"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... France." Bonaparte was wiser than to make any answer, he simply saluted and withdrew. But he paid no heed to the advice, and one day shortly afterward he again spoke to a priest of the unjust treatment of Corsica. The latter waited until the boy came to him at the confessional and then rebuked him on this subject. Bonaparte ran back through the church crying loud enough for all those present to hear him, "I didn't come in here to talk about Corsica, and that priest has no right to lecture me ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... 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
... 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 sepulcher ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Despised had saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl of much faith and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of confessional when she, in penitence, told of her ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... set by the houses. They were low, discreet, and very similar. Only a close inspection of window displays revealed differences between a food store and a sports shop. He passed a small building with a sign that read, ROBOT CONFESSIONAL—Open 24 hours a day. It seemed to be some sort ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... and 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 ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... an impromptu session of the Confessional Club during which several men, notably a poet in velveteen jacket, had vouchsafed sentimental or matrimonial revelations in the most approved Greenwich Village style. And the ladies, ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Confessions, belonging to past times, that have at all succeeded in engaging the attention of men, are those of St. Augustine and of Rousseau. The very idea of breathing a record of human passion, not into the ear of the random crowd, but of the saintly confessional, argues an impassioned theme. Impassioned, therefore, should be the tenor of the composition. Now, in St. Augustine's Confessions is found one most impassioned passage, viz., the lamentation for the death of his youthful friend in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of Molly Brandeis, and needed no final eulogy to confirm it. Father Fitzpatrick was there, tall, handsome, ruddy, the two wings of white showing at the temples making him look more than ever like a leading man. He had been of those who had sat in what he called Mrs. Brandeis's confessional, there in the quiet little store. The two had talked of things theological and things earthy. His wit, quick though it was, was no match for hers, but they both had a humor sense and a drama sense, and one day they discovered, queerly enough, that they worshiped the same ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... been so rudely opened to the 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
... the feelings, the subjective tendency, began to assert itself beside the Christian consciousness of the congregation. He may therefore be regarded as the last and the most perfect of those poets who were grounded in the ecclesiastico-confessional faith, and with him the line of the strict ecclesiastical poets closes. He may also be regarded as beginning the line of those in whose songs, praise and adoration of the revealed God recede before the expression of the feelings that master the soul in contemplating ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... follows out the pedantic but useful mode before named, of arranging the actual schools of theology after the fashion of foreign assemblies, he will place in the right, the friends of the confessional theology; in the centre, those of the mediation theology; in the left, the old critical school of De Wette; and in the extreme left, the school of Tuebingen. The first has its chief seat in Prussia, and the third probably in ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... striven against so much, to look on, in our own security, through microscopes, and detect the motes in the brains of men driven mad? Think, if you and I were Italians, and had grown from boyhood to our present time, menaced in every day through all these years by that infernal confessional, dungeons, and soldiers, could we be better than these men? Should we be so good? I should not, I am afraid, if I know myself. Such things would make of me a moody, bloodthirsty, implacable man, who would do anything for revenge; and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... old Abbe Faber, one of the vicars of the parish, is sure that twice out of three times he will find no penitent before his confessional, and has only to hear, for the most part of the time, the uninteresting confession of some good women. But he is conscientious, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at seven o'clock precisely, he betakes himself regularly to the chapel of St. John, only to make a short ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... 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 ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... by deeds which 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
... 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
... 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
... as the sacrament of Penance, or the practice of sacramental confession. It was ranked as a sacrament for the reason that the inward assurance of GOD'S pardon is in this connexion outwardly mediated by words of Absolution audibly pronounced. In medieval times there grew up a regular system of the confessional and an elaborate science of the guidance and direction of souls. Recourse to sacramental confession was made obligatory for all Christians at least once in the year. [Footnote: This is still the formal rule of the Church ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... of lightning the abductor carried the countess into an open chapel and seated her behind the confessional on a wooden bench. By the light of the tapers burning before the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated, they looked at each other for a moment in silence, clasping hands, and amazed at their own audacity. The countess had not the cruel courage to reproach the young man for the boldness ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... 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 liked ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... pontifical seat, adorned with mosaic and precious marbles. The papal altar is under a canopy in the Byzantine style. The pavement of this presbytery is worthy of particular attention. Descending to the confessional which is under the high altar the tomb of the martyred saints, Lawrence, Stephen, and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... further than this; it actually took pains to declare that any one who pleased might follow other theologians instead of St. Alfonso. After saying that no Priest was to be interfered with who followed St. Alfonso in the Confessional, it added, "This is said, however, without on that account judging that they are reprehended who follow opinions handed down ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... was one of power. But, while interfering little with the military discipline of the troops, in all matters of moral discipline she was inflexibly strict. All the abandoned followers of the camp were driven away. She compelled both generals and soldiers to attend regularly at confessional. Her chaplain and other priests marched with the army under her orders; and at every halt, an altar was set up and the sacrament administered. No oath or foul language passed without punishment or censure. Even the roughest and most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... her knees and slipped out from under the greasy and frayed half-curtain of the confessional box. The atmosphere of that penitential spot had been such as to make her feel faint and dizzy. She needed to recover herself. And so she stood, for a minute or more, in the clear, cool brightness of the nave of the great basilica, her highly-civilised figure covered by a chequer-work of morning ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... "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
