more sinned against than sinning

More sinned against than sinning, this Billy is largely a victim of circumstances, backed into a corner by life until his only option is to come out shooting.

Even if your daughters are, in some sense, more sinned against than sinning, you could reasonably worry that putting resources in their hands will allow them to support destructive causes.

He insists he is a man more sinned against than sinning and is working with lawyers to clear his name.

While the British tabloids like to cast Meghan in the villainous role of the Duchess of Windsor — the American divorcée who lured away their king in 1936 and lived with him in bitter exile, causing an irreparable family rift — Harry and Meghan seem determined to position her instead as a latter-day Diana, a woman mistreated by her in-laws, more sinned against than sinning.

As a result, when Lear describes himself as “a man more sinned against than sinning,” these words represent not the dawning of tragic awareness in a complicated protagonist but more self-pity from a cranky old narcissist.