"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kind of fodder, ex-Priest Slattery and his ex-nun wife were brought hither to lecture on A.P.Aism, and incidentally make the town too caloric for my comfort. The Baptists took their wives and daughters to listen to Slattery's foul lies about the convents and the confessional, the Pope and "his Waco Apostle," and his most infamous utterances were applauded to the echo. They sent their wives and daughters to hear the Slattery female defame women who had given up the pleasures of the world and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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
... to go though the confessional now," she told him, "and sit on the stool of repentance ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... mention one among numberless facts, which might be brought to prove these assertions: The Beggars of our capital carry on an increasing and very lucrative trade, with confessional and communion testimonials, which they sell to people who daringly transgress the holy ecclesiastical laws, by neglecting to confess and receive the holy sacrament of the Lord's Supper at Easter. Some of these impious wretches receive ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... Father M'Clane for holding a regular confessional; and an hour before sunset, he had taken his seat in the little darkened chamber, behind a table on which four tallow-candles were burning, with ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... themselves thoroughly, and that Holy Week would be a grand affair. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the Semana Santa have only this to distinguish them from ordinary days, that the churches are crowded with men and women waiting their turn at the confessional; and that in the afternoons the old promenade of Las Vigas, down in the Indian quarter by the canal of Chalco, is patronized by fashionable Mexico, which, except on some four or five special days, frequents the ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... of the Order were to combat heresy, to advance the interests of the Church, and to strengthen the authority of the Papacy. Its motto was Omnia ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (that is, All for the greater glory of God), and the means to be employed by it to accomplish these ends were the pulpit, the confessional, the mission, and the school. Of these the school was given the place of first importance. Realizing clearly that the real cause of the Reformation had been the ignorance, neglect, and vicious lives of so many monks and priests and the extortion and neglect practiced by the Church, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Archbishop of 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 ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... stating with entire moderation the facts he had observed and the 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the confessional in the church? No, thank you, Father. My little friends up yonder, those pretty, sparkling stars, my only companions on many a lonely night, have been the witnesses of my degradation. Let them now behold my restoration to the favor of ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... 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 Princess ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 had seen the dangers of revolt and decided to stamp it out relentlessly. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... 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 alive on ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... 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
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the building which had so long been covered up. The masonry is rude, but the walls are solid and complete. The interior was perfectly free from the modern accompaniments of Roman Catholic places of worship. There was no rood-loft, no confessional, no pictures of the Virgin and saints, nothing to indicate the unscriptural adoration of the wafer, or masses for the dead. The most diligent search was made for beads and pyxes, censers and crucifixes; not a fragment of either could be discovered. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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, a lewd and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... "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 them ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... vulgar glass chandeliers with ropes tied with faded pink ribands. 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 Saint Antoine ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... niches; on the north the small windows are placed very high up, the twisted vaulting shafts only come down a short way to a string course some way below the windows, leaving a great expanse of cliff-like wall. At the bottom are the confessional doors, so small that they add greatly to the scale, and above them tall narrow niches and their canopies. But the nave piers are the most astonishing part of the whole building. Not more than three feet thick, they rise up to a height of nearly seventy feet to support a great stone vault. Four only ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... versification. Up to 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
... 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 unutterable weakness of man; his failures; his uselessness. Nothing ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... 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
... deceptions of life, let herself be completely ruled by the rigid fanaticism of this boy who was the minister of Heaven. He led her to the feet of Christ the Consoler, teaching her how the holy joys of religion could alleviate all her sorrows, and, as she knelt in the confessional she humbled herself and felt little and weak before this priest, who looked about fifteen ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... mind, the Jewish law had brought the conscience into an extremely irritable state. The same effect, in a less degree, is produced by the Catholic confessional. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Spanish Cathedral the next day, and saw on the porch groups of gray-haired negroes waiting for alms. There were candles on the altar, paintings of the stations of the cross on the pillars, and confessional closets near the door. And here the lovely creole knelt side by side with pure black descendants ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... 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 ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... CONFESSIONAL; or, the Auricular Confession and Spiritual direction of the Romish Church. Its History, Consequences, and policy of the Jesuits. By M. Michelet. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and through a religious man, though not in the confessional sense. Reared in the Catholic faith he early attained to an independent opinion on religious things. It must be borne in mind that his youth fell in the period of enlightenment and rationalism. When at a later date he composed the grand Mass in honor of his esteemed pupil ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... and eat 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. ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... 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 before ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the church warned her that the morality of such a marriage might be doubtful. She accordingly sounded her conscience in the confessional. The stern priest explained the opinions of the Church, which sees in marriage only the propagation of humanity, and rebukes second marriages and all passions but those with a social purpose. Sylvie's perplexities were great. These internal struggles gave extraordinary force to her passion, investing ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... his own lodging—Alec with a black eye, which soon passed through yellow back to its own natural hue, and Beauchamp with a cut, the scar of which deepened the sneer on his upper lip, and was long his evil counsellor from the confessional of the mirror. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... aside his jovial manner and assumed his priestly attitude. "Well, my child, I will listen to you in the confessional; come along." ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... complete, a deductive frankness so compelling, that nothing stands against the process. He sees corruption everywhere—dreads it everywhere. There is no part of its empire, or its action, that his imagination is allowed to leave in shadow. It is the confessional that works. The devout Catholic sees all the world sub specie peccati. The flesh seems to him always ready to fall—the devil ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "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 done all that ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Buddha but from King Bimbisara, who pointed out that the adherents of 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 ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... boots, though, in the absence of her husband, she had expressed her willingness to discuss the advantages of the confessional. She had, however, declined, in the presence of her husband, to entertain the dogma of infallibility: though she admitted that the cardinals were showy; she would have liked one about her house, say, as a footman. She thought there was a great deal in Buddhism (she had read "The Light of Asia" ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... 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 manners, from the mighty Fielding, down, at a long interval, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... at Paris, where, on the 25th of September, the Irish college, vainly protected by an international treaty, has just been assailed by the mob; where Catholics, listening to the orthodox mass, are driven out and dragged to the authorized mass in the vicinity; where one woman is torn from the confessional, and another flogged with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... are struggles in which our strength oozes away without restraint, as blood from an inward wound. The sensibilities flow to waste and the result is a horrible weakening of the soul; an indescribable melancholy for which the confessional itself has no ears. Have I not ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... in the ruins of their houses, and the scenes when the victims were unearthed were often piteous and terrible. The positions of the bodies showed that the victims had died while in a state of great terror, the faces being convulsed with fear. Three bodies were found in a confessional of one of the fallen churches. One body was that of an old woman who was sitting with her right arm raised as though to ward off the advancing danger. The second was that of a child about eight years old. It was found dead in a position, which would indicate that the child ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... tumult and violent proceedings. The eight sermons which he preached to the excited people of Wittenberg are an invaluable evidence that Luther meant to proceed in the way of order. The mass and the confessional would have been abolished at that time, had it not been for Luther's interference. He made some lifelong enemies by insisting that the reformatory movement must be conservative. He held that before men's consciences had been liberated by the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... rare scandal. After a while he seemed to have resolved on a compromise, but it was no longer possible to obtain his place in advance of the crowd, where each one waited his turn. He took a post, therefore, directly opposite the front of the confessional, as near as he could get, but with half the width of the nave between, and waited till the priest should be visible. The moment came when the confessor, turning from one penitent to another, was seen from the front. The man leaned eagerly forward, and throwing out his right hand with three fingers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... to be relieved of his guilt by confession and expiation. For though I am not, I hope, an unmerciful person, I do not think that the inexorability of the deed once done should be disguised by any ritual, whether in the confessional ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... 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, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... at the Confessional kneel, Let the Jew with disgust turn from it, Let the mighty Crown Prelate in Church pander zeal, ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... out to my confessor's. You have made a clean breast to your friend at home; I have done the same in the confessional, and I have come home much happier than I went, and I truly hope much better." With that she bent down to the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... wrong-doing, 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 ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... spared the Black Rod? or the City if we spared the Lord Mayor? Is chloroforming dangerous? Should armorial bearings be taxed? or a tradesman's holiday use of his cart? Should classical texts be Bowdlerised for school-boys? Is the confessional of value? Is red the best colour for a soldier's uniform or for a target? Will it rain to-morrow? Ought any one to carry firearms? Do we permit the cancan on the English stage? or aerial flights without nets? Where are the lost Tales of Miletus? Should lawyers wear their own hair? Was the Silent ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... explanation. She was ashamed of herself for drawing it out, yet she was pleased; because she had been really hurt. Now that she need not puzzle over the man's motives, she would perhaps cease to think of him. But she must be kind, just for a minute or two—to make up for putting him in the confessional, and to prove the gratitude she wished ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... make him say 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 owned ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... 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