... 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 ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... be seen from the earliest dispatches which he sent to France. Before he had been in Quebec three months he reported to Colbert that it was the practice of the Jesuits to stir up strife in families, to resort to espionage, to abuse the confessional, to make the Seminary priests their puppets, and to deny the king's right to license the brandy trade. What seemed to the Jesuits an unforgivable affront was Frontenac's charge that they cared more for beaver skins than for the conversion of the savages. This ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... eked 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 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 ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... or two later, the effigy of our Saviour was observed to be half dressed in female attire, a glaring absurdity which the author has once before seen in the Spanish convent-church of Burgos. In the Matanzas church alluded to, boys and girls of nine and ten years were seen at the confessional. Could absurdity be carried to a greater height? These with negro women form nearly all the audiences to be met with in the Cuban churches, unless upon festal occasions. The men manifest their indifference ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... do not know the first thing about grace, the Gospel, or Christ. They retain the appearance and the name of the Gospel and of Christ for a decoy only. In their confessional writings faith or the merit of Christ are never mentioned. In their writings they play up the merits of man, as can readily be seen from the following form of absolution used among ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... 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 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... almost 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and pulpits, senators 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 ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the great worship of sorrow. Many were the hearts now dependent on her, the spiritual histories, the threads of which were held in her loving hand,—many the souls burdened with sins, or oppressed with sorrow, who found in her bosom at once confessional and sanctuary. So many sought her prayers, that her hours of intercession were full, and often needed to be lengthened to embrace all for whom she would plead. United to the good Doctor by a constant friendship and fellowship, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... business, and say grace, 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. If you had been close beside him, and had listened hard, you could have heard a faint ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... know, If once they find you saved their foe. 70 Now, you must bring me food and drink, And also paper, pen and ink, And carry safe what I shall write To Padua, which you'll reach at night Before the duomo shuts; go in, 75 And wait till Tenebrae begin; Walk to the third confessional, Between the pillar and the wall, And kneeling whisper, Whence comes peace? Say it a second time, then cease; 80 And if the voice inside returns, From Christ and Freedom; what concerns The cause ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... 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 ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... Master Bloom should have made ready the silver cup and paten I had bespoke.) Thereupon as soon as I had consecrated and administered the blessed sacrament, item, led the closing hymn, and every one had silently prayed his "Our Father" before going out of church, I came out of the confessional again, and motioned the people to stay yet a while, as the blessed Saviour would feed not only their souls, but their bodies also, seeing that he still had the same compassion on his people as of old on the people at the Sea of Galilee, ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... 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
... childhood, by forbidding and commanding in every particular of daily life. Pharisaism, therefore, whether Jewish or Gentile, ancient or modern, which replaces the moral law by casuistry, and the enlightened judgment of the individual by the confessional, creates a narrow character and mechanical morals. Freedom is the birthright of the soul, and it is by the discipline of life the soul finds itself. It were a poor business to be towed across the pathless ocean of this world to the next; by the will of God and for our good ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... "Get it out. It's obvious that the thing is suffocating you. I'll tell nobody—not even that you've told me—neither Doria nor Barbara—it will be the confidence of the confessional. You'll be all the better ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... denunciation, by an angry and an able man, of some of the most pressing practical evils of the Roman Catholic system. The celibacy of the priesthood, the mysteries of the confessional, the usurpations of priestly direction in the economy of families, in the control of women, and in the education of children—these are the objects against which the historian of France now directs the arrows of his indignation, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... passion, when something happens to one's eye or one's tongue, that one feels is half mad, but when the beast of prey within one, which shrinks at nothing, is the stronger. Untrue in one's beautiful, poetic calm, one's confessional silence, at one's work, I think ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... its stranglehold over your life and activities. Groups and lesser loyalties are highly necessary, and indeed desirable, in our modern large-scale society; but they involve men, and especially weak-willed and thoughtless men, in far greater dangers than their larger citizenship. What the confessional at its worst may be to a woman, professional or business or other loyalty may be to a man. The modern world is full of men who have bartered away their integrity of soul to preserve the unity of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... 