Ivan Cankar

“ A man may perhaps try to lie to his soul.—"It wasn't so bad as that. Your restlessness has created a black night out of mere shadows. It was but a trifle, an every-day occurrence."—Such words are lies, and the man knows it. The heart is not a penal code in which crimes and offenses are defined. Nor is it a catechism in which sins are classified. The human heart is a judge, just and exact.
Pardonable is a sin which can be described by word of mouth and atoned for. But heavy, tremendously heavy, is a sin which remains with you—in your heart—indescribable, formless. ”

“ Such injustice is an unpardonable sin, permanent, enduring, unforgettable in one's conscience. Sometimes the sin is forgotten, eroded from your life, drowned in the eventfulness of the days; but suddenly, perhaps in the middle of a beautiful enjoyable day, perhaps at night, it comes back upon you, to weigh down your soul, to pain and burn your conscience as though you have just committed it. Almost every other sin or bitter memory may be washed away with atonement and good thought, except this sin of injustice against someone whom you love. ”

“ Three or four months later a strange woman brought a cup of coffee to my room. Suddenly I felt a sting in my heart. I wanted to cry out from pain. I shivered, my whole being trembling in stark agony.—For a man's heart is a just judge; a man's heart does not concern itself with paragraphs in statute books or trifles. ”