Confession Quotes

“I know girls aren't supposed to tell, but I've got to tell—just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later—I wish I'd told him.”
― Iris Murdoch, Henry and Cato

“You hear stories about people who've committed bad crimes. Suddenly they decide to confess it all, turn themselves in to the authorities, get everything off their conscience-the burden, the harm, the shame, the self-hatred. They make a clean breast of things before going off to jail. As if guilt was the worst thing in the world to them. I'm willing to say now that guilt has less to do with it than you might think. Rather, the intolerable problem is of everything suddenly being so confused: the clear path back to the past being cluttered and unfollowable; how the person once felt being now completely changed from how he feels today. And time itself: how the hours of the day and night advance so oddly-first fast, then hardly passing at all. Then the future becoming as confused and impenetrable as the past itself. What a person becomes in such a situation is paralyzed-caught in one long, sustained, intolerable present. Who wouldn't want to stop that-if he could? Make the present give way to almost any future at all. Who wouldn't admit everything just to gain release from the terrible present? I would. Only a saint wouldn't.”
― Richard Ford, Canada

“He said, 'Forgive me for being a liar and a fool and an utterly worthless man.' Louise replied, 'I love you.' He took her in his arms for a moment and they held each other with closed eyes.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Do you know what I think?"she asked, rearranging the blanket to wear around her shoulders like a shawl.
"Not this again."
"I think there's more to you than you let people believe. I think you actually do care what people think. Oh sure, it's fun having everyone think you're dangerous and cold, but inside, where it matters, you're just warm pudding."
"Warm pudding?"
"Quite," she uttered confidently, with a firm nod.
The things that came out of that woman's mouth never failed to astound him. "Well, I'm going to... to leave now," he said slowly, as if he thought her the strangest creature on earth- just to tease her. When she laughed at herself, he smiled and muttered, "Good night, my sweet Charlotte." Fists on the edge of the couch, he made to push himself up.
"Wait," she said. And he froze.
Slowly, she sat up more fully, swinging her legs down. Which put her knees between his planted fists.
He couldn't help but give a low chuckle. "Charlotte, if I didn't know you better, I would venture to say that you are deliberately tempting me."
"Tempting you to what?" she asked, her tone utterly oblivious.
He had had enough. "Remember that little problem I forewarned you about? The one about a man and a woman never being able to become friends because lust gets in the way? That eventually, one or both of us would end up wanting something very intimate from the other?"
She nodded jerkily.
"Well, I'm there. I've been there. For years.”
― Olivia Parker, To Wed a Wicked Earl

“And then I saw it. My father's wood: thick by then with twenty years' growth, but still not fully mature. A half-grown wood of oak trees around that little clearing, which, with my new perspective, I could see made the shape of a heart.
I stared down at the clearing. The heart was unmistakable; tapered at the base with the strawberry field in the centre; a stand of trees to form the cleft. How long had it taken my father, I thought, to plan the formation, to plant out the trees? How many calculations had he made to create this God's-eye view? I thought of the years I had been at school; the years I had felt his absence. I remembered the contempt I'd felt at his little hobby. And finally I understood what he'd tried to say to me on the night of my wedding.
'Love is the thing that only God sees.'
I'd wondered at the time what he meant. My father seldom spoke of love; rarely showed affection. Perhaps that was Tante Anna's influence, or maybe the few words he'd had were all spent on Naomi. But here it was at last, I saw: the heart-shaped meadow in the wood, a silent testament to grief; a last, enduring promise.
Love is the thing that only God sees. I supposeyou'dsay that's because he sees into our hearts. Well, if he ever looks in mine, he'll see no more than I've told you. Confession may be good for the soul. But love is even better. Love redeems us even when we think ourselves irredeemable. I never really loved my wife- not in the way that she deserved. My children and I were never close. Perhaps that was my fault, after all. But Mimi- yes, I loved Mimi. And I loved Rosette Rocher, who was so very like her. One day I hope Rosette will see the heart-shaped meadow in the wood, and know that love surrounds her, whether see can see it or not. And you, Reynaud. I hope one day you can feel what only God sees, but which grows from the hearts of people like us: the flawed; the scarred; the broken. I hope you find it one day, Reynaud. Till then, look after Rosette for me. Make sure she knows my story. Tell her to take care of my wood. And keep picking the strawberries.”
― Joanne Harris, The Strawberry Thief

