How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
She sat there looking at the fire, with the can in her hands and the string which suspended it looping down from around her neck. She didn't look any thinner or any older. She didn't look sick either. She just looked like somebody that has quit sleeping at night. (4.1.6)
The can around Granny's neck is full of the money she's earned from stealing and selling back Union mules. She knows that it's wrong; that's why she's constantly praying for forgiveness for her sin. But that weight around her neck (both the literal and the figurative) keeps her from getting any rest.
Quote #2
[S]he said quiet too, quiet as Brother Fortinbride: "I have sinned. I want you all to pray for me." (4.2.3)
Granny is a proud woman, and in case you don't know any, they usually have a hard time saying that they were wrong. For Granny to admit in front of everyone that she has sinned, and ask them to pray, she must need to summon all her humility.
Quote #3
Ringo and I were just past fifteen then, but I could imagine what Doctor Worsham would have thought up to say, about all soldiers did not carry arms, and about they also serve and how one child saved from hunger and cold is better in heaven's sight than a thousand slain enemies. But Brother Fortinbride didn't say it. (4.2.4)
The definition of sin, and also of virtue, changes with the preachers who come through the Sartorises' church. Doctor Worsham was more of an educated guy, and would have weighed good and evil in a sort of moral calculus (and you thought regular calculus was bad!). Brother Fortinbride is a little more of a utilitarian with his definitions, as we can see with his involvement in Granny's scheme.
Quote #4
"I made a mistake," he said. "I admit hit. I reckon everybody does." (5.2.38)
When Ab Snopes confesses his sin, he calls it a mistake. Yeah, we'd agree that it was a mistake to lure Granny to her violent death. The problem with Snopes's apology is that he tries to blend in; instead of owning his mistake he just reminds the boys that everybody makes them. Not what they were looking to hear.
Quote #5
"It wasn't him or Ab Snopes either that kilt her," Ringo said. "It was them mules. That first batch of mules we got for nothing." (5.4.5)
Granny was killed by Grumby, let's make that clear. And Ab Snopes was the one who set her up. But the underlying sin, her greed and thieving, is what put her in the position to let those two evildoers kill her.
Quote #6
"I have come to appeal to them once more with a mother's tears though I dont think it will do any good though I had prayed until the very last that this boy's innocence might be spared and preserved but what must be must be and at least we can all three bear our burden together." (6.2.18)
The innocent boy in this scene is Bayard, and his Aunt Louisa intends to keep him that way by forcing her daughter, Dru, to marry John. In case you're missing the subtext, Aunt Louisa thinks they are living in sin, having sexual relations outside of marriage, and therefore is scandalized. She'll solve that sin by having them marry.
Quote #7
"You wish to tell me that you, a young woman, associated with him, a still young man, day and night for a year, running about the country with no guard nor check of any sort upon—Do you take me for a complete fool?" (6.2.23)
Aunt Louisa apparently has never heard of self-control. She thinks that sin is waiting around every corner, and the only way to avoid it is by setting up chaperone systems so that it never gets the chance to find you in the dark.
Quote #8
But they caught on quick now; now all of them were patting Aunt Louisa's hands and giving her vinegar to smell and Mrs Habersham saying, "Of course. You poor thing. A public wedding now, after a year, would be a public notice of the…." So they decided it could be a reception, because Mrs Habersham said how a reception could be held for a bridal couple at any time, even ten years later. (6.3.2)
Sexual sin is often a gossip's best friend. And these ladies are no exception. They are obsessed with whether or not Dru and John have done the deed, whether or not she's pregnant, and forcing the two to marry. But the marriage has to be done right, or it will just confirm to everyone that there was, indeed, sexual sin.
Quote #9
"Since you have forced your mother and brother to live under a roof of license and adultery you think you can also force them to live in a polling booth refuge from violence and bloodshed, do you?" (6.3.27)
A license is a cool thing when it lets you drive your parents' car to the movies whenever you want. But in this case, it's a sin: it's related to licentiousness, which is sexual immorality. Aunt Louisa believes that her daughter and John have committed several sins, and her proximity to them has stained her lily-white reputation.
Quote #10
[W]e had talked about it, about how if there was anything at all in the Book, anything of hope for His blind and bewildered spawn which He had chosen above all others to offer immortality, Thou shalt not kill must be it…. (7.1.10)
For all their concern with other people's sin, the people in the novel don't seem to care too much about the huge sin of killing that is constantly taking place through the war and the various revenge plots that they deal with. Bayard's the only one who seems to notice this fact.