"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men whose eyes have not been blinded by the dust of Popery and Democracy, can a Bishop or Priest, a Jesuit or Catholic, with these oaths upon their souls, be true American citizens? Not without the guilt of perjury, as black as the altar of a Roman Confessional! And if guilty of such perjury, the penitentiary should be their canonical residence for life! Strange to say, however, the Chief Justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney, is a Roman Catholic! Gen. Pierce's Postmaster-General, James Campbell, is both a Roman Catholic, and a member of ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... shall go 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
... Scripture so far profaned as to be quoted in newspapers, and exposed freely to the gaze of the vulgar. But what could they do? Their own literary qualifications did not warrant them to enter the lists with these writers: they had forgot the way to preach, unless at Lent; they could work the confessional, but even it began to be silenced by the powerful artillery of the press. At an earlier stage they might have roused the peasantry, and marched upon the Constitution, whose life they knew was the death of their power; but it was too late in 1851. An attempt of this sort made a year or two after, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the village tailor to be in the height of Parisian fashion, but being a novelty to the London "gamins," it attracted more notice from them than we could have wished. After Signora Mortera and her children had attended the confessional she seemed to be much easier in her mind, and was so amiable as to tell my mother on our return home that it was edifying to behold the signorina walking like a Roman matron, in contrast to those who were giggling and turning their heads first one way and then the other, like so many pulcinelle. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... words are well, O friend," I said; "Unmeasured and unlimited, With noiseless slide of stone to stone, The mystic Church of God has grown. Invisible and silent stands The temple never made with hands, Unheard the voices still and small Of its unseen confessional. He needs no special place of prayer Whose hearing ear is everywhere; He brings not back the childish days That ringed the earth with stones of praise, Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid The plinths of Philae's colonnade. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Welsh who are prisoners here, and spends much of his time in ministering to them. He loves thy future lord and his dying brother, and he knows somewhat of our plan, for I have revealed it in the confessional, and he has not chided ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... for she would go forth in the heart of the storm, fearing a longer stay would bring uneasiness to the castle; so I gave her protection, a guide and a promise to receive her in a few days for the confessional and some religious direction; and I feel sure she will visit me ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... fashion. And afterwards, with hushed footsteps, she made her way to the chapel of Saint Agnes, where two kneeling women with their faces buried in their hands were waiting, whilst the blue skirts of a third protruded from the confessional. Lisa seemed rather put out by the sight of these women, and, addressing a verger who happened to pass along, wearing a black skullcap and dragging his feet over the slabs, she inquired: "Is this Monsieur l'Abbe Roustan's ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... 1797. The visiting priests worked hard. They were, Nairne says, "industrious in private to confess the people, especially the women, which branch of their duty is deemed most sacred and necessary." Against this tremendous power of the confessional, Protestantism had nothing that could be called an opposing influence. When a Protestant died he might not, of course, be buried in the Roman Catholic burial ground. For these outcast dead Nairne set aside a plot near his own house, where, still, under a little clump ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... mind he was well-nigh worn out, and longed for peace in which to face his own private sorrow; but the wild words and anguished looks of the young Scot showed him that his case was one for immediate hearing, and he drew the lad into the confessional, authoritatively calmed his agitation, and prepared to hear the outpouring of the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then confessed. Raynald heard Richard's shrift, and nearly wept over it—it was the first the young priestly knight had received, and he could scarcely clear his voice to speak the words of absolution. Even as they left the confessional, he grasped Richard's hand and said, "Cast in thy lot with us! St. John will find thee father and home ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... etendant la main droite sur la tete des fideles; le chapelet, le celibat ecclesiastique, les retraites spirituelles, le culte des saints, les jeunes, les processions, les litanies, l'eau benite; voila autant de rapports que les Bouddhistes ont avec nous.' He might have added tonsure, relics, and the confessional.] ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... rapidity of lightning the abductor carried the countess into an open chapel and seated her behind the confessional on a wooden bench. By the light of the tapers burning before the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated, they looked at each other for a moment in silence, clasping hands, and amazed at their own audacity. The countess had not the cruel courage to reproach the young man for ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... the Poles. Instead she has connived at oppression. She might have opposed the orgies of militarism. Instead she has voted every increase in the army and navy. She has bartered her dignity and spiritual independence to secure confessional privileges, and to get her share in the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... Prussia equalled her in vice and in nothing else. Francis of Austria had the brain of a master of ceremonies; George III that of a model squire; Ferdinand of Naples was in his place in the kennel; Victor Amadeus of Sardinia, in the confessional. It is difficult to say to what place Charles IV of Spain and his consort can most fitly be assigned; for they could not live apart from Godoy; and with Godoy they would have been excluded from any residence but the royal palace of Spain. The policy of that Court wavered under his whims and devices. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... than the mere saying, "I like honey and milk better than meat and wine" or "I like girls who are plump and fair better than those who are slim and dark." That is why so much of modern autobiographical and confessional writing is dull beyond words. Even impertinence will not save our essays upon ourselves from being tedious—nor will shamelessness in the flaunting of our vices. Something else is required than a mere wish to strip ourselves bare; something else than a mere desire ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... that was not the sort of thing which, if told in the confessional in ancient times, got one convicted of being "possessed of ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... individuals or of the Government. Thus no man can be compelled to accuse himself, to answer any question that tends to render him infamous, or to produce his own private papers on any occasion. The communications of a client to his counsel and the admissions made at the confessional in the course of religious discipline are privileged communications. In the courts of that country from which we derive our great principles of individual liberty and the rules of evidence it is well settled—and the doctrine has been fully recognized in this country—that a minister ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... that the sin has been confessed (paid for, rather)? The sinner has gone away, rejoicing at having cleansed his conscience so easily; and he, the priest, has pronounced absolution, has received his fee for so doing, therefore his duty is over, and he comes forth from the confessional box, grossly expectorating on the Cathedral floor—even this action showing how little he respects his calling, and the place which he above all others should honour. This to me has been utter desecration of soul and temple, and I have gone away sick at heart. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... great worship of sorrow. Many were the hearts now dependent on her, the spiritual histories, the threads of which were held in her loving hand,—many the souls burdened with sins, or oppressed with sorrow, who found in her bosom at once confessional and sanctuary. So many sought her prayers, that her hours of intercession were full, and often needed to be lengthened to embrace all for whom she would plead. United to the good Doctor by a constant friendship and fellowship, she had gradually grown accustomed to the more and more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... this secret under the seal of the confessional," said the abbe, "you certainly would not urge ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the stranger is connected the phenomenon which indeed belongs chiefly, but not indeed exclusively, to the mobile man: namely, that often the most surprising disclosures and confessions, even to the character of the confessional disclosure, are brought to him, secrets such as one carefully conceals from every intimate. Objectivity is by no means lack of sympathy, for that is something quite outside and beyond either subjective or ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... deeply, and that the fact that she had said it meant more to him than anything else in the world could mean, left him thrilled and trembling. He wanted to reach out his hand and seize both of hers, and tell her how much she was to him, but it seemed like taking advantage of the truths of a confessional, or of ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... one did, David," acknowledged Miss Rhody. "Ef I hed been a Catholic I should a felt as ef the confessional hed been took from me. I ain't hed no one to talk secret like to excep' when Joe comes onct a year. He ain't been fer a couple of years, either, but he sent me anuther black dress the other day—silk, like the last one. To think of little ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... when his brother reminded him that this was the morning of a high holiday, and that, setting aside all other business or pleasure, he ought to go to the Monastery and shrive himself before Father Eustace, who would that day occupy the confessional, pride stepped in and confirmed his wavering resolution. "I will not avow," he thought, "a tale so extraordinary, that I may be considered as an impostor or something worse—I will not fly from this Englishman, whose arm and sword ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the congregation were disappointed because they had looked for a justification and enforcement of the confessional, thinking the change in the curate could only have come from that portion of the ecclesiastical heavens towards which they themselves turned their faces. A few others were scandalized at such an innovation on the part of a young man who was only ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... sometimes,—"Where are you going, Monsieur l'Abbe?" Our abbe would bow and smile, but say nothing. True to his character of abbe, he would listen at all the doors, saying that the chateau of the Tuileries was for him but one huge confessional. He ended, however, by knowing all things, and by sitting in council with the king and his mistress; and a precious trio it must be ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... he did 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, it is impossible, ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... on at St. Bartholomew's, Dover, admitted "There may be irregularities," but added "they do not appear to be of any importance." One of these "unimportant irregularities" was the introduction of the Confessional. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Eugene. "I am 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 absolution for ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of beads and saints and little books with crosses on them—who would leer at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all such jewels! A nice wife, who has a face like ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... compelled to own that, in the art of managing and forming the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied themselves to the ministry of the confessional. Throughout Catholic Europe the secrets of every government and of almost every family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... habit, you will have to give me your word of honor that you've conquered it. [Putting down proofs on table, taking up the money-box, giving it a shake.] Now, who will be first to step into the confessional? [Looking round. ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... rite in connection with his preaching. It helps to remember the distinction between baptism as practised in the Christian Church, and as practised by John, and by Jesus in His early ministry. In the church, baptism has come to be regarded as a dedicatory rite by some, and by others an initial and confessional rite. But in the first use of it, by John and Jesus, it was a purifying rite. It was a confession too, but of sin, and the need of cleansing, not, as later, of faith in a person, or a creed, although it did imply acceptance of a man's leadership. To a ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... was less than ten minutes' walk from the hotel, and stepping briskly along he soon reached its doors, entered, and went directly to the open counter instead of availing himself of one of the dirty, ill-smelling little confessional boxes wherein hapless creatures confess their poverty to Poverty's ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... 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
... his Magazin zum Gebrauche der Staaten Kirche Geschichte, or Magazine of Materials for a History of a State Church, relates that, in the year 1659, it was made known to Pope Alexander VII. that great numbers of young women had avowed in the confessional that they had poisoned their husbands with slow poisons. The Catholic clergy, who in general hold the secrets of the confessional so sacred, were shocked and alarmed at the extraordinary prevalence of the crime. Although they refrained from ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... indifferent in religious matters, rather than hypocritical, his conscience reproached him for going to absolve or condemn a fellow-creature when he inwardly felt how utterly unworthy he was himself of judging others at the tribunal of the confessional. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... short, that man's wife?" "Yes," murmur'd Matilda, "O yes!" "Then," he cried, "This chamber in which we two sit, side by side, (And his arm, as he spoke, seem'd more softly to press her), Is now a confessional—you, my confessor!" "I?" she falter'd, and timidly lifted her head. "Yes! but first answer one other question," he said: "When a woman once feels that she is not alone: That the heart of another is warm'd by her own; That another feels with her whatever she feel And halves her existence in ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... necessary to spend three hours a day among skirts: they ought to have worn them really, for they had the souls and the conversation of girls. Christophe had his hour as her confessor. At once Colette would become serious and intense. She was like the young Frenchwoman, of whom Bodley speaks, who, at the confessional, "developed a calmly prepared essay, a model of clarity and order, in which everything that was to be said was properly arranged in distinct categories."—And after that she flung herself once more ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... sincere Christian penitent. Henry, as we have frequently been reminded in these Memoirs, seems to have made much progress in the knowledge of sacred things, and to have become familiarly acquainted with the Holy Scriptures; and his confessional prayer breathes the aspirations of one who had made the divine word his study. He earnestly implores "his most loving Father to have mercy upon him, not suffering the miserable creature of his hand to perish, but making him as one of his hired servants." ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... book contains a denunciation, by an angry and an able man, of some of the most pressing practical evils of the Roman Catholic system. The celibacy of the priesthood, the mysteries of the confessional, the usurpations of priestly direction in the economy of families, in the control of women, and in the education of children—these are the objects against which the historian of France now directs the arrows ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... able to give the Irish Secretary plenty of news. His report will doubtless remain secret, as it is sensational. Mr. Morley has too much regard for the sensibilities of Mr. and Mrs. Bull, and when the Limerick inspector, entering the State confessional of Dublin Castle, advances and says, "I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... 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 ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... 