“Zazen is indeed the posture of “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). In our zazen we realize the illusory nature of thoughts, and no matter how powerful they might be, we don’t chase after them, try to get rid of them, or act on them. So zazen is the posture of “We know that our old self was crucified with him” (Romans 6:6) or “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:19). In the end, zazen is the purest expression of “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalms 46:10).”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“What’s the use of all these assortments of apps if you cannot share your feelings with someone?”
― Priyanka Agarwal, PiKu & ViRu

“But I will relate what happened with absolute honesty; that, perhaps, will help me understand it. After all, when one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a person that observes and narrates it and no longer the person that performed it.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Brodie's Report

“But peace, too, is a living thing and like all life it must wax and wane, accommodate, withstand trials, and undergo changes. Such was the case with the peace Josephus Famulus enjoyed. It was unstable, visible one moment, gone the next, sometimes near as a candle carried in the hand, sometimes as remote as a star in the wintry sky. And in time a new and special kind of sin and temptation more and more often made life difficult for him. It was not a strong, passionate emotion such as indignation or a sudden rush of instinctual urges. Rather, it seemed to be the opposite. It was a feeling very easy to bear in its initial stages, for it was scarcely perceptible; a condition without any real pain or deprivation, a slack, luke-warm, tedious state of the soul which could only be described in negative terms as a vanishing, a waning, and finally a complete absence of joy. There are days when the sun does not shine and the rain does not pour, but the sky sinks quietly into itself, wraps itself up, is gray but not black, sultry, but not with the tension of an imminent thunderstorm. Gradually, Joseph's days became like this as he approached old age. Less and less could he distinguish the mornings from the evenings, feast days from ordinary days, hours of rapture from hours of dejection. Everything ran sluggishly long in limp tedium and joylessness. This is old age, he thought sadly. He was sad because he had expected aging and the gradual extinction of his passions to bring a brightening and easing of his life, to take him a step nearer to harmony and mature peace of soul, and now age seemed to be disappointing and cheating him by offering nothing but this weary, gray, joyless emptiness, this feeling of chronic satiation. Above all he felt sated: by sheer existence, by breathing, by sleep at night, by life in his cave on the edge of the little oasis, by the eternal round of evenings and mornings, by the passing of travelers and pilgrims, camel riders and donkey riders, and most of all by the people who came to visit him, by those foolish, anxious, and childishly credulous people who had this craving to tell him about their lives, their sins and their fears, their temptations and self-accusations. Sometimes it all seemed to him like the small spring of water that collected in its stone basin in the oasis, flowed through grass for a while, forming a small brook, and then flowed on out into the desert sands, where after a brief course it dried up and vanished. Similarly, all these confessions, these inventories of sins, these lives, these torments of conscience, big and small, serious and vain, all of them came pouring into his ear, by the dozens, by the hundreds, more and more of them. But his ear was not dead like the desert sands. His ear was alive and could not drink, swallow, and absorb forever. It felt fatigued, abused, glutted. It longed for the flow and splashing of words, confessions, anxieties, charges, self-condemnations to cease; it longed for peace, death, and stillness to take the place of this endless flow.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

“What did the torturers of the Inquisition want? The admission of evil, of the principle of evil. It was necessary to make the accused say that he was not guilty except by accident, through the incidence of the principle of Evil in the divine order. Thus confession restored a reassuring causality, and torture, and the extermination of evil through torture, were nothing but the triumphal coronation (neither sadistic nor expiatory) of the fact of having produced Evil as cause. Otherwise, the least heresy would have rendered all of divine creation suspect.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“That it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering, is the most difficult and profound Jesus idea.”
― Jaco Strydom, Confessions oor kerkwees

“Jy kan nie jou lewe vir Jesus gee sonder om dit vir die wêreld te gee nie.”
― Jaco Strydom, Confessions oor kerkwees

