"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tremendous influence exerted over a fanatically religious people, who implicitly followed the teachings of the reverend fathers, once their confidence had been secured, the curate was seldom to be gainsaid in his desires. By means of the secret influence in the confessional and the more open political power wielded by him, the fairest was his to command, and the favored one and her people looked upon the choice more as an honor than otherwise, for besides the social standing that it gave her there was the proud prospect of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... confession, or the sacrifice of penance, of which confession forms an essential part. To the efficacy of this ceremony, contrition of heart is supposed, in theory, to be essential; but its necessity is rarely taught, and the great mass of the community go away from the confessional fully satisfied that their sins are canceled by ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... addition to their many crafts and trades, are matrimonial brokers of honourable repute. And in their meddling and making, their baiting and mating, they are as serviceable as the Column Personal of an American newspaper. Whoso is matrimonially disposed shall whisper his mind at the Confessional or drop his advertisement in the pocket of the visiting Columns of their Bride-Dealer, and he shall prosper. She as well as he ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... and clergymen, have vied with each other in the vehemence with which they declare absolution un-Christian, un-English. All that is most abominable in the confessional has been with unsparing and irreverent indelicacy forced before the public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... ranks have had to bear the same trial and with much less alleviation. You know now that your wife is innocent and is prepared to forgive you." It did not strike Mr. Stafford that men like Bernard Clowes do not care to be forgiven by their wives. There was no confessional box in Chilmark church. "You have plenty of interests left and plenty of friends: so long as you don't alienate them by behaving in such an unmanly way. Lift him, Val.— Come, Major Clowes, you're torturing your wife. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... entirely at peace with her world, and with heaven as well, that was certain. Whatever her sins, the confessional had purged her. Like others, doubtless, she had found a husband and the provinces excellent remedies for a damaged reputation. She lived now in the very odor of sanctity; the cure had a pipe in her kitchen, with something more ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Christ,—His truthfulness, His honor, His fearlessness, His tenderness. He insists that Christ had a particular affection for the young. Witness how He chose His Apostles, and how He attached them to His Sacred Person. And thus my curate's confessional is thronged every Saturday night by silent, humble, thoughtful young fellows, sitting there in the dark, for the two candles at the altar rails throw but a feeble light into the blackness; and Mrs. Darcy, under all improvements, has ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... and transacted this business too openly and then there was trouble. One evening some of the nurses were at Benediction at the Carmelite Church, when a wretched newspaper lad rushed into the church and hid himself in a Confessional. He was followed by four or five German soldiers. They stopped the service and forbade any of the congregation to leave, and searched the church till they found the white and trembling boy, and dragged him off to his fate. ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... deeply in the consciousness of her thoughts, but after a moment said, "I do not believe in the confessional." ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... little hints. One is, never to start reading the Hours unless there be ample time for finishing the Hour or Hours intended to be then and there read. The practice of squeezing the small Hours into scraps of time (e.g., in the intervals between hearing confessions in the confessional, at a session) is fatal to careful and pious reading. Another hint is, to read everything, every word (e.g., Pater Noster, Ave, Credo), and to repeat nothing from memory, because the printed words meeting ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... Ellison grew more haggard. Suddenly all the weakness of her sex swept over her—all the weakness also of the wrong-doer. The comfort of the confessional seemed the sole happiness possible for her. And so it was that she gave to Eddring the first direct confirmation of that which he had by piece-work reasoning convinced himself to be the truth. He first rapidly ran over the salient features of the Loisson story, explaining to her fully his interest ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... toes of the right foot, for which latter the affectionate pilgrims are answerable. On either side of the statue a corridor lined with marble tablets—presented by "grateful" individuals in acknowledgment of cures and cleansings—and dotted with confessional boxes, leads down to the chapel. The repulsive gaudiness of the tinsel display in the church above it is almost absent here, and though the same exaltation of the Virgin over our Saviour is manifest, yet otherwise this chapel, with its vaulted roof and its quietude, seems ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... glad now of my unexpected speech," I replied, "and feel as if I had really been to the confessional; your mother is so sensitive, I