... she 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 ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... suddenly, "I'd better take you straight up to your rooms as soon as we arrive; and I'll have a notice put up on your confessional that you are unable to attend there to-day. You'll have the whole afternoon—after four at least—to yourself, and the rest of the evening. We needn't tell a soul until we're certain that it can't be helped, not even the Cardinal. But ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... her swimmingly to the confessional, where sat a man with his head in a hood, and he soon heard enough of mixed substance to dash his hood, almost his head, off. Beauty may be immoderately frank in soul to the ghostly. The black page comprised a very long list. 'But put this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the confessional, did any of you ever come under the torture of that modern Inquisition, the 'Confession Book?'" ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... respects, and whose love he would make any sacrifice to win. After enduring much, he flings himself at the feet of his confessor, and begs for his sympathy and counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and accuses him, fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime—bids him never return to the confessional until contrition has touched his heart, and the stains which sully his spirit are, by ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Cathedral were over when we entered, but many people were in the building. Some were in silent adoration before the Cross at the magnificent high altar; some were worshiping at the foot of the Virgin, or praying at the shrines of the saints; others were contritely kneeling at the confessional boxes with faces close to the little grated windows, whispering deeds of misdoing to the confessor within and awaiting the father's words of penance or of absolution. We followed a crowd of Italians who were going into a chapel at the side where preparations were being made ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... in the monotonous, gentle voice which he had acquired by years of duty in the confessional, continued whispering in her ear. One evening in the past he had warned her; solitude, he had said, would be harmful to her welfare. No one could with impunity live outside the pale of life. She had imprisoned herself too closely, and the ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... indignation. "This is worthy of the Inquisition. Will not even the cross upon her breast protect her from being compelled to reveal those secrets that are sacred to wife and motherhood? Can the law thus indirectly tear the seal of confidence from the Confessional? Mr. O'Brien, you go too far! There are some things that even you—brilliant as ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... my good intention and my aspirations in this important matter still more paralyzed by a dry, spiritless routine, when I was now to approach the confessional. I was indeed conscious of having many failings, but no great faults; and that very consciousness diminished them, since it directed me to the moral strength which lay within me, and which, with resolution and perseverance, was at last to become master ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... so intimate that the most intrepid writer hesitates to chronicle them lest it should be inferred that he himself is in the confessional. We have endeavoured to show our author as a level-headed English-man with his nerves well under control and an honest contempt for emotionalism in the stronger sex; but his feelings in the face of the first little bundle of reviews sent him by the press-cutting agency would prove ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... found Cinq-Mars standing, disguised, and anxiously awaiting her. As soon as she recognized him, she advanced with rapid steps into the church, holding her velvet mask over her face, and hastened to take refuge in a confessional, while Henri carefully closed the door of the church by which she had entered. He made sure that it could not be opened on the outside, and then followed his betrothed to kneel within the place of penitence. Arrived an hour before her, with his old valet, he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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
... therefore, that I have always regarded the Stock Exchange as a philanthropic institution, or that, on the other hand, a church has always seemed a sombre place in which a black priest leaps forth from behind a confessional to seize one by the throat in the ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... confidences, even those given me outside the pale of my church's confessional. Young Latisan is like his grandfather—tinder for a stray spark. If I know your fault—if I can tell him, when I see him, what you would have ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... doctrine, founded on the Apostles and Prophets, and set forth in our Symbolical Books, neither error, fault or anything wanting." If these words are not clear enough and strong enough to answer any charge of confessional disloyalty, it would be difficult to say ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... one feels that the saint has pondered long and lovingly upon themes like an et quando peccata sint oscula or de tactu et adspectu corporis; he writes with all the authority of an expert whose richly-varied experiences in the confessional have been amplified and irradiated by divine inspiration. I hesitate what to call this literature, seeing that it was obviously written to the glory of God and His Virgin Mother. The congregation of the Index, which was severe in the matter of indecent ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... indulgences and remissions of future sins. Some muttered words, a stifled cough, the light whispered prayers of the sisters, recalled to Jansoulet the distant and confused sensation of the hours of waiting in the corner of his village church round the confessional on the eves of the great festivals of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... 