“I believe creeds aren't worth the paper they are written on...But I still believe in God.
I believe that if you look at my life, you'll only sometimes see what I believe.
I believe that if we have two coats, we should give one away (though I don't do it).
Today I don't believe in anything; tomorrow who knows.
I sometimes believe in God- one who existed before time, beyond gender or fathom.
Maker of heaven and earth and ginger (all good things), whales, two-hundred-foot cliffs, cloud banks, shipwrecks,
And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost- how?
Born of a fourteen-year-old, Mary, scared out of her wits.
Was crucified, dead, and buried, and I used to believe in the penal substitution theory of atonement, but now I just see a violent death and struggle to see how violence can ever be redemptive...
He descended into hell, or was hell all around him all the time?
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into safety of abstraction, away from having to feel this, from dealing with this,
And sits, maybe sprawls, on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
I believe in me; I believe in the Spirit, Sophia, wisdom...
The holy catholic (i.e., everybody) Church;
The Communion of saints; does this mean me?
LOVE
The Forgiveness of sins (but I still feel shame); (don't you?)
The Resurrection of the body.
I believe in singing the body electric
And the life everlasting,
A life we find right here in our midst”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Su modestia y su anhelo de agradar eran tan duraderos que muchas noches comenzó por defensa y acabó por confesión, siempre al servicio de las inclinaciones del pueblo.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Cuentos completos

“No one wants to hear anything like the truth during these landmark times. It has to be one emotion, a positive one - unless it's a quiet, heartfelt confession of fear or nervousness that can utterly disarm listeners and give them the opportunity to be reassuring - just to keep the social wheels turning in the way that makes everyone feel secure.”
― Emma Newman, Before Mars

“I absent-mindedly returned to stalking”
― Kathleen Hale

“Confession takes away the burden of any act or matter that's committed, and gives peace to the mind, heart, and soul and inspires confidence to bear the positive or negative results.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“That's really what all books are, isn't it? I mean, lists of secrets and things you only wish you’d done - a sort of deathbed confession where you're trying to get it all out while the lights are still on.”
― Andrew Smith

“Me," I said a little more loudly. "Why me?"
"Why not you?" he returned. "Why not the girl who played her music for me in the Goblin Grove when she was a child?"
He had said so much, yet nothing I wanted to hear. That he desired me. That he had chosen me. That he... I wanted to hear the truth in his eyes said aloud. I could feel his gaze upon every part of my body; on my neck, where my shoulder disappeared into the torn sleeves of my blouse, the line of my collarbone as it led to my décolletage, the swell and ebb of my breasts as I breathed. I had waited for this my entire life, I realized. Not to be found beautiful- but desirable. Wanted. I wanted the Goblin King to claim me as his own.
"Why me?" I repeated. "Why Maria Elisabeth Ingeborg Vogler?"
I held his eyes with mine. He had his pride, but so had I. If I were to make good on the promise I made that little dancing boy in the wood all those years ago, I needed to hear validation from his own lips.
"Because," he said. "Because I loved the music within you."
I closed my eyes. His words were the spark to the tinder lining my blood; they touched my heart and warmth blazed from within, spreading through me like wildfire.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Wintersong

“I tasted Elliott's food as we cooked this morning. His traditional Scottish dishes were rich and satisfying. I thought some lighter sides would be a nice contrast and balance the breakfast. Black pudding isn't my favorite food, but I thought it was perfect for someone who needs a hearty meal." She glanced at the table of farmers, some of them friendly faces she knew from previous trips. Those smiles spurred her on. "I'm not Scottish, but my partner is. This contest is about blending our two styles. So our platter showcased both of our approaches to cooking- traditional Scottish fare and my love of fresh fruit and vegetables.”
― Penny Watson, A Taste of Heaven

“Confession leads to cleansing.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The sense of sin is the first step towards salvation.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“My life... didn't pass before my eyes. All I saw was you." His lashes fell and his hand slipped from her face. He managed one more whisper before he fell asleep. "The last moment, I thought... I would die wanting you.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Cold-Hearted Rake

“I let out a slow, careful breath. “I’ve been thinking . . . there might be something of my father’s inside the vault.”
I don’t want to tell her I was following Liam, but this is true too. And I’m almost shocked by how easily the confession rolls off my tongue, as though I had always meant to tell Caro.”
― Sara Holland