could not tell her, and I have kept this thought constantly before me, 'He will not stay if he goes, and I am sure he cannot eat ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... truths in which we agree are part of the Catholic faith. In the words of Dr. Dollinger, "we can say each to the other as baptized, we are on either side, brothers and sisters in Christ. In the great garden of the Lord, let us shake hands over these confessional hedges, and let us break them down, so as to be able to embrace one another altogether. These hedges are doctrinal divisions about which either we or you are in error. If you are in the wrong, we do not hold you morally culpable; for your education, ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... qualities requisite for a perfect statesman in a monarchy governed by despotic principles, but was absolutely unqualified for republics which are governed by kings. Educated between the throne and the confessional, he knew of no other relation between man and man than that of rule and subjection; and the innate consciousness of his own superiority gave him a contempt for others. His policy wanted pliability, the only virtue which was here indispensable to its success. He was naturally overbearing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Maximus, Priscus, and Eleazar in the Opisthodomos or priests' room, behind the altar in the Temple of Jupiter. The whole temple was lit up, and the purpose of the improvements which had taken place could be seen. By the colonnade on the left hand was an ambo or pulpit, and under it a confessional; there were also a seven-branched candlestick, a baptismal font, a table with shewbread, and an incense-altar. These represented Julian's attempt to attach the new doctrine to the old, and to amalgamate heathenism, Christianity, and Judaism. Heliogabalus had indeed attempted the same ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... "merchant-voyageurs" as something spoken of in books, but not worth the while of a bon vivant. The common hands, who paddled canoes and underwent the drudgery of the trade (who were exclusively of the lower order of Canadian peasantry), squared their moral accounts once a year with a well-conducted confessional interview and a crown, and felt as happy as the "Christian Pilgrim" when he had been relieved of his burden. It would, probably, be wrong to say that the lordly Highlander, the impetuous son of Erin, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the Spring of 1914, I had never allowed a Spring to pass without reading Homer; and I feel that this familiarity had its influence both as to form and spirit; but I shall not take the space now to pursue this line of confessional. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... priesthood, when through greed and ambition they forsook the ancient wisdom, so do the priesthood of Rome, with their celibacy added to the abominations and opportunities of the confessional. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... open the door, and entered a room, which closely resembled all other similar offices. There were seats all round the room, polished by frequent use. At the end was a sort of compartment shut in by a green baize curtain, jestingly termed "the Confessional" by the frequenters of the office. Between the windows was a tin plate, with the words, "All fees to be paid in advance," in large letters upon it. In one corner a gentleman was seated at a writing table, who, as he ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... within himself, that if Lucy drove the matter to extremities, he was not so sure of his own powers of resistance as he ought to be? She might marry him before he knew what he was about; and in such a case the Rector could not have taken his oath at his own private confessional that he would have been so deeply miserable as the circumstances might infer. No wonder he was alarmed at the position in which he found himself; nobody could ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... continued, in a low voice, "I am perpetually sitting with sorrow, communing with disease. That consulting-room of mine is as a pool of Bethesda, only not all who come to it, alas! can be healed. I sit day by day in my confessional—I like to call it that; perhaps I was meant to be a priest—and I read the stories of the lives of men and of women, most of them necessarily, from the circumstances which bring them to me, sad. And yet I have a belief in joy and its triumph which nothing ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... hear, except by way of dealing somebody a mortal blow. He had, consequently, often longed to dip his arms into the public letter-box. Since the previous evening the private room at the post-office had become a big confessional full of darkness and mystery, in which he tasted exquisite rapture while sniffing at the letters which exhaled veiled longings and quivering avowals. Moreover, he carried on his work with consummate impudence. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... sufficient to appal the stoutest Evangelical and turn to blue ruin such men as the editor of the "Bulwark" are elevated in front; over all, as well as collaterally, there are inscriptions in Latin; designs in gold and azure and vermilion fill up the details; and on each side there is a confessional wherein all members, whether large or diminutive, whether dressed in corduroy or smoothest, blackest broad cloth, in silk or Surat cotton, must unravel the sins they have committed. This confession must be a hard sort ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... knew or has told the whole story. It is true that these characters have not the strange quality which some one imputed to the writing of Tacitus, that it seems to put the reader himself and the secrets of his own heart into the confessional. It is in the novel that, in this country, the faculty of observing social man and his peculiarities has found its most popular instrument. The great novel, not of romance or adventure, but of character and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... out of it," I said. "You are one of those who cause Israel to sin. You bring the Confessional, for it is no better, into the house of a Prelate of the Protestant Church of England!" Would you believe that she had the assurance to answer me with a passage from the Prayer Book, which I have often ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... blind, telling his beads in the corner of the cloister garden, sighed. Father Tomasso, who had brought him from his confessional in the great church to the bench where day after day he kept his sightless vigil over the pond of the goldfish, turned back at the sound, then, seeing the peace of Father Denfili's face, thought he must have fancied the sigh. For sadness came alien to the little garden of the Community ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... any Protestant clergyman administer comfort to her? Could he? might he do so? He might listen, and quote texts; but he would demand the harsh rude English for everything; and the Countess's confessional thoughts were all innuendoish, aerial; too delicate to live in our shameless tongue. Confession by implication, and absolution; she could know this to be what she wished for, and yet not think it. She could see a haven of peace in that picture of the little brown box with the sleekly reverend ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?—who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?—scornfully insult him who, kneeling at the Muses' confessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts thus to think, and speak, and write of Robert Burns?—He who has reconciled poverty to its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Fitzpatrick was there, tall, handsome, ruddy, the two wings of white showing at the temples making him look more than ever like a leading man. He had been of those who had sat in what he called Mrs. Brandeis's confessional, there in the quiet little store. The two had talked of things theological and things earthy. His wit, quick though it was, was no match for hers, but they both had a humor sense and a drama sense, and one day they discovered, queerly enough, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... prophets under the elms or bind a child with a daisy-chain or, with a lady, thread my way through the acacias. I shall swim down rivers into the sea and outstrip all ships. Unhindered I shall penetrate all sanctuaries and snatch the secrets of every dim confessional. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... been nothing to him. But now,—now that the matter had been put before him in this way, might it not become him, as a gentleman, to fall in love with so very beautiful a woman, whose name had already been linked with his own? We all know that story of the priest, who, by his question in the confessional, taught the ostler to grease the horses' teeth. "I never did yet," said the ostler, "but I'll have a try at it." In this case, the duke had acted the part of the priest, and Mr Palliser, before the night was over, had ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... confession, amongst other heinous crimes, accused herself of using rouge. "What is the use of it?" asked the confessor. "I do it to make myself handsomer."—"And does it produce that effect?" "At least I think so, father."—The confessor on this took his penitent out of the confessional, and having looked at her attentively in the light, said, "Well, madam, you may use rouge, for you are ugly enough even ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... necessity of care. But he did not dare publish it under his own name, nor did he even dare publish it in a Catholic town; he gave it to the world anonymously, and, in order to prevent any tracing of the work to him through the confessional, he secretly caused it to be published in the Protestant town ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... nook within this solemn Pass But were an apt confessional for one Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, That Life is but a tale of morning grass Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass Untouched, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Alexander that the matter of the divorce was a European question; he wished to test, he said, the temper of his ally. Both ministers suggested that a contemplated match between the daughter of Paul I and the King of Sweden had fallen through because of the confessional difficulties, the latter being a Protestant, the former of the Greek Church. The Emperor shrugged his shoulders in displeasure, and they discharged their task. Apparently the Czar was not shocked, for, opening the subject himself, he told Napoleon that his best friends looked ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... only two-and-twenty, and I must make up my mind to the drawbacks of my time of life. Besides, I am confessing my sins, and it would be impossible to kneel in a more charming confessional; you commit your sins in one drawing-room, and receive ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Several frightful plaster statues daubed with scarlet and chocolate brown stood under the windows, which were protected with brown woollen curtains. Close to the entrance were a receptacle for holy water in the form of a shell, and a confessional of stone flanked by boxes, one of which bore the words, "Graces obtenues," the other, "Demandes," and a card on which was printed, "Litanies en honneur de ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Monsignor Saracinesca in confession, and he gently told her that it was wrong to speak disrespectfully of her superior, she rather pertly asked him whether any one who lived under a volcano could fail to 'respect' it; whereat he shook his head gravely inside the confessional, but his spiritual mouth twitched with amusement, in spite of himself. The four novices were inclined to distrust Angela at first, however, as she was not even a postulant, and it was not till she became one of themselves that she ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... we do not know them, we can divine them. We are certain, for example, that Watteau's gay pictured visions were the projection—and confession—of his own disappointed dreams. The great advantage of art over ordinary expression, in this respect, is its universality. Art is the confessional of the race. The artist provides a medium through which all men can confess themselves and heal their souls. In making the artist's expression ours, we find an equal relief. Who does not feel a revival of some old or present despair of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... indulgences to the church doors; how bravely he burnt the Pope's bull. Although the Elector would not allow Tetzel to enter his dominions, he got to a place within four miles of Wittemburg, and many people purchased indulgences. While Dr Martin was seated in the confessional, many of these poor dupes came to him and acknowledged themselves guilty of excesses. 'Adultery, licentiousness, usury, ill-gotten gains'—still they would not promise to abandon their crimes, but trusting to their letters of indulgence obtained from Tetzel, showed them, and maintained ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... some cases, where actual names are affixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works, of the authors referred to.—And now the reader may expect me, while in the confessional, to explain the motives why I have so long persisted in disclaiming the works of which I am now writing. To this it would be difficult to give any other reply, save that of Corporal Nym—It was the humour or caprice of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... been in the extremity of sickness. A single ecclesiastic, who directs the parish of Chateau-Richer, has assured us that he has procured more than eight hundred general confessions, and I leave you to think what the reverend Fathers must have accomplished who were day and night in the confessional. I do not think that in the whole country there is a single inhabitant who has not made a general confession. There have been inveterate sinners, who, to set their consciences at rest, have repeated their confession ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... doctrine our church differs not only in theory but also in practice from many of our Protestant brethren. In some of their original confessional statements the Reformed churches declared that the Spirit of God required no means of grace, since He worked immediately and directly. They claimed that the corporeal could not carry the spiritual, and that the finite could not be made the bearer of the infinite. ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... up in victory. Death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory? God be thanked who giveth us the victory through Christ our Lord' (I Cor. xv.). In God therefore he trusted, and in His strength would go now to the confessional." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... pastor without charge, notwithstanding the power of the Pope and the bishops, until it be further determined. Every canton also shall and may consult with its pastors and clergy, and devise a plan, as to how and in what form the gross abuses of the confessional may be punished. In regard to the courtesans, who invade our livings, it is our plain order and opinion, that where such Romish knaves come, they shall be cast into prison and punished in such a manner, as that henceforth we shall be rid of them. Because the priesthood, in some part at least, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... said, "this confessional business of yours has been an excellent exercise. It has enabled me to get outside myself, to look at myself as a Case. Now I can even see myself as a remote Case. That I needn't bother about further.... So far as that goes, I think we have ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... that—Caesar, who had his own reasons for saying nothing; Peter Christian himself, who was hardly likely to tell; and the High Bailiff, who was a bachelor and a miser, and kept all business revelations as sacred as are the secrets of another kind of confessional. When Pete's evil day came and the world showed no pity, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... rather long, and somewhat narrow. At the far end there was a small altar and a prie dieu. A candle was burning and its light defined the ivory crucifix above. In the corner a curtained something that might be a confessional. Indeed, not a few startling confessions had been breathed there. An escritoire with some shelves above, curiously carved, that bespoke its journey across the sea, took a great wall space and seemed almost to divide the room. The window ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ornaments, special services at unusual hours, and processions in the streets. His taste in chasubles was loud, he gardened in a cassock and, it was said, he slept in his biretta; he certainly slept in a hair shirt, and he littered his church with flowers, candles, side altars, confessional boxes, requests for prayers for the departed, and the like. There had already been two Kensitite demonstrations at his services, and altogether he was a source of considerable anxiety to the bishop. The bishop did his best not to know too exactly what was going on at ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... run up stream, or to stop the downward current. It is said that most of the senators would sooner lose their hopes of the horned bonnet, than lose him. Jacopo! He knows more family secrets than the good Priore of San Marco himself, and he, poor man, is half his time in the confessional." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cette glise, Auprs d'un confessional, Le prtre, qui veut faire croire Lise, Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;— Pour prouver la mignonne Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux, N'a jamais damn personne Petits ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... borderline of sanity. He sees the whole world full of calumny and ambuscades threatening his peace: nearly all those who once were his best friends have become his bitterest enemies; they wag their venomous tongues at banquets, in conversation, in the confessional, in sermons, in lectures, at court, in vehicles and ships. The minor enemies, like troublesome vermin, drive him to weariness of life, or to death by insomnia. He compares his tortures to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, pierced by arrows. But his is worse, for ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... cafe noir, and the visit was prolonged into the warm harvest moonlight with news of friends and acquaintances. Bessie heard that the venerable cure of St. Jean's still presided over his flock at Caen, and occupied the chintz edifice like a shower-bath which was the school-confessional. Miss Foster was married to a brave fermier, and Bessie was assured that she would not recognize that depressed and neuralgic demoiselle in the stout and prosperous fermiere she had developed into. Mdlle. Adelaide was also married; and Louise, that pretty portress, in spite of the raids ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... smoked his pipe on the porch and stared reminiscently at the shifting clouds above the tree-tops, and with a tenderness about the lips that must have surprised and gratified the stubby, ill-used brier, inanimate confederate in many a lofty plot. He recalled all she had said to him in that sylvan confessional, and was content. His family? Pooh! He had a soul of his own. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the many books in French literature that her friend M. Heger lent her. But life took on a very sombre shade in the lonely environment in which she found herself. She became so depressed that on one occasion she took refuge in the confessional precisely as did her heroine Lucy Snowe in Villette. In 1844 she returned to her father's house at Haworth, and the three sisters began immediately to discuss the possibilities of converting the vicarage into a school. Prospectuses were issued, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... there this morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned under the seal of the confessional. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Wolff, with a sneer. "The men know how to praise her for it. No paternoster would be imposed upon her in the confessional on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the conduct of the female peasantry in the eastern counties of England, who unblushingly avow their derelictions from the paths of virtue. The crime of infanticide, so common there, is almost unknown among the Irish. If the priest and the confessional are able to restrain the lower orders from the commission of gross crime, who shall say that they are without their use? It is true that the priest often exercises his power over his flock in a manner which would appear to a Protestant to border on ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... which he had been speaking, had not stirred. The father's cigar had gone out. It lay idly in his fingers, which rested on the arm of the chair, above a tiny pile of ashes on the rug. But there was no other sign of emotion, except his half affirmative interjections, with a confessional's encouragement to empty the mind of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Abbey, by law, and that he would still pay the entrance fee to go into Westminster Abbey like other liege subjects, resign himself meekly to the guidance of the beadle, and "listen without rebuke when he pointed out to his admiration detestable monuments, or show a hole in the wall for a confessional." "He would still visit the shrine of St. Edward, and meditate on the olden times when the church would fill without a coronation, and multitudes ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... one of power. But while interfering little with the military discipline of the troops, in all matters of moral discipline she was inflexibly strict. All the abandoned followers of the camp were driven away. She compelled both generals and soldiers to attend regularly at confessional. Her chaplain and other priests marched with the army under her orders; and at every halt, an altar was set up and the sacrament administered. No oath or foul language passed without punishment or censure. Even the roughest and most hardened veterans obeyed her. They put ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... light manner as she might have tossed aside her fan, and he was startled at the intimacy of misery to which her look and movement abruptly admitted him. Perhaps no Anglo-Saxon fully understands the fluency in self-revelation which centuries of the confessional have given to the Latin races, and to Durham, at any rate, Madame de Treymes' sudden avowal gave the shock of ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... lifelike in the colouring of the flesh, sweet in countenance, and likewise executed with corresponding beauty of person, whereby he won infinite praise from the craftsmen. It is said that, while this figure was exposed to view in the church, the friars found, through the confessional, women who had sinned at the sight of it, on account of the charm and melting beauty of the lifelike reality imparted to it by the genius of Fra Bartolommeo; for which reason they removed it from the church and placed it in the chapter-house, where it did not remain long before ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition: "Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de Listomere's evening, and that Marianne did think I was home, and did really forget to make my fire, ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... primitive basilica beneath. At the end is the ancient pontifical seat, adorned with mosaic and precious marbles. The papal altar is under a canopy in the Byzantine style. The pavement of this presbytery is worthy of particular attention. Descending to the confessional which is under the high altar the tomb of the martyred saints, Lawrence, Stephen, and Justin, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... the fluctuating states of their own souls but in the august authority of the Church to which they belonged. As long, therefore, as they remained in obedient communion with their Church their souls were secure. The Church offered them its confessional for their unburdening and its absolutions for their assurance, its sacraments for their strengthening and its penances for their discipline and restoration. It took from them in spiritual regions and maybe in other regions too, ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... to explain that,' replied the lady. 'An Indian, convicted of murdering a monk, some three years previously, was condemned to death. On being taken, according to Mexican usage, on the eve of execution, to the confessional, he refused the slightest attention to the exhortations of the priests, affirming that he had written a letter to the Governor, which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... widow-queen of Portugal Had an audacious jester Who entered the confessional Disguised, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... a party-government. With untiring jealousy he watched the secret opponents who still looked out for some movement from abroad, as a signal for fresh revolt: he kept diaries of their doings and conduct: it was said he availed himself of the confessional for this purpose: men whose names were from time to time solemnly cursed at S. Paul's on account of past treasons, so that they counted for open enemies, became useful to him as spies. If the decision lay between services received and suspicious conduct, the latter easily weighed down the balance, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Saint Frond.—In the last church we visited we had a scene. A woman was in the confessional; the priest, with a white handkerchief up to conceal his face, and prevent what he said being overheard, attracted the attention of the children, who demanded an explanation. Children ask so many questions. "Do you think she has been very wicked? ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... highly necessary, and indeed desirable, in our modern large-scale society; but they involve men, and especially weak-willed and thoughtless men, in far greater dangers than their larger citizenship. What the confessional at its worst may be to a woman, professional or business or other loyalty may be to a man. The modern world is full of men who have bartered away their integrity of soul to preserve the unity of the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... temple-servants, and said: "Perform his duty, watch the man, and if he escapes you will go after the geese to-morrow too. See, my friends, how many worshippers kneel there before our altars—go and fulfil your office. I will wait in the confessional to receive ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the morning to the yellow grotto, where you would wait for me. You told me further not to say a word about it to anybody; it should remain a secret between you and me, and I should not even mention it to the priest at the confessional. That was not honest of you, sir; nay, it was bad of you to try and persuade me to such mean things. It showed me that you cannot be a good man, and that your friendship for me is prompted by ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... and the priest in the confessional follow the thoughts and feelings of the minds they have to deal with, not by virtue of any special power of divination, but simply by judging their fellow-men's way of thinking and feeling to be ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... belonging to past times, that have at all succeeded in engaging the attention of men, are those of St. Augustine and of Rousseau. The very idea of breathing a record of human passion, not into the ear of the random crowd, but of the saintly confessional, argues an impassioned theme. Impassioned, therefore, should be the tenor of the composition. Now, in St. Augustine's Confessions is found one most impassioned passage, viz., the lamentation for the death of his youthful friend in the fourth book; one, and no more. Further there is nothing. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ask, what value could this scheme have, since the secrets of the confessional are sacred and cannot be revealed? True—but suppose another person should overhear them? That person is not bound to keep the secret. Well, that is what happened. Cauchon had previously caused a hole to be bored through the wall; and he stood with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... actually was,—a subterfuge; as she surmised, it could only be La Valliere. Having discovered the name of her confessor, the Queen herself went in disguise to the Theatin Church, flung herself into the confessional where this man officiated, and promised him the sum of thirty thousand francs for their new church if he would help her to save ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the man of the world as to the doctor before whom all veils and pretenses are discarded. It is difficult, indeed, to banish the idea that the consultation-room of Arthur Schnitzler, Dr. med., is the confessional which furnishes material to Arthur Schnitzler, author. For the modern physician is not concerned with his patient's body only, but also with his soul. He must be a psychologist as well, and the success of his diagnosis depends upon his skill to unravel ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... and adversity Francesca had never ceased to frequent that church. At its confessional and at its altars she had been a constant attendant. Other women, her friends and imitators, had followed her example; bound by a tender friendship, bent on the same objects, united by the same love of Jesus and of Mary, often ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... than all good works, that they were an insurance against the pains of hell and of purgatory, that they availed for all satisfactions, even in the case of the most heinous sins that could be conceived.[27] "Confessional letters" [28] were one of the forms of this indulgence. They gave their possessor permission to choose his own confessor, and entitled him to plenary remission once in his life, to absolution from sins normally reserved, etc. The indulgences for the ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... that she had no inclination towards the life of a religieuse, and the country quickly became insupportable after her return to its provincial society. Ennui took possession of her. She was glad even to go to confessional, for the sake of telling her thoughts to some one. She complained bitterly that the life of women compelled dependence upon the conduct of others, submission to all ills and all consequences. Long afterwards she said that she would have married the devil if he had been ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... time too, Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets of the confessional when there was an object to gain, had a long conversation with the Archduke's ambassador, in which the holy man said that the King had confessed to him that he made the war expressly to cause the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... royal ear, a Racine shrinking from the cold glance of the royal eye and going home to die of a broken heart. Here Louis had signed the decree which sent his dragoons to force his Protestant subjects to the mass and the confessional; here he had received with a smile of triumph the tidings that the Pope himself had been compelled to yield to his arrogant pretensions; and here he had listened in haughty state, when one of the last of the glorious republics of the Middle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... which now rests upon them were removed, and we have reason to think it is lifting, they would be as bright and sunny as their own skies. The women of the better classes wear the black mantilla when they venture into the streets, which they seldom do, except to attend mass or the confessional. This robe is extremely elegant, as it is worn, but it requires an adept to adjust it gracefully. It covers the whole person from head to foot; in parts drawn closely to the form, in others falling in free folds. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... absolute passion, when something happens to one's eye or one's tongue, that one feels is half mad, but when the beast of prey within one, which shrinks at nothing, is the stronger. Untrue in one's beautiful, poetic calm, one's confessional silence, at one's work, I think very ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... "Get it out. It's obvious that the thing is suffocating you. I'll tell nobody—not even that you've told me—neither Doria nor Barbara—it will be the confidence of the confessional. You'll be all the better ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... the secrets of love are sacred—sacred as those of the confessional. Nevertheless, I may confide in you sooner than you expect, for I may need your help as well ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... food and drink, And also paper, pen and ink, And carry safe what I shall write To Padua, which you'll reach at night Before the duomo shuts; go in, And wait till Tenebrae begin; Walk to the third confessional, Between the pillar and the wall, And kneeling whisper, Whence comes peace? Say it a second time, then cease; 80 And if the voice inside returns, From Christ and Freedom; what concerns The cause of Peace?