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. This ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... of one of these chapels is peculiar. A hundred or a hundred and fifty ladies, almost buried in silk and velvet, are crowded devoutly about the confessional. A sweet scent of violets and vervain permeates the vicinity, and one halts, in spite of one's self, in the presence of this large ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... had made her attend church and go to the confessional. But the mass, whose meaning she did not understand, offered no solace to the soul which yearned for love alone. Besides, it wearied her to remain so long in the same place, and the confession forced the girl, who had never shrunk from honestly expressing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 had put ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... hold a receipt in M. Schmucke's hand which did not cost you much.—Ah! you are in the confessional, my lady! Don't deceive your confessor, especially when the confessor has the power of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the bench 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 even as ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... I longed, but did not dare, to say, "Are you afraid of ... that?" I thought if one could say the word it might break down that dumb fright, draw the flesh up again over those bulging eyes, give him a sort of anchor, a confessional, even if it was only me. But I didn't dare. Gayner is one of those men so pent up, so rigid with some inner indignation, one cannot ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... the Knight, assisting her to a seat. "Henceforth let no distrust exist between us, and, that it may be so, inquire, and I will answer as at the confessional." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... was, as was so frequently the case in those times, the doctor and the scribe, as well as the spiritual adviser, of his entire flock; and he was so much trusted and esteemed that all men told him their affairs and asked advice, not in the confessional alone, but as one man speaking to another in whom he has strong ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was wiser than to make any answer, he simply saluted and withdrew. But he paid no heed to the advice, and one day shortly afterward he again spoke to a priest of the unjust treatment of Corsica. The latter waited until the boy came to him at the confessional and then rebuked him on this subject. Bonaparte ran back through the church crying loud enough for all those present to hear him, "I didn't come in here to talk about Corsica, and that priest has no right to lecture me on ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... Victorine, piously, racking her brains meanwhile for a ready escape from this dilemma, and trying in her fright to recall precisely what she had just said. "I said not that he told it to me in the garden; it was in the confessional that he said it. I had confessed to him the grievous sin of a horrible rage I had been in when one of the bees had stung me on the lip as I was gathering the cool vine leaves to lay on the good Sister Clarice's forehead, who was ill with ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... papal pedler, like Tetzel a century later, caused trouble. He came to Prag and with beating of drums ordered the people into the churches, where contribution boxes had been placed; even the confessional was abused to extort ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann
... sposa, and afterwards her features to the very turn of her nose. She was then kneeling by the side of a box, in which was seated a man in black, fast asleep. The Neapolitan knew this must be the confessional. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... a glimmering of the truth, for better than any one he understood the girl he had confessed many times, besides himself having succumbed to the Russian, led the way to the confessional in some perturbation of spirit. He walked slowly, hoping that the long, cool church, its narrow high windows admitting so scant a meed of sunlight that no one of its worshippers had ever read the legends ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... who was labouring in Madrid, wrote of a civil guard who, because of his bold witness for Christ and renunciation of the Romish confessional, was sent from place to place and most cruelly treated, and threatened with banishment to a penal settlement. Again he writes of a convert from Borne who, for trying to establish a small meeting, was summoned ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the details of the transaction, weigh the causes which led up to it, consider the conditions surrounding it, realize the temptations or provocations that precipitated it, you step into your confessional: "Lord, my nature and heart are not different from this sinner's, and but for accidents and good fortune which were none of my providing, I should stand accountant to-day as he does!" You bring the whited sepulcher home to you, and find ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... had," replied the Earl, "you would do well to keep that interview as secret as that which is spoken in a confessional. I seek no one's ruin; but he who thrusts himself on my secret privacy were better look well to his future walk. The bear [The Leicester cognizance was the ancient device adopted by his father, when Earl of Warwick, the bear and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... 