin is not out there; it's deep inside you and me... What's wrong with the world? I am, because I sin, and my sins well up from the darkness in my own heart.

Sainthood does not mean sinlessness.

For what is more consonant with faith than to recognize that we are naked of all virtue, in order to be clothed by God? That we are empty of all good, to be filled by him? That we are slaves of sin, to be freed by him? Blind, to be illumined by him? Lame, to be made straight by him? Weak, to be sustained by him? To take away from us all occasion for glorying, that he alone may stand forth gloriously and we glory in him [cf. I Cor. 1:31; II Cor. 10:17]?

It is at this point that the gospel differs most from philosophy, since it teaches that the salvation of men is through the free remission of sins.

For if by natural instinct or wisdom we could bring ourselves back to the road and escape from error, we would have no need for Christ.