Quotes & Sayings About Confession

'God help me, yes. I don't want anything more than you. I want nothing less than you.' — T.J. Klune

Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance. — S. Leonard Rubinstein

Confession has a "consequence" too - a good consequence! A free and happy heart! — Stormie O'martian

Confession alone is not necessarily good for the soul. — Pete Hamill

I cannot protect my children from my weaknesses. As hard as I may try, at some point my sin will affect their lives. However, the way I deal with my failure can provide an example for them to follow. I am a sinner raising sinners. Each of my children will face the weight and sorrow of his or her own sins. Just as we teach daily hygiene habits like brushing teeth, our children need instruction on how to find cleansing for their souls. By teaching our children about confession and repentance as well as grace and forgiveness, we bless their lives for years to come. — Melissa B. Kruger

I often talk about unconditional love towards others. But the truth is I have always looked for favorable conditions when it comes to self-love and happiness.
Now that is what you call a true confession! — Saurabh Sharma

I have a confession," Kai mumbled into her hair. She tilted her head to peer at him. "Careful. There could be paparazzi hiding behind these trees. Any confessions might end up on tomorrow's newsfeeds." He pretended to consider this for a moment, eyes twinkling, before he said, "I could live with that." She — Marissa Meyer

A sinner is justified and reconciled with God the moment he truly believes in the person and atoning work of Christ. However, the evidence that he truly believed and was genuinely converted in that moment is that he goes on believing and confessing all the days of his life. This is not to say that the true believer will be immune to doubts, free from failure, or unhindered in his growth to maturity. However, it does mean that the God who began a good work in him will continue perfecting that work until the final day.7 Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone.8 However, the evidence of saving faith is a genuine and enduring confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ throughout the believer's life. — Paul David Washer

Repentance is shockingly beautiful when we see it not as "I sinned again, I need to repent," but as "I sinned against my God again, but He is calling me back so He can lavish me with His love and forgiveness. — James MacDonald

One night i rode home - it was a confession - and i came staggering across the yard and i fell into the rosebush and crawled up the stairs on my hands and knees and i was sick on the floor beside my bed. In the morning I tried to tell him I was sorry, and do you know what he said? 'Why, Tom, you were just jolly'. 'Jolly,' if I did it. A drunken man didn't crawl home. Just Jolly — John Steinbeck

She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no values or morals. If I am "good" (and they assume that I am), it's obviously for lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually. — Katherine Dunn

A confession has to be part of your new life. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I can't bring myself to trust you. But even if you were to betray me, and even if you were to become my enemy ... would it be okay for me to love? Could you ... let me love you? — Ryohgo Narita

We are so unrepentant that we would rather perish than confess truthfully that we are sinners and justify God by means of confession. David justified the prophet Nathan's words: 'You are an adulterer, a murderer, and a blasphemer.' When David heard this, he was chastened and replied: 'The words are true.' He confessed his sins immediately and received forgiveness. Nathan did not write David a letter of indulgence, nor did he say to him: 'Make a pilgrimage to St. James, or have Masses read; or lie down in a hairy garment!' No, he said: 'The Lord has removed your sin. — Martin Luther

The Christian confession is not a neutral proposition; it is prayer, only yielding its meaning within prayer. — Pope Benedict XVI

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. — John Ruskin

In his profession and mine you're successful if it leaves you untouched." "How does one achieve that?" "In one of two ways: by not looking at people at all or by looking at everything about them." "Which is preferable, Miss Francon?" "Whichever is hardest." "But a desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself. — Ayn Rand

Don't harden your heart. Return to the Lord. He will revive and restore you. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Dancers are a great breed of people. And they really want to dance so you don't have to beg them to work. However, dancers sometimes build walls around themselves because they are presenting themselves all the time: dancing is very much a confession. — Suzanne Farrell

Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence. — Dorothy Dix

I thought it was over, all I could think was I never told you I love you. What an idiot. — Nora Roberts

While Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul,Christ exclaims,'If it is possible, let this cup pass from me'.Christ in this respect is the self- confession of human sensibility. — Ludwig Feuerbach

And I didn't choose it, Kat. I chose you. — Ally Carter

[ ... ]we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I knew that his confession would be a tremendous relief to him but a burden to me. Such information, once shared, can never be retracted. — Karen Essex

So much of my life has been about self-effacement, pretense, masquerading, concealment, and indirection. — Marlon Riggs

Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an origincal affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a political history of truth would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free
nor error servile
but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this. — Michel Foucault

A true Christian will be sensitive to the sin in their life and it will lead them to brokenness and genuine confession, but the person who says they are a Christian and are not sensitive to sin, it does not lead them to confession, a person who is that way is not a Christian. — Paul Washer

But the more time I spend with you . . . the more like you I become." He pulls back and I'm left with that heavy, yet strangely flattering, confession. I'm not sure what I should say. So I awkwardly mumble, "Well, be prepared to become totally awesome. — Karina Halle

You think about me ever?" Ben's eyes were intent on Maddox. All the time. Even when I knew I shouldn't. The confession died in his throat, but maybe Ben could see it in his eyes because Ben gave a sly smile. "I've thought about you." "Yeah?" Maddox's voice was hoarse, eyes riveted to Ben's. "Sucking — Annabeth Albert

Confession breaks the power of canceled sin. It also heals the broken heart. — Mark Batterson

Confession ran in the family. — Iris Murdoch

Ridicule is a public confession of fear. — Vanna Bonta

A confession you make merely to illuminate the murky corners of your little life may end up lighting the path to freedom for a thousand other hearts. — Martha Beck

I have a confession to make. The love affair of my life has been with the Greek language. I have now reached the age when it has occurred to me that I may have read some books for the last time. I suddenly thought that there are books I cannot bear not to read again before I die. One that stands out a mile is Homer's Iliad. — William Golding

Three conditions are necessary for Penance: contrition, which is sorrow for sin, together with a purpose of amendment; confession of sins without any omission; and satisfaction by means of good works. — Thomas Aquinas

we are to 'hunger and thirst for righteousness'. For what is the use of confessing and lamenting our sin, of acknowledging the truth about ourselves to both God and men, if we leave it there? Confession of sin must lead to hunger for righteousness. — John R.W. Stott

I half hoped he would be shirtless, but then wanted to smack myself at the ridiculous secret confession. — Alex Rosa

Then he just blurted it out, with no preparation. 'The truth of it is that whether your mother arranged our marriage, or whether it was all an illusion, I must be horribly obtuse, because I can't talk myself out of being in love with you. — Eloisa James

Average intelligence loves blinders, which facilitate an even trot; but a brisker and livelier intelligence desires uncertainty, risk, a play of more deceptive and elusive forces ... where one can preserve flight, pride, joke, confession, rapture, play, struggle. — Witold Gombrowicz

A person who knew he could come to God with nothing more than a cupful of flour and a confession of his sin and still receive forgiveness was learning something fundamental about the grace of God . . . even the most powerful in the land knew that God was not impressed by the most lavish sacrifices. . . .49 — Timothy J. Keller

In every one of these cases, the police ignored the suspect's tentative and mealymouthed expressions of interest in a lawyer, persisted in their questioning, and successfully managed to get him to make some damaging statements (not necessarily a confession) that could be used to help convict him, and the courts concluded that such statements were admissible against the suspect because he had not made a clear and unequivocal request for a lawyer. — James Duane

His confession felt like finding out my cat - Sir Edmund Hillary, named after the first man to climb Mt Everest - could talk and wanted to give me a tongue bath. At best, Sir Hillary was indifferent to my existence. At worst, he may have been plotting my demise. He was an audacious Calico psychopath, always pushing his litterbox from its place beside the toilet in the bathroom directly in front of the shower, but only when I was in the shower ... — Penny Reid

What matters to us is the revelation of the swindle, fraud, or defalcation. This makes known to the world that things have not been as they should have been, that it is time to stop and see how they truly are. The making known of malfeasance, whether by the arrest or surrender of the miscreant, or by one of those other forms of confession, flight or suicide, is important as a signal that the euphoria has been overdone. The stage of overtrading may well come to an end. The curtain rises on revulsion, and perhaps discredit. — Charles P. Kindleberger

Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus:
"Not the man who denies the gods worshiped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious"
Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus:
"In simple words, I hate the pack of gods"
is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. — Karl Marx

In confession occurs the breakthrough of the Cross. The root of all sin is pride, superbia. I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride ... In the deep mental and physical pain of humiliation before a brother - which means, before God - we experience the Cross of Jesus as our rescue and salvation. The old man dies, but it is God who has conquered him. Now we share in the resurrection of Christ and eternal life. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Somehow, Thorne's inability to talk about his attraction to Cress spoke so much louder than an outright confession. After all, he had no trouble making suggestive commentary about Cinder. — Marissa Meyer

Some of the most healing words in any language are, "I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?" How much more we need that confession to our Father in heaven. — Billy Graham

I say, 'But he does not have you,' and I kiss her through the orchard gate.
It's a kiss I have longed to take. A kiss that gently tugs at Astrid's seething power, at the wildness inside both of us. It's sweet and feels like a confession: I love her. — Tessa Gratton

She rubs my back and sighs.
Jesus Abby, I'm so sorry. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're still hung up on him. Big time. — Annie Brewer

The weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender. — Dante Alighieri

God, you smell nice," he whispered. "I've missed that smell. I've missed everything about you, little Ann. — Wendy Higgins

I wasn't ready for the guilt of being a parent. I was raised Catholic, so guilt is a familiar friend. Guilt is as much a part of the Catholic culture as is rooting for Notre Dame. I grew up with a "God is watching you, so you better not make him mad" mentality. I felt guilty for feeling good, for feeling bad, and for feeling nothing. Attending Confession was supposed to alleviate some of the guilt, but I always ended up feeling guilty for not telling the priest everything I felt guilty about, so I stopped going to Confession. Then I felt guilty that I stopped going to Confession. That's a lot of guilt. Just when I thought that nothing could top "Catholic Guilt," I became acquainted with "Parental Guilt," which totally puts "Catholic Guilt" to shame. Sorry, Catholic Guilt. Now I feel guilty for shaming you. — Jim Gaffigan

So it's the unwinding of your nervous system. The corresponding experience to what winds you up comes out in your dreams. To write a song then, even one like Don't Bother Me, helps to get rid of some subconscious burden. Writing a song is like going to confession. — George Harrison

I'm in love with you, you stupid arse, and I'm not losing you. Got it?" she whispered against his lips before kissing him again. Her confession had stolen his breath, so all he could do was nod. "Now, once again, how do we fix you?" she asked, when they finally parted. To — Morgan Rhodes

People can't function without forgiveness. It's why the Catholics have confession and the Jews have Yom Kippur. You recognize your failings, and you move on. — Simon Wood

And there I am, blushing and confused, made beautiful by Cinna's hands, desirable by Peeta's confession, tragic by circumstance, and by all accounts, unforgettable. — Suzanne Collins

Wait for that wisest of all counselores, Time. — Pericles

Had I been allowed to testify, I would have told them that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the bullet that killed President Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll area. I would have also informed the Warren Commission about the call I received from Lyndon Johnson while we were operating on Lee Harvey Oswald. President Johnson told me that a man in the operating room would get a deathbed confession from Oswald. — Charles A. Crenshaw

ANNE: You said you'd keep me in my room until I confessed. I just thought up a good confession and made it as interesting as I could.
MARILLA: But it was still a lie.
ANNE: You wouldn't believe the truth. — L.M. Montgomery

Sean slowly met her eyes. He knew damn well that now wasn't the time to have this conversation, not when they were parked a hundred yards from the warehouse, but he couldn't stop the confession. "I love you, you know. — Elle Kennedy

I had to make a confession of faith in stone. That was the beginning of the tower, the house I built for myself at Bollingen. — Carl Jung

There are many ways to cover up our sin. We may justify or minimize it by blaming circumstances and other people. However, real repentance first admits sin as sin and takes full responsibility. True confession and repentance begins when blame shifting ends. — Timothy Keller

Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we're sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don't know anybody nowadays who is not sincere. — Walker Percy

Tell everything to your spiritual father, and the Lord will have mercy on you and you will escape delusion. But if you think that you know more about the spiritual life than your spiritual father, and you stop telling him everything about yourself in confession, then you will immediately be allowed to fall into some sort of delusion, in order that you may be corrected. — Silouan The Athonite

If Christians realized that God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit really dwells within our bodies, we would be far more careful about what we eat, drink, look at, or read. No wonder Paul said, "I beat my body and make it my slave" [1 Corinthians 9:27 NIV]. This should drive us to our knees in confession. — Billy Graham

There it was: a full confession. Sherlock Holmes had done it again, and as I marveled at my devastating powers of deduction, I wished there had been two of me so I could have patted myself on the back. I know it sounds arrogant, but how often does one achieve a mental triumph of that magnitude? After listening to her speak just two words, I had nailed the whole bloody thing. If Watson had been there, he would have been shaking his head and muttering under his breath. — Paul Auster

This girl holds my heart in her hand and she's squishing it to nothing with her confession. — Siobhan Davis

Ben shook his head.
Sitting down he asked, "So, you are Marty, right?"
He got an incredulous look in response along with a cautious, "Yeah."
"You look way different dressed like that and without any make up on and stuff. Like a pretty guy almost, no offense."
Marty widened her eyes incredulously. "Umm...I have a confession here I obviously need to make. We're in public, so don't you dare punch me, or try to jump me later. I got witnesses who'll be able to verify I was here with you and that you threatened me."
Ben's brows furrowed. "What? Why would I do that?"
"Hello, my name is Marty." Marty extended her hand across the table. "I'm a guy. — Leona Windwalker

So this is my Pathetic Loser's confession: I am Oren Tenning, and I have fallen. Hard. — Linda Kage

I frowned with disappointment. I'm not sure what I'd expected to see, although a short, dark-haired man standing beneath a floating neon arrow that read BAD GUY HERE would have been nice. A suspect and quick confession wouldn't have been amiss, either. This was a lot harder than in the movies. — Chloe Neill

Never do anything that you can't admit doing, because if you are that ashamed of whatever it is, it's probably wrong. — Ashly Lorenzana

He had never missed God or the hope of heaven, but he had dearly wanted confession to rest his mind, Communion to let him touch something beyond Father Krone's dry, shaky hand, and holy water to taste like starlight. — Peter S. Beagle

Everything here is a small offense and not of value as art or confession. It is not a whim. It is an attempt to peel another putrid skin. — Patti Smith

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction. — Don Roff

It was here in the darkness of night and warmth of my bed that I made my confession, inside myself and silently to her. I loved her. It was too fast, too rushed, too new, but I didn't care. I loved her. — Lila Felix

Notoriety and public confession in the literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me. — Jack Kerouac

Love can't cover over the sins we cover up ... If you want God and others to cover over your sin, stop covering it up. — Mark Buchanan

Confession is for the confessor. It makes you feel good; it ruins the lives of everyone else. It's a selfish thing to do. Don't confess. — Jake Adelstein

In 1960, in Blackburn v. Alabama, the Court said, "Coercion can be mental as well as physical." In reviewing whether a confession was psychologically coerced by the police, the following factors are crucial: (1) the length of the interrogation, (2) whether it was prolonged in nature, (3) when it took place, day or night, with a strong suspicion around nighttime confessions, and (4) the psychological makeup - intelligence, sophistication, education, and so on - of the suspect. — John Grisham

When you see a condemned man on his way to the gallows, it moves you to pity. If you could do something to free him, you would do it. Well, brothers and sisters, when I see a person in mortal sin, I see someone drawing nearer with every step to the gallows of hell. And seeing him in this unhappy state, I happen to know the way to free him: that he be converted to God, ask God's pardon, and make a good confession. Woe betide me if he does not. — Anthony Mary Claret

It's like this with us baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts ... nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo. — Raymond Chandler

I don't know. I don't know, Jess," he said as a sob shuddered through him. "Because I am a damned fool. Fuck! I
have everything I want right in front of me, I love you so damned much I can't think straight, and then it's like ... I don't
know, like I'm so afraid of losing you, that I keep pushing you away so maybe I'll stop caring as much and then it won't hurt as bad if I do lose you. It's so fucking twisted even I don't understand it. — M.L. Rhodes

A hug is a display of love that begins on the physical end of the spectrum but bleeds into the emotional end of the spectrum if you let it, if you give into it. It's the most innocent, pure form of physical human connection there is. It only takes two willing people, who don't even have to know each other, to participate. Two willing people who want that exchange. It's so easy, but there are people who never get them. People who never get them," she repeats softly, it's a confession. — Kim Holden

They were students of the expressions of young women as they went in to confession, and they saw them as they came out and read the nature of the sin. — John Steinbeck

My life has been about living like a monk and looking like a priest so that people will come up to me and tell me their most appalling stories. They have to make their confession to somebody, and it might as well be me. — Chuck Palahniuk

In one long glorious acknowledgment of failure, he laid himself bare before God. — John Grisham

If you're lucky, at the right time you come across music that is not only "great," or interesting, or "incredible," or fun, but actually sustaining. Though some elusive but tangible process, a piece of music cuts through all defenses and makes sense of every fear and desire you bring to it. As it does so, it exposes all you've held back, and then makes sense of that, too. Though someone else is doing the talking, the experience is like a confession. Your emotions shoot out to crazy extremes; you feel both ennobled and unworthy, saved and damned. You hear that this is what life is all about, that this is what it is for. Yet it is this recognition itself that makes you understand that life can never be this good, this whole. With a clarity life denies for its own good reasons, you see places to which you can never get. — Greil Marcus

Listen.
I will lose myself
if it means I can find you. — Alaska Gold

Leo Tolstoy's A Confession is possibly the most important document of the last two centuries for understanding our current plight. The dogmas of modern unbelief had captured his elite circle of Russian intellectuals, artists, and members of the social upper crust, and the implications of it slowly destroyed the basis of his life. On those dogmas only two things are real: particles and progress. "Why do I live?" he asked. And the answer he got was, "In infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely small particles change their forms in infinite complexity, and when you have understood the laws of those mutations of form you will understand why you live on the earth". — Dallas Willard

I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." - I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity. — Edward Gibbon

He grinned at her. "Well, then I have a bit of a confession to make. Colin said some things to me and the sound of his voice irritated me so I had one of those clowns with the big red noses in the paediatric wing turn him into a balloon animal. A giraffe I'm afraid. Sad fate it was," Alessandro joked with no sign of remorse at all. — E. Jamie

Catholics don't believe in divorce. We do believe in murder. There's always Confession, after all.
Brianna Fraser to Roger MacKenzie — Diana Gabaldon

Make this confession out loud: "I am the righteousness of God in Christ. — Kenneth E. Hagin

I do not approve of children being beaten. It is always a confession of failure. — Patricia Wentworth

There will be masses available all day long. Confession available all day long. — Thomas Monaghan

...no one of mature age cares to make a complete confession of his past life. — W.B. Maxwell

Confession may or may not be good for the soul, but it's undoubtedly soothing to the nerves. — Stephen King

Fear is a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or you think it is, else you wouldn't be afraid of it. — Lucy Maud Montgomery

Before I could reply, he had picked me up, literally swept me off my feet, and kissed me. And afterwards, when I tried to speak, he silenced me in much the same manner. It was a shock (but not at all distasteful) to be so caught up. Later - when he at last set me down - he handled me more gently. He took of my glasses and told me that he loved me. — Jennifer Paynter