“Tell me what you are thinking when you look at me like that."
There was iron and ice in his voice. Not even a hint of tenderness. For some reason, his harsh manner did not bother her. She sensed something beautiful and elusive existed behind his daunting facade. The possibility of discovering what it was filled her with delicate anticipation.
She looked into his eyes and answered truthfully. "I am thinking about how you make me feel."
The muscles along his jaw tensed, and his eyelids lowered just the barest fraction. He brought his hands around to clasp them behind his back.
To keep from reaching for her?
"How do I make you feel?"
Her skin tingled in reaction to the raw note in his voice. Lily took a moment as she thought about how to put it into words. It was a difficult thing to explain, and she wanted it to come out right.
"I feel..." she began, then hesitated. Her breath caught in her chest, and she had to force it out on a heavy sigh. "I feel strong and weak at the same time. When you look at me, I feel exposed, as if you can see my most private thoughts. And though it frightens me- you frighten me- it is such an exquisite sensation that I do not want it to end. Because I want you to know me, to see the deepest parts of me."
At first he did not respond beyond a fierce clenching of his teeth, and Lily wondered if he wanted to hear something else. Had she revealed too much of her inexperience? Should she have said something more provocative, more sophisticated?
"Do you desire me?" he asked finally.
The molten heat running through his words curled around her, heating her breath, her skin, her blood. She looked into his eyes and felt a swirling deep within. It tingled like white fire and spread to the most intimate places in her body.”
― Amy Sandas, The Untouchable Earl

“The truth is that I have long been... curious about the more passionate aspects of human existence. I do not want to live my entire life huddled beneath my bedcovers, imagining what desire must feel like. I want to experience it. I do experience it with you."
Her words stole his breath.
"From the first moment I saw you, my lord, I felt something ignite inside me. Something powerful. It is important to me that you know I would never have considered becoming the mistress of anyone but you."
Avenell's heart stopped.”
― Amy Sandas, The Untouchable Earl

“Tell me what you feel," he demanded. "Right now, in this moment."
Her arms flexed as she pulled against the rope around her wrists, stopping just shy of loosening the restraint. She licked her lips, and her gaze fell to travel hotly over his bared chest and abdomen. And then lower to where his painful erection jutted fiercely from the shadow of his groin.
His entire body tensed when her attention seemed to lock on that part of his body.
"I am on fire from the inside out," she whispered in a husky tone. "I feel desperate and frantic. As though I am fighting for my life." She brought her gaze back to his face. "And only you have the power to save me."
She arched her body, lifting her breasts and rolling her hips. "Please, my lord. Kiss me," she sighed in a quiet demand.
Kiss her? He wanted to consume her.
In that breathless moment, her gaze seemed to contain all the mysteries of life and death. Mysteries he wanted desperately to explore... until he acknowledged with an intense stab of regret that a woman like Lily would not reveal the depths of her heart unless she could expect reciprocation in kind.
Avenell would never know the beautiful secrets she kept. But he could know this.
The sigh she breathed as he lowered his head toward hers.
The silken texture and lush softness of her lips beneath his.
The sweetness of her tongue, the sharp edge of her teeth.
The way he so quickly and easily lost himself in the languid exploration of her mouth.
She arched more deeply toward him. The peaks of her breasts pressed into his chest. He tensed at the rise in sensations but did not pull away. The kiss took priority over all else.
Her tongue played fiercely against his, and her teeth scraped along his lower lip, demanding more of him. Her body melted as her moans and sweet whimpers fanned the fire burning hot inside him. She strained beneath him, arching deeper, pressing harder toward him.
It was the deepest pleasure.”
― Amy Sandas, The Untouchable Earl

“Praise is to express approval in worship to your Lord and Savior. I hope you want to praise the living God and His Son, Jesus Christ, right now: for they are good, and God’s mercy and love endures forever and ever. Do you agree? Say this to yourself until it’s deep down on the inside of you, “I will bless the Lord at all times: His praise should continuously be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1).”
― Shelena Griffiths, A Real Desire To Praise God Devotional

“When Hegel writes that “language is the existence of the spirit as the immediate self,” he suggests that language connects the universal consciousness to the particular individual. Language is universal, in the sense that it is shared by all of the members of a linguistic community, but it lives only in the utterances of particular individuals. According to Hegel, language is the concrete expression of spirit in and through individuals. Judging and confessing are both speech acts that marry universality and particularity in this way.”
― Molly B. Farneth