"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frail; thus, he passed for what is known as a "deep" man, when he was nothing of the sort, and although it may be a mooted point whether in a Catholic community the local priest has or has not the entire conscience of that community at his mercy by means of the confessional, it was certain that there were a few things that Father Rielle did not know. Had he been social, convivial, fond, like most of his brother priests, of a game of cards, of good living and long drinking, he might have worked more reforms in the countryside, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... astronomer bore no part in the struggles and jealousies about him. His very occupation at that moment invested him in Emmet's eyes with something of the impartiality and spiritual aloofness of the seer. It did not occur to him to seek the help of the confessional, to make his peace with the church from whose instruction, even as a boy, he had fled to the public schools, in spite of his mother's disapproval and the angry protests of his parish priest. That very night he would go to Leigh, if not for advice, at least ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you can see them,— Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu, Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,— Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,— Here, overcrusting with shame, perverting, defacing, debasing, Michael Angelo's dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven, Raphael's Joys and Graces, and thy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Alice 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 ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... you go into 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 ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... that,' replied the lady. 'An Indian, convicted of murdering a monk, some three years previously, was condemned to death. On being taken, according to Mexican usage, on the eve of execution, to the confessional, he refused the slightest attention to the exhortations of the priests, affirming that he had written a letter to the Governor, which would ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... aside his jovial manner and assumed his priestly attitude. "Well, my child, I will listen to you in the confessional; ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... pontifical 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
... desecrated by 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 ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... Lapham. "Tell him we'd like to see him alone a while," he said to the girl who was holding the door ajar for him, and she showed him into the reception-room, which had been the Protestant confessional for many burdened souls before their time, coming, as they did, with the belief that they were bowed down with the only misery like theirs in the universe; for each one of us must suffer long to himself before he can learn that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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
... 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 ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Priscus, and Eleazar in the Opisthodomos or priests' room, behind the altar in the Temple of Jupiter. The whole temple was lit up, and the purpose of the improvements which had taken place could be seen. By the colonnade on the left hand was an ambo or pulpit, and under it a confessional; there were also a seven-branched candlestick, a baptismal font, a table with shewbread, and an incense-altar. These represented Julian's attempt to attach the new doctrine to the old, and to amalgamate heathenism, Christianity, and Judaism. Heliogabalus had indeed attempted ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... communion,' I said. This made him angry, and, in order to know what he ought to do, he applied to Bishop Diedo. His eminence came to see me, and told me that I ought to be guided by my confessor. I answered that we had mutual duties to perform, and that the mission of a priest in the confessional was to listen to me, to impose a reasonable penance, and to give me absolution; that he had not even the right of offering me any advice if I did not ask for it. I added that the confessor being bound to avoid scandal, if he dared ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was ranked as a sacrament for the reason that the inward assurance of GOD'S pardon is in this connexion outwardly mediated by words of Absolution audibly pronounced. In medieval times there grew up a regular system of the confessional and an elaborate science of the guidance and direction of souls. Recourse to sacramental confession was made obligatory for all Christians at least once in the year. [Footnote: This is still the formal rule of the Church of Rome.] The system came to be attended by ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... grave of intellect. The people must have rest, amusement, excitement. All these things the Catholic Church gives, and consecrates. Crusader, baron, knight, priest, peasant, all resort to the church for benedictions. Women too are there, and in greater numbers; and they linger for the confessional. When the time comes that women stay away from church, like busy, preoccupied, sceptical men, then let us be on the watch for some great catastrophe, since practical paganism will then be restored, and the angels of light ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... admissions and membership, whichever, according to the laws of the club, has the matter in hand. Usually it is the governing committee or board of governors. This communication is treated, as are all club matters, with the secrecy of the confessional. Your sponsors are written to and the objections stated, but the name of the person objecting is withheld. The other method is, if any one has an objection to your admission, that he should go at once in a manly way to one of your sponsors and state it. It ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... which expands it intervals into five square chapels. There are other things, of which I have but a con- fused memory: a great fortified keep; a queer little primitive chapel, hollowed out of the rock, beneath these later structures, and recommended to the visitor's attention as the confessional of Saint Tro- phimus, who shares with so many worthies the glory of being the first apostle of the Gauls. Then there is a strange, small church, of the dimmest antiquity, standing at a distance from the other buildings. I remember that after we had let ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... 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
