Quotes about Confession

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Torture the data long enough and they will confess to anything.

Thou shalt confess the vain pursuit Of human glory yields no fruit But an untimely grave.

Gentlemen, I have a confession to make. Half of what we have taught you is in error, and furthermore we cannot tell you which half it is.

Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.

This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd,- Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.

Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance.

We can make majors and officers every year, but not scholars; kings can invest knights and barons, as Sigismund the emperor confessed.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Research teaches a man to admit he is wrong and to be proud of the fact that he does so, rather than try with all his energy to defend an unsound plan because he is afraid that admission of error is a confession of weakness when rather it is a sign of strength.

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgement was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply speaking her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.

Lord, I confess I am not what I ought to be, but I thank you, Lord, that I'm not what I used to be.

There is no more reason to accuse ourselves excessively of our failings than to excuse them overmuch. He who goes overboard in self-criticism often does so in order not to suffer others' criticisms, or else does so out of a kind of vanity that wishes to make others believe that he knows how to confess his faults.

I confess that there is nothing to teach: no religion, no science, no body of information which will lead your mind back to the Tao. Today I speak in this fashion, tomorrow in another, but always the Integral Way is beyond words and beyond mind.

A reply to Olbers' attempt in 1816 to entice him to work on Fermat's Theorem. I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of. []

Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.

And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world's spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new; then see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.

nine keys to contentment Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength enough to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbors. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.

In attempting to develop a life of prayer, one becomes conscious of the fact that he is two persons, and this is true of all of us. There is our outside self, the person who is seen and watched by others, who lives and speaks and acts in public, the person we reveal to others with varying degrees of frankness or affectation. And there is that other self - the inner self, which is ever partly hidden even from our closest friends, and which we, ourselves, but dimly apprehend. It is this self, our better self, that the Master sees and values. To him the door of this interior castle is always open. He sees the real person. He knows that the fiercest battles are fought in this 'Sector of the Soul,' and he whispers hope to all who have not surrendered there. . . . "It was this understanding of the inner man which caused him to advise us to go alone into our closets and close the door when we would commune with the Father. Man, when alone with God, knows there can be no pretense, or make believe. Here at least he is absolutely honest. 'We feel the thing-we- ought-to-be beating beneath the thing-we-are.' Realizing that he knows before we tell him, we lay bare our souls to God. It is the antiseptic washing of the wound which makes healing possible, and in religion this is called repentance, and forgiveness. It is a time when our souls are naked and perhaps ashamed, but, when no longer distracted by fear of discovery, we can really concentrate on prayer. Rich and radiant living is generated in the hour of quiet meditation, of self-examination, of confession of weaknesses and prayer for forgiveness. This searching of our own souls and admitting what we see, is sometimes painful, but its effects are healing and wholesome. Probing a wound is sometimes more beneficial than applying an ointment.

Close to the Gates a spacious Garden lies, From the Storms defended and inclement Skies; Four Acres was the allotted Space of Ground, Fenc'd with a green Enclosure all around. Tall thriving Trees confessed the fruitful Mold: The reddening Apple ripens here to Gold, Here the blue Fig with luscious Juice overflows, With deeper Red the full Pomegranate glows, The Branch here bends beneath the weighty Pear, And verdant Olives flourish round the Year.

It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.

We must dare to be happy, and dare to confess it, regarding ourselves always as the depositories, not as the authors of our own joy.

I must confess, I was born at a very early age.

Prayer is a confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.

There was never miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might have led him to confess a God.