Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation - when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself.

Original sin is not only the violation of a positive command … but … attempts … to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man with only a sense of the master-slave relationship.

It is not possible to understand original sin without reference to the fullness of givenness – that is, love. Original sin is a refusal to partake in love, in the good of all creation coming from love, and above all, in the good of love itself. In this sense, it is the loss of grace.

All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority, otherwise called ambition.

Pride is the master-sin of the devil; and the devil is the father of lies.

Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul's peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan's whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility.

If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.

From St. Augustine's De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia: 'Original sin lies in man's arrogance and pride; it was committed when Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge, wanting to elevate himself to the divine heights and to become himself master of all creation.' God punished man - Adam by implanted in him a certain drive - the sexual drive - which cannot be mastered, tamed, like hunger/thirst. Someone with a strong enough will can starve to death in the middle of a room full of delicious food, but if a naked virgin passes his way, the erection of his phallus is in no way dependent in the strength of his will.

The original sin is to limit the Is. —Don't.

The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, is the cause of Man's error and misery.

For man's greatest crime is to have been born.

Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.

The “magnificent Psalm of Praise to the Creator with which Genesis opens” is filled with magnificent mistakes, and is utterly absurd. “The beautiful legend of the first sin and its fateful consequences” is probably the most contemptible story that was ever written, and the treatment of the first pair by Jehovah is unparalleled in the cruelty of despotic governments. According to this infamous account, God cursed the mothers of the world, and added to the agonies of maternity. Not only so, but he made woman a slave, and man something, if possible, meaner—a master.

Sex, sin, and the Devil were early linked.