... my brother's company when I don't want it—for a 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 a head from a tombstone in the Campo Varano ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... 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
... executed, except in the few cases in which a real murderer is seeking 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 or ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... for that; while each of the combatants retired unaccompanied to 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
... perhaps she might be able to pray. Of late she had not dared. There was a pleasant darkness in the place, and its large simplicity was soothing. In her exhaustion, she watched listlessly the people go to and fro. Behind her was a priest in the confessional. A little peasant girl, in a Breton coiffe, perhaps a maid-servant lately come from her native village to the great capital, passed in and knelt down. Margaret could hear her muttered words, and at intervals the deep voice of the priest. In three minutes she tripped ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... 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 ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... dark locks, her eyes beaming with love and pleasure, a heavenly smile playing about her lips—ah, when she thus passed through the church, her feet scarcely touching the floor, then I, who awaited her in the confessional, felt myself nearly frantic with ecstasy, my brain turned, my eyes darkened, there was a buzzing in my ears, and I attempted to implore the aid and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... in addition to their many crafts and trades, are matrimonial brokers of honourable repute. And in their meddling and making, their baiting and mating, they are as serviceable as the Column Personal of an American newspaper. Whoso is matrimonially disposed shall whisper his mind at the Confessional or drop his advertisement in the pocket of the visiting Columns of their Bride-Dealer, and he shall prosper. She as well as ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... censor's seat to share the mortification of the pillory, is at all times a peculiarly painful reverse; hence, powerful indeed must be the conviction which impels a man who prided himself on his legal astuteness, to come boldly into this sacred confessional of truth and justice and plead for absolution from a stupendous mistake. Two years ago, I became Gen'l Darrington's attorney, and when his tragic death occurred in October last, my professional relations, as well as life-long friendship, incited me to the prompt apprehension of the person ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the crying," Dr. Redfield announced, and he was very humble. It did not seem odd to him that he should come to confessional before this little boy. He believed that he had judged too hastily, and he was come to make it right. "Maybe you were lonesome," he ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... mind, a cell and a scourge, and a record kept of starving fancies as calling them ecstatic visions vouchsafed by some old Stylite to bless his favoured worshipper; for the painted demirep of fashionable life, there would be a pretty pocket-idol, and the snug confessional well tenanted by a not unsympathizing father; for the pure girl, blighted in her heart's first love, the papist would afford that seemingly merciful refuge, that calm and musical and gentle place, the irrevocable nunnery; a place, for all its calmness, and its music, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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?" ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... acknowledge that for many years past the Jews in those countries have had no reason to complain; but in the new conditions of mixed races and creeds which confront those States, and in face of the symptoms already apparent of an accentuation of the long-standing inter-confessional bitterness and strife, they prefer not to relinquish the international obligations by which the rights of their co-religionists have hitherto been secured. In this view they find themselves supported not only by all the Jewish communities of the Balkans, but also ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... 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 ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Hipprocratic oath. They solemnly swear not to reveal the confidences of their patients; or, more properly their innocent confidences. They are not bound like priests in the confessional; if a patient tells the doctor he has poisoned his mother or is about to poison his father, the doctor is not bound to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... waxing) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. (He wriggles) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... walked slowly from 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 ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... his humble home. He 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 ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... without antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Madame de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow-being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-being suffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... though she were wise and discreet as Maria Theresa or the Castilian Isabella. This woman knew it not. This woman, who, on the morning preceding that blackest day in our country's annals, knelt in the performance of her most sincere and sacred duty at the confessional, and received the mystic rite of the Eucharist, knew it not. Not only would she have rejected it with horror, but such a proposition, presented by the guest who had sat at her hearth as the friend and convive of the son upon whose arm and integrity her widowed ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... well as in others, speaks openly of his tastes and passions: his own fortunes are dwelt on with painful minuteness, and his errors are recorded with the accuracy, but not the seriousness of the confessional. He seems to have been fond of taking himself to task. It was written when "Hungry ruin had him in the wind," and emigration to the West Indies was the only refuge which he could think of, or his friends suggest, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and sufficient influence of the former, in this respect, may be evidenced by the fact of a little Catholic boy whom I knew, duly attending church with the rest of us, and afterwards leaving the school, and remaining to this day as stanch a Papist as ever entered the confessional. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... Hence among Protestants the duty of Church Discipline is acknowledged, which deals with such sins or lapses from rectitude as constitute 'offences' or 'scandals,' and tend to bring into disrepute the Christian name and profession. In the Roman Church, the Confessional, through which moral error is avowed, with its system of penances, has in view the same object—viz., to reprove, correct, and reclaim {238} those who have lapsed into sin—thus seeking to fulfil Christ's ideal 'to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... inquisitive, but if you don't mention the particular bad 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
... 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
... end of the S. aisle marks the site of what was formerly the lady-chapel. The font is very 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 Anthony (d. 1819), and a brass to one ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... 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' up ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... how bravely he burnt the Pope's bull. Although the Elector would not allow Tetzel to enter his dominions, he got to a place within four miles of Wittemburg, and many people purchased indulgences. While Dr Martin was seated in the confessional, many of these poor dupes came to him and acknowledged themselves guilty of excesses. 'Adultery, licentiousness, usury, ill-gotten gains'—still they would not promise to abandon their crimes, but trusting to their letters of indulgence obtained from Tetzel, ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... language of the spheres, one pillar of Memnon answers another, the dead comprehend the Walkyrie, sleep-walkers the speech of the moon—lovers only the language of love. And he who has ever known this sacred emotion will not profane it, but guard it like a secret of the confessional. Neither the wise king in his marvelous song, nor Ovid in his love elegies, nor Hafiz in his ardent lays, nor Heine in his poems, nor Petofi in his "Pearls of Love," can describe it—it remains one of the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... the sight of the priest Fabio was thrown into some agitation; but the experienced old man had thought out beforehand how he must treat him. When he was left alone with Fabio, he did not of course betray the secrets of the confessional, but he advised him if possible to get rid of the guest they had invited to their house, as by his stories, his songs, and his whole behaviour he was troubling the imagination of Valeria. Moreover, in the old man's opinion, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and look on at our meditations; 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
... differs not only in theory but also in practice from many of our Protestant brethren. In some of their original confessional statements the Reformed churches declared that the Spirit of God required no means of grace, since He worked immediately and directly. They claimed that the corporeal could not carry the spiritual, and that the finite could not be made the bearer of the infinite. Over against these hyperspiritual ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... Death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory? God be thanked who giveth us the victory through Christ our Lord' (I Cor. xv.). In God therefore he trusted, and in His strength would go now to the confessional." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... display, that had rendered him so interesting in Aglaya's eyes. She was so fascinated that, even before marrying him, she joined a committee that had been organized abroad to work for the restoration of Poland; and further, she visited the confessional of a celebrated Jesuit priest, who made an absolute fanatic of her. The supposed fortune of the count had dwindled to a mere nothing, although he had given almost irrefutable evidence of its existence to ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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
... church at all hours, in their hoods and long camblet cloaks, with a slow pace, demure aspect, and downcast eye. Those who are poor become very troublesome to the monks, with their scruples and cases of conscience: you may see them on their knees, at the confessional, every hour in the day. The rich devotee has her favourite confessor, whom she consults and regales in private, at her own house; and this spiritual director generally governs the whole family. For my part I never knew a fanatic that was not an hypocrite at bottom. Their pretensions ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... door, and entered a room, which closely resembled all other similar offices. There were seats all round the room, polished by frequent use. At the end was a sort of compartment shut in by a green baize curtain, jestingly termed "the Confessional" by the frequenters of the office. Between the windows was a tin plate, with the words, "All fees to be paid in advance," in large letters upon it. In one corner a gentleman was seated at a writing table, who, as he made entries in a ledger, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... conclusion of her illness would be the term of Christina's stay at Adlerstein, and with this trust Johanna must content herself. The priest took leave, after appointing with Christina to meet her in the confessional early in the morning before mass; and half the night was spent by the aunt and niece in preparing Christina's wardrobe ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inquire into the wealth of the clergy, which raised the jealousy of the order; and the clergy, in order to divert the attention of the court, revived the opposition of the parliament to the bull Unigenitus. It was resolved by the clergy to demand confessional notes from dying persons, and that these notes should be signed by priests adhering to the bull, before extreme unction should be given. The Archbishop of Paris, at the head of the French clergy, was opposed ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... and somewhat narrow. At the far end there was a small altar and a prie dieu. A candle was burning and its light defined the ivory crucifix above. In the corner a curtained something that might be a confessional. Indeed, not a few startling confessions had been breathed there. An escritoire with some shelves above, curiously carved, that bespoke its journey across the sea, took a great wall space and seemed almost to divide the room. The window in the front end was quite wide, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and clergymen, have vied with each other in the vehemence with which they declare absolution un-Christian, un-English. All that is most abominable in the confessional has been with unsparing and irreverent indelicacy forced before the public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? who ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... widow has married secretly her chauffeur two months after her husband's sudden death from ptomaine poisoning; if the man who spoke last night was the preacher who declared all protestant churches will some day return to the confessional;—if such facts can be obtained, they will add greatly to the interest and the value of the story, and the reporter should make every effort to obtain them. Their interest lies, of course, either in the fact that they aid the public in identifying the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... the girl's legal marriage with a 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. Cable, Madame ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... now, we have tried to make people good in a vague, general way, by using priests, sacraments and confessional boxes. For some centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers and juries and ballot boxes. We are now to try, at last, religion or gospel or news or ideals—practical, shrewd aimed ideals, that is, news ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... preserved in the presbytery. The triumphal arch is round, with early caps and impost mouldings; other early caps and columns are visible in the walls of the choir in hollows made to expose them. The theory is that there was a confessional behind the apse instead of below it, of which these fragments are the remains. Encrusted in the outer wall of the south aisle is an inscription which runs thus: "In the year 857, fifth indiction, under Ludovicus, Emperor ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... 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 ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... revival is something for which the past provides no analogy. It is not concerned so much with individual salvation as with the salvation of the race and the world. The petty sins and shortcomings which brought men to the confessional and to the stool of repentance lose importance when compared with the awful omissions which we now recognize as the cause of the calamities which have befallen us. It is not only the existence of war that is rousing the conscience. War is seen ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... of the most interesting of its kind. During our admiration of all that was curious in this venerable edifice, we were struck by our old friends, the penitents,—busy in making confession. In more than one confessional there were two penitents; and towards one of these, thus doubly attended, I saw a very large, athletic, hard-visaged priest hastening, just having slipt on his surplice in the vestry. Indeed I had been cursorily ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... payment for the murder of Sir John Foterell and of Christopher Harflete, and of the imprisonment and robbery of Cicely Harflete, the daughter of the one and the wife of the other. He bound himself to do those things which she should tell him. He bound himself neither in the confessional nor, should it come to that, on the bed of torture or the scaffold to breathe a word of all their counsel. He prayed that if he did so his soul might pay the price in everlasting torment, and of all these things he took ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... speak to him he whistled, exactly as one would whistle for a dog. The confessor never failed to respond promptly to this royal call, and followed his penitent into the embrasure of a window, in which improvised confessional the king divulged what he had on his conscience, received absolution, and sent back the priest until he felt himself obliged ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... weakness of our religion (God pardon the sin of hinting at any want in that same!) that we have no chance of laying the heart bare to mortal man. Many a time I could wish for the salving influence of the confessional, even without ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Magdalen she concealed the object of 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 ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... are none living to whom we can confide them,—who can sympathize with what then we felt? It is this that makes poetry, and that page which we create as a confidant to ourselves, necessary to the thoughts that weigh upon the breast. We write, for our writing is our friend, the inanimate paper is our confessional; we pour forth on it the thoughts that we could tell to no private ear, and are relieved, are consoled. And if genius has one prerogative dearer than the rest, it is that which enables it to do honour to the dead,—to ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... century and the beginning of the present one for cultivated people to keep diaries, in which the incidents of each day were jotted down, accompanied by the expression of private opinions and feelings. Women, especially, found this diary a pleasant sort of confessional, a confidante to whose pages they could entrust their most secret thoughts without fear of rebuke or betrayal. Sarah Grimke's diary, covering over five hundred pages of closely written manuscript, though not begun ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... within the little fort; and so edifying was the demeanor of the colonists, so faithful were they to the confessional, and so constant at mass, that a chronicler of the day exclaims, in a burst of enthusiasm, that the deserts lately a resort of demons were now the abode of angels. [ Vritables Motifs, cited by Faillon, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... little room whose door was marked "MRS. BUCK" had come to be more than a mere private office for the transaction of business. It was a clearing-house for trouble; it was a shrine, a confessional, and a court of justice. When Carmela Colarossi, her face swollen with weeping, told a story of parental harshness grown unbearable, Emma would put aside business to listen, and six o'clock would find her seated in the dark and smelly Colarossi ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... we do not know them, we can divine them. We are certain, for example, that Watteau's gay pictured visions were the projection—and confession—of his own disappointed dreams. The great advantage of art over ordinary expression, in this respect, is its universality. Art is