We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.
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83, a slight variant of this was later published in Parables and Paradoxes (1946): We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we find ourselves is sinful, quite independent of guilt.
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Also quoted in this form in The Parables of Peanuts (1968) by Robert L. Short, and Like a Dream, Like a Fantasy: The Zen Teachings and Translations of Nyogen (2005)Franz Kafka
God: Where are you?
Adam:I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.
God: Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
Adam:The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.Adam
The apple of knowledge is not far from here. As soon as you've eaten it, you'll know as much as I do. But be careful not to make any mistakes: most of the apples hanging from that tree are enveloped in a thick skin. If you taste it, you will be brought low, beneath man; the inner part of the fruit will bring you up to the level of an angel.
Cyrano de Bergerac
What is considered sinful in one of the great religions to which citizens belong isn't necessarily sinful in the others. Criminal law therefore cannot be based on the notion of sin; it is crimes that it must define.
Pierre Trudeau
That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures--because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer--because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.
Adam
Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.
James Fenimore Cooper
Kafka, Franz
Kagan, Elena
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