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 ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... to undergo the welcome humiliation of his reprimands, to confide to him her inmost thoughts, scruples, and fears. You must not imagine, however, that she told him everything, for a pious woman has rarely the courage to make use of the confessional for a love confidence. She may perhaps give herself up to the enjoyment of sentiments which are not devoid of peril, but there is always a certain degree of mysticism about them which is not to be conciliated with anything so horrible as sacrilege. At all events, in this ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... morbid and weak at times; her character sets up no pretensions to unmixed strength, and anybody living her life would necessarily become morbid. It was no impetus of healthy feeling which urged her to the confessional, for instance; it was the semi-delirium of solitary grief and sickness. If, however, the book does not express all this, there must be a great fault somewhere. I might explain away a few other points, but it would be too much like drawing a picture and then writing underneath the name of ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... orders, Gram?" Jimmie inquired. "How do you work the confessional? I wish I could make anybody give anything up to me, but I can't. Did you just go into that darkened chamber and say to the kid, 'Child of my adoption,—cough,' and she coughed, or are you the master of some subtler system of choking the truth out ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... sides, Mademoiselle. On the one is the confessional: you must go—you shall not choose. You kneel; you speak out all—every thought in your heart, every secret of your dearest friend. You may not hide one little thought. The priest hears you hesitate? The questions come:—Mademoiselle, terrible questions, questions I could not ask, nor you understand. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... priests and people alike, God's name everywhere profaned by men, women and children, and truthfulness of lip almost absolutely unknown; the women and girls degraded and oppressed and left to the tender mercies of a corrupt clergy through the infamies of the confessional; all these practices and many others which space forbids us to mention, combined with the social bondage entailed upon woman by the gross code of Islam, rendered the women of the nominal Christian sects of Syria almost as hopeless subjects of missionary labor as were their ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... 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 into ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Bob exclaimed, "the little Temple of Bacchus— overgrown with roses. It used to be my shrine and my confessional until I saw the light. Now that I've escaped from the bondage of sin, sickness, and error, I'm giving a triumphal feast ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... into many a hidden doctrine and strange brotherhood now forgotten or veiled under some horrible outbreaking of stifling passion and terrible ante-Protestantism. Over this path, on which, in earlier ages, the mitre and rosary and violet robe and confessional, and doctrines of celibacy and monkery and nun-nism, and bell and consecrated taper, and still deeper dogmas or doctrines, wandered from the East into the Church, came also heresies, terrible as Knights Templars', which in due time warred against the Church, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... door as we passed in together; for a Protestant confessional is a holy place, excelling far the Catholic, even as a love-letter excels a ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Mary, quietly—"He's a great High Churchman, and he wants to introduce Mass vestments and the confessional whenever he can. Some people say that he receives an annual payment from Rome for doing this kind ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the speaker should always mention himself last; unless his own superior dignity, or the confessional nature of the expression, warrant him in taking the precedence: as, "Thou or I must go."—"He then addressed his discourse to my father and me."—"Ellen and I will seek, apart, the refuge of some forest ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 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 ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... confessional this morning," said a toothless old woman, Sister Sipa. "I wanted to confess, so ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... A priest could not testify about what he had heard in confessional. But a priest might tell some one else.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} O, God! If the man would only go and leave him to think. Hell and murder, murder and hell. The two words beat upon his brain without mercy. He longed to interrupt the priest and beg him to ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... already intimated, what Hilda ought to 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 best of the argument. It is a trying situation, in which ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... be extremely careful. The good bishop, however, returned to his work with all his characteristic energy, and on the very day after the doctor's warning attended three funerals outside Belfast. Later, in the afternoon of the same day, he was seized with illness in his confessional, from which he had to be carried in a dying state. The last sacraments were administered on the same spot, and he was afterwards removed with great difficulty to his residence. During the following days he lay peacefully ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... white man who loves her honorably. On the afternoon of the marriage-day, when the wedded pair have taken their departure, Madame Delphine seeks her confessor, owns the perjury, receives absolution, and falls dead in the confessional.—George W. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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 ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... emperor so heavy a blow on the head with his sword-knot as to bring the blood. It does not appear that he was made to suffer for his boldness, but two of the lower ecclesiastics, John of Nepomuk and Puchnik, were put to the rack to make them confess facts learned by them in the confessional. They persistently refused to answer. Wenceslas, infuriated by their obstinacy, himself seized a torch and applied it to their limbs to make them speak. They were still silent. The affair ended in his ordering John of Nepomuk to be flung headlong, during the night, from the great bridge ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... 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 St. John, only to make a short ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... she pleased; added to which her "conversion" to Rome was an annoying piece of news. Fifteen years ago she was an intelligent woman and a beautiful woman, if photographs do not lie, and it was disagreeable for me to think of her going on her knees in a confessional, receiving the sacraments, wearing scapulars, trying to persuade herself that she believed in the Pope's indulgences. She must now be middle-aged, but the decay of physical beauty is not so sad a spectacle as the mind's declension. "She began to think," ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... 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. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... have ring the bell every time! It is intoxication—but not of aguardiente. Look! I have long time an ancestor of whom is a pretty story. One day in church he have seen a young girl—a mere peasant girl—pass to the confessional. He look her in her eye, he stagger"—here Enriquez wobbled pantomimically into the road—"he fall!"—he would have suited the action to the word if I had not firmly held him up. "They have taken him home, where he have remain without his clothes, and have dance and sing. But it was the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... you more'n any 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 Joe Forbes a-growin' ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... will not bear the censure of missionaries. On the other hand, to Poutrincourt, the Jesuits meant divided authority; and the most lawless scoundrel that ever perpetrated crimes in the fur trade could win over the favor of the priests by a hypocritical semblance of contrition at the confessional. Contrition never yet undid a crime; and civil courts can take ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... establishment of an alibi. Not infrequently confession of small crimes is made to establish an alibi for a greater one. And finally there are the confessions Catholics[1] are required to make in confessional, and the death bed confessions. The first are distinguished by the fact that they are made freely and that the confessee does not try to mitigate his crime, but is aiming to make amends, even when he finds it hard; and desires even a definite penance. Death bed confessions may indeed ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... 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 ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... new English translation of the entire Book of Concord, together with introductions and other confessional material, appeared in two volumes, edited by Dr. H.E. Jacobs. The first volume of this edition embraces the confessional writings of the Lutheran Church. It contains C.P. Krauth's translation of the Augsburg Confession as revised for Schaff's Creeds ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... render them pleasurable to those who patronize them. Strip them bare until they stand in the simple innocence to which their defenders' arguments would reduce them and the world would not have them." A Roman Catholic priest testifies that "the confessional revealed the fact that nineteen out of every twenty women who fall can trace the beginning of their ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... 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 and often they had been there together, those noble women who had resolved ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... checked but persistent vestiges may become centers of morbid complexes and in yet other cases it burrows and proliferates more or less unconsciously, and finds secret and circuitous ways of indulgence which only psychoanalysis or a moral or religious confessional could trace. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... destroyed. The fine old church of 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 the church carrying the dais, beat the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... had eliminated from her soul, by telling, all the sophistications that had been hers, including those she shared with others. In the Protestant way, she must bare her soul in public, as in the Catholic way it was done in the privacy of the confessional. The result of such baring would be unity, tranquillity, happiness, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... I saw that he did not understand what he was doing. I could not help being amused at his awkwardness, but I had not yet seen the best part of the comedy. As soon as he had somehow or other finished his mass he went to the confessional, and after hearing in confession every member of the family he took it into his head to refuse absolution to the daughter of his hostess, a girl of twelve or thirteen, pretty and quite charming. He gave his refusal publicly, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... remained. The dim light came from the high arched windows, and the bats' wings were small broken panes rattling in the gale. But I was not alone. By the transient light I saw several grim figures, some kneeling, others with outstretched arms, bloody and seared, and one appeared to be in the confessional. At the sight of these infernal spectres, for they came and went with the successive flashes of the lightning, by a droll chain of ideas, I caught myself shouting, rather than singing—"Ship ahoy! ship ahoy!—what cheer, what cheer?" in a voice ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of a cross, so that only its transepts remained in shadow. Then came a sound of chanting, and at the western door entered the Prior, wearing all his robes, attended by the monks and acolytes, who swung censers. In the centre of the nave he halted and passed to the confessional, calling on Godwin to follow. So he went and knelt before the holy man, and there poured out all his heart. He confessed his sins. They were but few. He told him of the vision of his sickness, on which the Prior pondered ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... escape the cynicism which belongs 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