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, surroundings, ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... skilful in 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, for he ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... old Abbe Faber, one of the vicars of the parish, is sure that twice out of three times he will find no penitent before his confessional, and has only to hear, for the most part of the time, the uninteresting confession of some good women. But he is conscientious, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at seven o'clock precisely, he betakes himself regularly to the chapel of ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... possibly anterior to the Conquest; it is a roughly hewn mass of Barnack stone. The low window in the S. wall of the chancel was opened out during some renovations, and is thought to have been connected with a confessional, as a coloured figure of the Virgin was discovered on the wall. The theory, however, may be dismissed as purely mythical. There is a brass to William Langley, a rector of the church (d. 1478); a low-relief medallion by Chantrey to William ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... appointed to each, cartridges served out, matches lighted, and all the flags ready to be run up. I took my place at the starboard after gun, and we all waited for the signal from on shore. At ten o'clock the bride went up with her sister to the confessional, dressed in deep black. Nearly an hour intervened, when the great doors of the Mission church opened, the bells rang out a loud, discordant peal, the private signal for us was run up by the captain ashore, the bride, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Pope on his own {183} ground, meeting his rapier-like dexterity of neatness with heavy sword-strokes of sincerity and strength. But here, as in the prose, the true Johnsonian excellence is best seen when he is in the confessional. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... any of the neighbours to the function, and gave parents' names of her own choosing at the church. For godfather she selected the parish sexton, named Paul Marmiou, who gave the child the name of Bernard. La Pigoreau remained in a confessional during the ceremony, and gave the man ten sou. The godmother was Jeanne Chevalier, a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... interrupted Wolff, with a sneer. "The men know how to praise her for it. No paternoster would be imposed upon her in the confessional ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... when they made it good. The only sin we are justified in confessing to our brother man is that we have committed against him. All else must be told in the ear of Jesus, that great High Priest, whose confessional is always open, and whose pure ear can receive our dark and sad stories without ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... substantial truth of his guest's story, the good Padre Esteban was not unwilling to have it corroborated by such details as he thought he could collect among the Excelsior's passengers. His own experience in the confessional had taught him the unreliability of human evidence, and the vagaries of both conscientious and unconscious suppression. That a young, good-looking, and accomplished caballero should have been the ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... not misunderstand this, he cautions—that the pretense here around the broken automobile grows shallow enough to plumb. There is nothing here. Two dozen men standing dead on a curbing, tricked into confessional ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... indeed! He is handsome! [Confidentially.] If I tell you all this, it is only because you are a midwife, and a midwife in such affairs as this is like a priest in the confessional. But you, Madame Flache, you, who have been a dancer at the Opera, you must also have had, surely—little ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... chapel to chapel, and transept to transept, I could see men and women—principally the latter—with great apparent devotion kneeling before the altar, or at the confessional. It was not Sunday, yet many people were constantly passing in and out. I might perhaps infer from this fact, that the French possess much religious feeling—but I cannot believe it. Art and literature swallow ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... it is said," was Mrs. Pitt's reply. "Perhaps it may have been a kind of confessional, where ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... was consummated. What more than the simple knowledge of the man's guilt does any mortal desire; guilty, or not guilty, is the plain question which the law asks, and no more; take my advice, sir, as a poor Protestant layman, and leave the acts of the confessional and inquisition ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... anew. A thousand demons leaped from the silence to mock him; the earth rolled beneath his feet. The impulse of confession was strong upon him, even in the face of Thorpe's scorn. He wondered why only one church saw the need of the confessional, why he could not go, even to Thorpe, and share the burden that oppressed his ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... call this luck. This is as good as a confessional, small and dark, and 'fess I've got to, Aunt Meda, or there'll be trouble for somebody ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... 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 ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... alike to 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 ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... "Nevertheless," he 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 ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... her early visit, and pressed closer to her heart the dead treasure she intended as a present for Father Francis. The church opened; she stole around the dark aisles, whence the daylight had not yet banished the shades of night, and noiselessly approached the confessional of the holy man. She placed the dead child on the seat, and hurried to some recess of the great church, where she could watch the happy issue of this ingenious mode of disposing of her child. The early morning hours wore away, and at length the wished for moment ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... kiss me, and begged me to go up early in 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 ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... often what she heard was sound without sense. Still, her face never betrayed this distraction. And what was singular she did not recount to the doctor that morning's adventure. Why? If she had put the query to herself, she could not have answered it. It was in no sense confessional; it was a state of mind in the patient the doctor had already anticipated. Yet ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... would feel called upon, at some distant confessional, to tell the fortunate Lord Amberdale that I had brutally kissed her. And Lord Amberdale would grin in his beastly supercilious English way and say: "What else could you have expected from a bally American bounder?" She would no doubt ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... in alluding to the secrets of the confessional, had gone a step beyond what the rules of his order and of the church permitted. He was baffled by the Fleming's reply, and finding him unmoved by the charge of heresy, he could only answer, in some confusion, "You refuse, then, to admit me to the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 Wither'd 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 ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the Brahman 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
... Jeanne de Divion; his clerk, Perrot de Sanis; his fille de chambre, Jeannette des Chaines, and Pierre Tesson, notary. All this made a tremendous sensation in Paris; a Jacobin, called as one of the witnesses, refused to reveal the secrets of the confessional; he was threatened with the rack by the Bishop of Paris; the doctors in theology assembled and decided that he must testify, in the interests of justice, which he did, and was accordingly confined in prison for the rest of his days. The demoiselle La Divion was burned ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... to the church early that evening, as it was his turn to be in the confessional. One or two people came to confession, and then the church seemed to be empty. He knelt down to his prayers and soon became absorbed. To-night he was oppressed in a new way by the sins, the temptations, and the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... of ecclesiastical and confessional Christianity into historical Christianity is the work of biblical science. The conversion of historical Christianity into philosophical Christianity is an attempt which is to some extent an illusion, since faith cannot be entirely resolved into science. The transference, however, of Christianity ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... confession, as she felt rather doubtful whether Clara would accompany her, but she promised that she would consider the matter; and the vicar on leaving felt satisfied with the way he had made. As yet, however, he had not got so far as to set up a confessional box in his church. He intended, in the first instance, to employ the vestry for that purpose. He had his doubts whether Mr Lennard might not withdraw the support he was now affording him; still, he had made considerable progress. His first step was ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ste.-Genevieve at the same time was first turned into a hall of meeting for the electors, who distrusted each other so profoundly that when their first meeting was held, May 3, 1790, the documents relating to the elections were locked up in a confessional, lest they should be stolen, and then deliberately wrecked and looted by the 'friends of Liberty,' or, in other words, by a squad of ruffians from Chauny and the neighbourhood, who, after putting on the sacerdotal vestments, marched about ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... were eloquently exhorted that the purchase of indulgence-letters was better 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 ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... sought him out, and who had surrendered unconditionally. They had evinced an equally disturbing tendency,—a willingness to be overborne. For had he not, indeed, overborne them? He could not help suspecting these other ladies of a craving for the luxury of the confessional. One thing was certain,—he had much less respect for them than for Eleanor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... government bore throughout the bitter and hateful character of 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 ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... other schools met on fixed days and that it would be well if his disciples did the same. He assented and ordered that when they met they should recite a formula called Patimokkha which is still in use. It is a confessional service, in which a list of offences is read out and the brethren are asked three times after each item "Are you pure in this matter?" Silence indicates a good conscience. Only if a monk has anything to confess does he speak. It is then in the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... with which physicians are conversant. As if nature intended them as warnings, they are imprinted on the most visible and public parts of the body. The skin, the hair, the nose, the voice, the lines on the face, often divulge to the trained observer, more indubitably than the confessional, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... what terrible thing she had done and Kennedy, for the present, did not try to lead the conversation. But of all the stories that I have heard poured forth in the confessional of the detective's office, hers, I think, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... have done was, to leave Rome at once, and forever; but she is no more capable of forming such a resolution, than Hamlet was of organizing a conspiracy against his usurping uncle. When, however, the priest steps out from the confessional-box and attempts to make a convert of Hilda,—for which indeed she has given him a fair opening,—she asserts herself and her New England training, with true feminine dignity, and in fact has decidedly ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Richelieu thought he had achieved success when he was admitted to the Council. This penniless woman was supposed to be so dependent on every one about her, that she seemed doomed to perfect silence. She herself called herself the Family Confessional. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and Death are themes of Petrarch's Triumphs. The same profound sense of the transiency of things, which meets us in the studied pages of his confessional—the Latin treatise De Contemptu Mundi—pervades these exquisite poems. Du Bellay's Antiquities, which Spenser's translation under the title of The Ruines of Rome has made familiar, were written after a visit ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... be the sort of thing—"Where them Nettlerash lib?" "He lib for drunk, Massa." "Where them Smiles?" "He lib for town, for steal, Massa." "Where them Black Man Misery?" But I draw a veil over the confessional, for there is simply no artistic reticence about your Kruman when he is telling the truth, or ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... shut up in his confessional, Constantia kneeling by him opened the state of her soul to him; and after having given him the history of a life full of innocence, she burst out into tears, and entered upon that part of her story in which he himself ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Besancon went further than this; it actually took pains to declare that any one who pleased might follow other theologians instead of St. Alfonso. After saying that no priest was to be interfered with who followed St. Alfonso in the Confessional, it added, "This is said, however, without on that account judging that they are reprehended who follow opinions handed down by other ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... countryman did not know how far his course had been subject to the gaze of the stranger: denial gave way rapidly; he assented, and explained, and enlarged—and thus the office of the superintendent answered the purpose of a confessional. It was the practice to furnish all possible information to the local government, and to keep its details a secret from the prisoners: such had been the advice of the Commissioner. Thus the wonder of the country transport, to find that the picture ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... permission to the priest to pronounce absolution privately to the sick man. This was a feature of the First Book that was not disturbed in the Second. But wherever else they found anything that seemed to look toward the continuance of the system familiarly known to us under the name of "the Confessional," they expunged it. Between the Exhortation and the Confession there is, in point of literary merit, a noticeable contrast, and it is scarcely to be believed that both formularies can have proceeded from one and the same pen. Another step in the Protestant direction was the prohibition of ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... 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
... information, as I said to Peery Hacket's wife, the last day I held the Station in Peery's. There was just such another goose hanging before the fire; but, you must know, the cream of the joke was, that I had been after coming from the confessional, as hungry as a man could conveniently wish himself; and seeing the brown fat goose before the fire just as that is, why my teeth, Mave, began to get lachrymose. Upon my Priesthood it was such a ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... because Isabel had awoke, that she was unsatisfied with the round of ritual observances which were all in all to her sister. She could confess to man, and be absolved by man; but how could she wrestle against the conviction that she rose from the confessional with a soul none the cleaner, with a heart just as disinclined to go and sin no more? The branches might be lopped; but what mattered that while the root of bitterness remained? It is only when we hear God say, "Thy ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the little room, gave the key to one of the 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 complaints, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... their dinner, and be thankful. That's what I say. Egg-shells, forsooth!" The Baron was passing through the chapel, and he mechanically removed his helmet; but he did not catch sight of the glittering eye of Father Anselm himself, who had stepped quickly into the confessional, and there in the dark watched Sir Godfrey with a strange, mocking smile. When he had the chapel to himself again, the tall gray figure of the Abbot appeared in full view, and craftily moved across the place. If you had been close beside him, and had listened hard, you could ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... day especially, when we discussed it in a pleasant way, he said jestingly to me, 'I shall have you, after all in my confessional.'" ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... furnished in the letters that passed between the parties, both of whom were of a temperament strung to the most exquisite tones of consciousness, with minds both wise and strong, and with characters under the control of austere principles of duty and piety. Michelet, in his work on the Confessional, gives a skilful and forcible picture of this rapt friendship; but his own pervading sensuousness, not to say sensuality, does the sentiment gross injustice by mixing in it so much of flesh and earth. The union of these two mystics in spirit and deed ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... 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 eyes and the spoken words reaching the ears help to fix the attention and there ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... of 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, the boot ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the bannock's cooked; it's time we both turned in. The morning mist is coral-kissed, the morning sky is gold. The camp-fire's a confessional — what funny yarns we spin! It sort of made me think a bit, that story that you told. The fig-leaf belt and Rory Bory are such odd extremes, Yet after all how very small this old world seems to be . . . Yes, that was quite a yarn, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service |