the confessional of the race. The artist provides a medium through which all men can confess themselves and heal their souls. In making the artist's expression ours, we find an equal relief. Who does not feel a revival of some old or present despair of his own when ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... belief as necessarily beginning in harshness. I fancy the monks have won over the simple Indians here to a great extent by gentle methods. They protect them, and manage their affairs, and know all their secrets through the confessional, and amuse them with no end of feast-days, and gewgaws, and puerile ceremonies. The natives seem to have a great deal of our dear old French Canadian habitans about them, only in a more sublime stage ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... foot, for which latter the affectionate pilgrims are answerable. On either side of the statue a corridor lined with marble tablets—presented by "grateful" individuals in acknowledgment of cures and cleansings—and dotted with confessional boxes, leads down to the chapel. The repulsive gaudiness of the tinsel display in the church above it is almost absent here, and though the same exaltation of the Virgin over our Saviour is manifest, yet otherwise this chapel, with its vaulted roof and ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... to 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 can to ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... instinct taught him to treat the situation with simplicity, but he guessed that Joanna would not appreciate the quiet dealings of the confessional. He had always liked Joanna, always admired her, and he liked and admired her no less now, but he really knew very little of her—her life had crossed his only on three different brief occasions, when she was engaged to his brother, when she was anxious to appoint a Rector to the living in her ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... 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, inasmuch ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... minds to enjoy 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, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... answered quickly, then stopped because I knew I must not tell what I had overheard—should I say in the confessional? ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... inanity and dowdy vanity growing lush as jimson, where yesterday, with strained prophetic vision, he saw budding excellence and worth, his soul is wrung by a worry that knows no peace. The matter is so poignantly personal that he dare not share it with another in confessional, and so he hugs his grief to his heart, and tries to hide ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a good and holy man from the west country. He loveth those poor 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 me ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... any man in all my life. I could not do so now did I not feel in some strange way that by this time—perhaps at this very time—you are either dead or in some extreme of peril. If I knew that you would see this, I could not write it. As it is, it gives me some relief—it is my confessional. How often does a woman ever confess her own, her inner and real heart? Never, I think, to any man—certainly not to any ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... can be extraordinarily nettling in conversation, as I have suggested, is evidently of a very soothing character in the confessional—if that is the proper term. He has a remarkable following among women, and it is said that "if he put a brass plate on his door and charged five guineas a time" he might be one of the richest mind-doctors in London. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... 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 ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... 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
... embrace and 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
... 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
... 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
... the spiritual intoxication of the confessional as never before. He half consciously allowed himself to dwell upon the image of the beautiful Miss Morison to the end that he might the more effectively pour out his contrition for that sin. He was so eloquent in the confessional that he admired himself both for his penitence and for the words in ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... 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 of Christendom. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... 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 ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... 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 top of her head. In short he described most accurately the gala dress of the Neapolitan's cara 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
... 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 ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in a dilemma. She did not know what to do. Not only did the Rodenhurst code of honour regard Form secrets as being inviolable as those of the confessional, but further she had been continually warned by Father and Beatrice that, now Winnie was a mistress, she and Lesbia must be particularly careful never to repeat anything they heard at home which might be likely to compromise their sister at school. ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... to 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
... of 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, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... of Giuditta. "The spirits know everything, but I do not. They only speak through me with another voice. I do not know what they are going to say. You need have no apprehension. This is more sacred than the confessional, Signore, more secret than ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... inconveniences, scarcely is any document asked in which the government does not require the supervision of the cura; and in this way it obliges him to be acquainted with matters quite at variance with his ministry. The cura possesses the language, resides in the village, has the means of the confessional, [104] and when he wishes there are but few matters, even the most trivial, that can be hidden from him. On the contrary the alcalde, not having any of these advantages, can have knowledge of but few things, if the parish priest does not communicate them. I shall quote here ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... 