... as a reckless voluptuary. But just herein is the final proof of Constanze's devotion and her understanding of him, for, while there never was a breath of slander against herself, she found heart to forgive Mozart's ficklenesses. He actually made her the confessional of his excursions from the path of rectitude, and found forgiveness there! "He loved her dearly, and confided everything to her, even his little sins, and she requited him with tenderness ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... 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 its ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... on 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 ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... Squire prospered. Leila had been a gay comrade, but not as yet so interested as to tempt him to discussion of the confusing politics of the day. "She has not as yet a seeking mind," said the rector, who in the confessional of the evening pipe saw more and more plainly that this was a divided house. The Squire could not talk politics with Ann, his wife. She held a changeless belief in regard to slavery, a conviction of its value to owner and owned too positive to be tempted into discussing it with people who knew so ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Mass every Sunday in a tent made of drugget, and covered with a calico fly. His presbytery, sacristy, confessional, and school were all of similar materials, and of small dimensions. There was not room in the church for more than thirty or forty persons; there were no pews, benches, or chairs. Part of the congregation consisted of soldiers from the camp, who had come up from ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... son," said the invalid; "you are perhaps right; but I wish you to know that I had heretofore made my will, giving to you and Cousin Hetty a joint interest in my estate. You know the feeling which induced me to do so. I am in the confessional to-day, and may as well admit that I was hasty and perhaps unjust in so doing. In justice to Cousin Hetty I wish also ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... confessional I have been sitting at, with the inward ear of my soul open, as the multitudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants came back to me like the reduplicated echo of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... such an impression of its being all dream-work on his side, that I have stamped my feet on this floor with impatience to think of having to wait so many hours before the 'candid' closing letter could come with its confessional of an illusion. 'People say,' I used to think, 'that women always know, and certainly I do not know, and therefore ... therefore.'—The logic crushed on like Juggernaut's car. But in the letters it was different—the dear letters took me on the side of my own ideal ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... S. Sebastian, naked, very 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 ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... he might not escape her, while he uneasily glanced around on all sides to see if anyone noticed the woman at his feet. Finally, seeing that he could not free himself from her, he said: "Rise; I have the key to the confessional with me." ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... 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 ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... spoke his voice had changed. It was gentle, and packed with sympathy. It was like a voice within the gate of a confessional. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... see it was rubber hose, and told the old man. He was mad and glad, at the same time; glad because he had found that his teeth where not to blame, and mad because the grocer had sold him boarding house macaroni. Then the girl came in and was put on the confessional, and told all, and presently there was a sound of revelry by night, in the wood shed, and the still, small voice was saying, "O, Pa, don't! you said you didn't care for innocent jokes. Oh!" And then the old man, between the strokes of the piece of clap-board would say, "Feed your father a hose ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or only imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake them; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the Church had written books ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... written. It is the entire unveiling of a human heart, the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of its sin. The voice which speaks to us from these old pages seems not so much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to self gratification, careless of the world's opinion, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... A righteously and benignly ordered immortality, based in truth and adjudicated by the sole sovereignty of God, is no engine of oppression, though a doctrine of heaven and hell irresponsibly managed by an Orphic association, the guardians of a Delphic tripod, the owners of a secret confessional, or the interpreters of an exclusive creed, may be. In a matter of such grave importance, that searching and decisive discrimination, so rare when the passions get enlisted, is especially needed. Because a doctrine is abused by selfish tyrants is no reason for supposing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... was one Morning 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 in Tears, and entred upon that Part of her Story ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... gallant young man of high family disappeared from the gay circles of Rome, a lovely girl of 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, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... learn what knowledge this worthy father could have of her brother's goodness, questioned him so pressingly that he at last told her the secret under the seal of the confessional, saying— ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... constituted the general reading in the work-rooms. The periodicals I note in the order of their popularity, "Chambers's Journal," "Leisure Hour," "Good Words," "The Quiver," "Sunday Magazine," and "Sunday at Home." The reading of an article in the "Leisure Hour," entitled the "Thief in the Confessional," was the chief cause of the readings being discontinued both in the work-rooms and the hospital. As this happened recently and the particulars are still fresh in my memory I will narrate them here. There were readings ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... 