Sublime

Human nature begins with the potential for honesty (“upright” is literally “straight”), but people pervert this potential by devising devious calculations, like wily accountants juggling figures in their books.

Time and again, he says, he finds himself wanting to do good but instead doing evil. His sense of sinfulness is overpowering. This leads him to the following argument: The law—that is, the Torah—creates the desire to sin, and sin itself is a kind of death. But sin itself was brought into the world by Adam, who ate from the Tree of Knowledge and was

This is why when the devil comes to Eve in the Garden, he doesn’t come with a stick but with an idea. Because ideas and the idea systems of fallen society are the primary trade of the evil one. They cause us to believe lies.

Adam ate the apple, and our teeth still ache. —Hungarian proverb