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 no ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... everything, but never repeat what they hear, except by way of dealing somebody a mortal blow. He had, consequently, often longed to dip his arms into the public letter-box. Since the previous evening the private room at the post-office had become a big confessional full of darkness and mystery, in which he tasted exquisite rapture while sniffing at the letters which exhaled veiled longings and quivering avowals. Moreover, he carried on his work with consummate impudence. The crisis through which the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... it out with invention. I believe that, in some cases, where actual names are affixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works, of the authors referred to.—And now the reader may expect me, while in the confessional, to explain the motives why I have so long persisted in disclaiming the works of which I am now writing. To this it would be difficult to give any other reply, save that of Corporal Nym—It was the humour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... of the larger church, ex urbis obsidio anno 1674 lapsae, and offering an indulgence of 100 days for every visit paid to it, with the sensible proviso una duntaxat vice per diem. Soldiers not being generally made of the confessing sex, or of confessing material, there is only one confessional provided for the 6,000 souls which the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... and successful 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 ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... more—is needed 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 ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... is there much under the influence of the priest, especially the women, and, indeed, among the upper classes the confessional and other priestly operations are attended with as much rigidity as in past centuries, although the male sex has very greatly emancipated itself therefrom, and receives any allusions to the priest with a shrug of the shoulders, or, at times, with coldness or open hostility towards ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... time too, Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets of the confessional when there was an object to gain, had a long conversation with the Archduke's ambassador, in which the holy man said that the King had confessed to him that he made the war expressly to cause the Princess to be sent back to France, so that as there could be no more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... evangelical 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 ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... 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 how ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... be ratified. We were under the surveillance of a sleepless eye: Rome watched jealously her son through that mystic lattice at which I had knelt once, and to which M. Emanuel drew nigh month by month—the sliding panel of the confessional. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was a confessional—a little oaken structure, about as big as a sentry-box, with a closed part for the priest to sit in, and an open one for the penitent to kneel at, and speak through the open-work of the priest's closet. Monuments, mural and others, to long-departed worthies, and images ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the English proverbial expression, Under the Rose, is derived from the confessional, is, I believe, generally admitted: but the authorship of the well-known Latin verses on this subject is still, as far as I am aware, a rexata quaestio, and gives a somewhat different and ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... and transacted this business too openly and then there was trouble. One evening some of the nurses were at Benediction at the Carmelite Church, when a wretched newspaper lad rushed into the church and hid himself in a Confessional. He was followed by four or five German soldiers. They stopped the service and forbade any of the congregation to leave, and searched the church till they found the white and trembling boy, and dragged him off to his fate. ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... any Protestant clergyman administer comfort to her? Could he? might he do so? He might listen, and quote texts; but he would demand the harsh rude English for everything; and the Countess's confessional thoughts were all innuendoish, aerial; too delicate to live in our shameless tongue. Confession by implication, and absolution; she could know this to be what she wished for, and yet not think it. She could see a haven of peace in that picture of the little brown box with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of this remarkable incident, spoken with breathless rapidity in a burst of confidence, seemed to cause the relief supposed to be obtained by a penitent in the confessional, and to lift a weight off Bob Keeley's mind. The smile deepened on the 'Passon's' face, and for a moment he had some difficulty to control an outbreak of laughter, but recollecting the possibly demoralising ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... empty, but down the vista of the great columns hospitable lights gleamed, and here and there a man or a woman—more women than men—was kneeling in the great aisle, before a picture, at the side of a confessional, at the steps of the altar. How hushed and calm and sweet it was! She crept into a pew in a side aisle in the shelter of a pillar; and sat down. Presently, in the far apse, an organ began to play, its notes stealing softly out through the great spaces like a benediction. She fancied ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... herself then applied to Dr. Windischmann, the Vicar-General, telling him that if he would undertake the office she would reciprocate by securing him a bishopric. This dignitary, however, was not to be tempted. "Madame," he said, "my confessional is in the Church of Notre-Dame; and you can always go there when you want to accuse yourself of any of the numerous ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... conciliatory prologue to the narrative of a few incidents revealed in the attorney's privileged confessional; throughout which I have of course, in order to avoid any possible recognition of those events or incidents, changed the name of every ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... is speaking: it is the voice of a highly cultivated and intellectual human being with all Greek thought behind him; it is, in short, Milton himself. The whole poem is full of such autobiographical confessional passages, either indirect like this or open and undisguised like the great introductions to the first, third, seventh and ninth books. This constant intervention of the poet in his epic is one of the originalities of Paradise Lost, and certainly not ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... silent submission to the penance imposed by the priest is a 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... that is poured into their ears almost in a continuous stream during the eight days of the retreat. The rush upon the confessionals begins at five in the morning, and goes on with little intermission all day. The penitents huddle together like sheep in a snowstorm around each confessional, so that the foremost who is telling his sins knows that there is another immediately behind him who, whenever he stops to reflect, would like to give him a nudge m the back. The peasants, whether it be that they have never cultivated the habit of whispering, or whether their zeal be such as ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... sat there, counting her beads. Then she slowly rose and entered the confessional, but when she came out there was still the look of longing in her face. Toward the altar she went. Perhaps in the communion she might find help for her troubled soul, and again ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... in the consciousness of her thoughts, but after a moment said, "I do not believe in the confessional." ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the night. In Italy churches have ever been applied to such uses. After the reduction of Milan, Francesco Sforza rode into the Duomo, and when King Ladislaus of Naples conquered Rome, he rode into the basilica of St John Lateran. The guerilla chief bivouacked in a confessional, while his Red-shirts slept where they could on the cathedral floor. Four hundred of them had been killed or wounded in ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... accident was seized with an attack of brain fever immediately upon his arrival at Millbank. The facts that transpire within that place of retirement are whispered with as much reserve as guards the secrets of another kind of confessional, but I do hear that since the admission of the man who was known on his trial as Paul Drayton, and who is now indicated by a numerical cognomen, certain facts have come to light which favor the defense he ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... said Dick; "you'll regard what I'm going to say as said under seal of the confessional and that ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of appetite, and the Father sets them an example. Father Shannon is rather big about the middle to accommodate the large laugh that lives in him, but a most shrewd searcher of hearts. It is reported that one derives comfort from his confessional, and I for my part ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... a young man to conserve his candour. He has seen the hideous origins of all fortunes, the disputes of heirs over corpses not yet cold, the human heart in conflict with the Code. . . . A lawyer's office is a confessional where the various passions come to empty out their bag of bad ideas and to consult about their cases of conscience while seeking ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the cradle of compulsory education. But he said that the English idea that compulsory education would reduce bastardy and intemperance was an error—it has not that effect. He said there was more seduction in the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons, because the confessional protected the girls. I wonder why it doesn't protect married ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... scepticism with acrimony against that faith which, because it shone with spirituality and truth, might prove formidable to her. Noemi was always suspicious, not of her sister, but of Giovanni, fearing he would attempt to convert her, and her suspicion had that day been apparent when, discussing the confessional, she had several times answered him very sharply. Then Giovanni had reminded her, gently and gravely, that error harboured unconsciously, in the sincere and pure desire of truth, is innocent in the eyes of God, but that if a sentiment foreign ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... 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 love ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... drained of their mental force by uncongenial persons. To such a man his Journal becomes his duplicate self and he says to it what he could not say to his nearest friend. It becomes both an altar and a confessional. Especially is this true of deeply religious souls such as the men I have named. They commune, through their Journals, with the demons that attend them. Amiel begins his Journal with the sentence, "There is but one thing needful—to possess God," and Emerson's ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... narrator either knew or has told the whole story. It is true that these characters have not the strange quality which some one imputed to the writing of Tacitus, that it seems to put the reader himself and the secrets of his own heart into the confessional. It is in the novel that, in this country, the faculty of observing social man and his peculiarities has found its most popular instrument. The great novel, not of romance or adventure, but of character and manners, from the mighty Fielding, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... 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 ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... honest damnation to the soft self-deceptions of feminine religiosity. Ah! If she could have been a Roman Catholic, genuine and convinced—with what ardour would she have cast herself down before the confessional, and whispered her sinfulness to the mysterious face within; and with what ecstasy would she have received the absolution—that cleansing bath of the soul! Then—she could have recommenced!... But she was not a Roman Catholic. She could no more become a Roman Catholic ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... came in, unlocked 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 loud click, like a tradesman ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... not one well-educated man in ten thousand does. So, without serious and settled intention of becoming an author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy seeks in poetry or romance a confessional,—an outpouring of thought and sentiment, which are mysteries to herself till she has given them words, and which, frankly revealed on the page, she would not, perhaps could not, utter orally to ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