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 ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... doublet, and laid it on the bed near by, between the candle and his mandolin-headed sleeper; the name of the book was Notes in a Cathedral and dealt with the confessions of a young girl, which the author claimed to have jotted down, while concealed behind a pillow near the Confessional, every Sunday for the entire period of Lent. Lastly he pulled a sheet a little loose from the bed, until a corner of it lay on the floor; then he lay down on the boards, still keeping his sword in his hand, and by means of the sheet ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... is repugnant to me—fashionable friends, confidences, meddling in family affairs, dining out, letters from ladies who need consolation.... I don't mean anything wrong; pray don't misunderstand me. I merely mean to say that I hate their meddling in family affairs. Their confessional is a kind of marriage bureau; they have always got some plan on for marrying this person to that, and I must say I hate all that sort of thing.... If I were a priest I would disdain to ... but perhaps I am wrong to speak like that. Yes, it is very wrong ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... 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 ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... Roman. But the permanent effect of a solitary bias in the youth of genius, impelling the whole current of his after-life, is strikingly displayed in the remarkable character of Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, the author of the famous "Confessional," and the curious "Memoirs of Hollis," written ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... necessary for salvation. The 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, knowledge, and training made the ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... objectivity of 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 objective relations. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... incriminate himself directly? It seems to me that in giving myself up I have done all that a man's conscience can possibly require—outside of the confessional. I shall be tried, and my lawyer will do what he ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... shop 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 Father Confessor, ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... of the screen door clicked. Kenny rummaged for cigarettes and struck a match. Joan had slipped to her place at the table before he threw the match away. Then he smiled. His eyes were a curious droll confessional that Brian seemed at once to understand. They deplored the fickle strain in his blood that doomed all madness of the heart to end in time. Brian had seen that look too many times to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... not old enough in concealment to deceive me. You are in trouble. Come sit here.... True, I am not an authorized confessor; yet I know the principle on which the Church defends the confessional. Let me share your burden. Insomuch as you give me, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... opinions, but a connected whole. The tendency towards a separate department of study is shown by the ever-increasing space devoted to the discussion of general economic topics in general theological treatises, and more notably still in the manuals of casuistry for the use of the confessional, and handbooks of canon law for the use of ecclesiastical lawyers. It was shown even more distinctly by the appearance of a shoal of special treatises on such subjects as contracts, exchange, and money, not to mention those on usury.'[2] In all this development, however, the principles enunciated ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... mingled her own with,—in 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 ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... her work of art, her poem and her prayer, to repeat this story, low and precipitately, as if she were in the confessional. You felt that she came to it quite naturally, without transition, so completely did it possess her ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... 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 ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... unpruned espaliers. Or they played lawn-tennis or fives in an angle of a great wall that surrounded the garden—an angle from which the fruit trees had long died away. They painted in water-colour; they embroidered; they copied verses into albums. Once a week they went to Mass; once a week to the confessional, accompanied by an old nurse. They were happy since they ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... had no scruples. He had a strong belief in necromancy, and had never heard that there was sin in its practice. He was still Romanist enough at heart to look upon the confessional as an easy and pleasant way of getting rid of the burden of an uneasy conscience. His mind was very open to conviction and impression in religious matters. He was no bigot, but he had a constitutionally inherited tendency towards the old faith that was possibly stronger than ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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 ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... possible comfort in this world for me, in not being what I ought to be, it is the thought that I am not the only one that knows it. At all events, this feeling that the worst is known, even if one takes, as I am doing now, a planet for a confessional, gives one a luxurious sense—a sense of combined safety and irresponsibility which would not be exchanged for a world. Every book should have I-places in it—breathing-holes—places where one's soul can come up to the surface and look out through the ice and say ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... 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 ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... without their order: so that they (the Jesuits) are masters in spiritual matters, which, as you know, is a powerful lever for moving every thing else." [Footnote: Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672.] And he complains that they have spies in town and country, that they abuse the confessional, intermeddle in families, set husbands against wives, and parents against children, and all, as they say, for the greater glory of God. "I call to mind every day, Monseigneur, what you did me the honor to say to me ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the door of a confessional with a click which sounded in the silence, and entered it; a woman followed, disappeared within the curtain of the same, emerging again in about five minutes, followed by the priest, who locked up his door with another ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy |
