All these evils in which I see and in which I partake are the fruit of sin. They would not have been, had we not sinned. They are but the first installment of the punishment of sin. They are an imperfect and dim image of what sin is. Sin is infinitely worse than famine, than war, than pestilence. Take the most hideous of diseases, under which the body wastes away and corrupts, the blood is infected; the head, the heart, the lungs, every organ disordered, the nerves unstrung and shattered; pain in every limb, thirst restlessness, delirium — all is nothing compared to that dreadful sickness of the soul which we call sin. They all are the effects of it, they are shadows of it, but nothing more.
--Blessed John Henry Newman