—for answer, slip ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... nook within this solemn Pass, But were an apt confessional for One Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, That Life is but a tale of morning grass Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... anguish seized me, a red cloud passed over my eyes, I felt my heart freezing, and I thought myself dying. Then I spoke and said: 'Count Leminof, thou canst kill me, but thou shalt not tear from me the secrets of the confessional.'" And at these words, the priest stooping, laid bare his right foot and showed Gilbert the bruised and withered flesh, and bones deformed by torture; then covering it again he recoiled, as if from a serpent in his path, and cried in a thundering voice, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... distinguished parentage had suffered her blonde tresses to be shorn, her graceful limbs draped in forlorn russet, her merry meetings with girlish spirits like herself exchanged for the tears of the confessional, the lengthened prayers of the cloister, the frequent fastings and sometimes scourgings of monastic life. The cause of this contemporaneous disappearance was known only to the most intimate friends of two celebrated but no longer wealthy families, who deemed the sacrifice necessary, and so ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... private confession to a priest—auricular confession—being at that time formally established. This, so far as domestic life was concerned, gave omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition. Not a man was safe. In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies. Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong suspicions of heresy. No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... have been gifted with a certain power of spiritual vision, but because I have practised as a solicitor. A solicitor has to advise families. He has to think of the future and know the past. His office is the real modern confessional. Among other things he has to make people's wills for them. He has to shew them how to provide for their daughters after their deaths. Has it occurred to you, Lubin, that if you live three hundred years, your ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... sacramental confession. It was ranked as a sacrament for the reason that the inward assurance of GOD'S pardon is in this connexion outwardly mediated by words of Absolution audibly pronounced. In medieval times there grew up a regular system of the confessional and an elaborate science of the guidance and direction of souls. Recourse to sacramental confession was made obligatory for all Christians at least once in the year. [Footnote: This is still the formal rule of the Church of Rome.] The system came to be attended by many superstitions and abuses, frequently ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... can be extraordinarily nettling in conversation, as I have suggested, is evidently of a very soothing character in the confessional—if that is the proper term. He has a remarkable following among women, and it is said that "if he put a brass plate on his door and charged five guineas a time" he might be one of the richest mind-doctors in London. He himself declares that his ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... avoiding the pitfalls that beset his path as statesman. He had many spies in his service, paid to bring him reports of his enemies' speech and actions. Great ladies of the court did not disdain to betray their friends, and priests even advised penitents in the Confessional to act as the Cardinal wished them. When any treachery was discovered, it was punished swiftly. The Cardinal refused to spare men of the highest rank who plotted against the King or his ministers, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... was Mrs. Pitt's reply. "Perhaps it may have been a kind of confessional, where the ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... that something must be done with himself, and done immediately; for in a few days he must again meet Agnes at the confessional. He must meet her, not with weak tremblings and passionate fears, but calm as Fate, inexorable as the Judgment-Day. He must hear her confession, not as man, but as God; he must pronounce his judgments with a divine dispassionateness. He must dive into the recesses of her secret heart, and, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Shakspere, the likelihood that "Philaster" was the original, "Cymbeline" the "copy." Shakspere at the age of forty-six, long after he had portrayed the real insanity of Lear, the simulated insanity of Hamlet, the confessional dream of Lady Macbeth; long after he had "filled the audience with surprise and delight" by the romantic realities of Hero and Portia, of Viola and Rosalind; years after he had anticipated the heroic "romance" in the romantic ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... was only for the remedy of public calamities, or for the cure of particular persons; and it was in the same spirit, that, being one day greatly busied in hearing the confessions of the faithful at Goa, he departed, abruptly in appearance, out of the confessional, and from thence out of the church also, transported with some inward motion, which he could not possibly resist: after he had made many turns about the town, without knowing whither he went, he happened upon a stranger, and having tenderly embraced him, conducted him to the college of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... then the voice that had uttered its confession in that deep confessional of a gloomy soul said, and there was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various |