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 ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... He is handsome! [Confidentially.] If I tell you all this, it is only because you are a midwife, and a midwife in such affairs as this is like a priest in the confessional. But you, Madame Flache, you, who have been a dancer at the Opera, you must also have had, surely—little ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... always the hope that, whether the young lady died or recovered, the 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 for ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Alsatian artist a good deal younger than herself had for some months been preying upon her. What his hold upon her precisely was, Father Lenoir, her director, when David went to see him, either could not or—because the matter was covered by the confessional seal—would not say. The artist, Brenart by name, was a handsome youth, with a droll facile tongue, and a recklessness of temper matching her own. He became first known to her as one of her husband's drinking companions, then, dazzled by the wife's mad beauty, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... her ear becoming as accustomed to the firing as a city dweller's to the distant roar of city traffic Mrs. Galland slept. But Marta could not follow her advice. If, transiently at least, she had found something of the peace of the confessional, the vigor of youth was in her arteries; and youth cannot help remaining awake under some conditions. She tiptoed across the hall into her own room and seated herself by the window, which had often spread the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... and the visit was prolonged into the warm harvest moonlight with news of friends and acquaintances. Bessie heard that the venerable cure of St. Jean's still presided over his flock at Caen, and occupied the chintz edifice like a shower-bath which was the school-confessional. Miss Foster was married to a brave fermier, and Bessie was assured that she would not recognize that depressed and neuralgic demoiselle in the stout and prosperous fermiere she had developed into. Mdlle. Adelaide was also married; and Louise, that pretty ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... One 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
... 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 into tears, and entered upon that part of her story in which he himself had so great a share. "My behaviour," says she, "has, I fear, been ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... directly also in the drama. There is no escape from this—none; the dramatist is lopsided if he tries to ignore it; he is a monster if he is wholly blind to it—like the poet in In Memoriam, "Without a conscience or an aim." Mr Henley, in his notorious, all too confessional, and yet rather affected article on Stevenson in the Pall Mall Magazine, has a remark which I confess astonished me—a remark I could never forget as coming from him. He said that he "had lived a very ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... if Lucy drove the matter to extremities, he was not so sure of his own powers of resistance as he ought to be? She might marry him before he knew what he was about; and in such a case the Rector could not have taken his oath at his own private confessional that he would have been so deeply miserable as the circumstances might infer. No wonder he was alarmed at the position in which he found himself; nobody could predict ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... 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 Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Bible,—sprinkling water upon people, on proper subjects and improper subjects for baptism, when we know that the word baptize means to immerse, and that believers only are properly baptized,—how can we be silent? Would you be silent if Episcopalians should set up Latin prayers, or the confessional; or the Methodists turn their love-feasts into the ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... much alone, and clad in dark attire, which seemed to have been washed a trifle too often, was Delphine Carraze on her second visit. And this, he was confident, was over and above an attendance in the confessional, where he was sure he had ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... them. We are certain, for example, that Watteau's gay pictured visions were the projection—and confession—of his own disappointed dreams. The great advantage of art over ordinary expression, in this respect, is its universality. Art is the confessional of the race. The artist provides a medium through which all men can confess themselves and heal their souls. In making the artist's expression ours, we find an equal relief. Who does not feel a revival of some old or present despair of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... anew. A thousand demons leaped from the silence to mock him; the earth rolled beneath his feet. The impulse of confession was strong upon him, even in the face of Thorpe's scorn. He wondered why only one church saw the need of the confessional, why he could not go, even to Thorpe, and share the burden that oppressed his ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... cried, ecstatically, "they should as soon make a priest tell confessional secrets, as force me, honest Andrea Luziani, to betray a man who has given me good cigars! Let them run back to Gaeta and hunt in every hole and corner! Carmelo may rest comfortably in the Montemaggiore without the shadow of a gendarme to disturb him! Ah, signor!" ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... whose jambs are enriched with empty 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 ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... philosopher's day had come to an end. How can Philosophy minister to raw wounds, when we are in a rageing gale of the vexations, battered to right and left! Religion has a nourishing breast: Philosophy is breastless. Religion condones offences: Philosophy has no forgiveness, is an untenanted confessional: 'wide air to a cry ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be extraordinarily nettling in conversation, as I have suggested, is evidently of a very soothing character in the confessional—if that is the proper term. He has a remarkable following among women, and it is said that "if he put a brass plate on his door and charged five guineas a time" he might be one of the richest mind-doctors in London. He himself declares that his real work is almost entirely personal. I ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... bench and the priest in the confessional follow the thoughts and feelings of the minds they have to deal with, not by virtue of any special power of divination, but simply by judging their fellow-men's way of thinking and feeling to be even ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... church differs not only in theory but also in practice from many of our Protestant brethren. In some of their original confessional statements the Reformed churches declared that the Spirit of God required no means of grace, since He worked immediately and directly. They claimed that the corporeal could not carry the spiritual, and that the finite could not be made the bearer of the ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... we have reason to think it is lifting, they would be as bright and sunny as their own skies. The women of the better classes wear the black mantilla when they venture into the streets, which they seldom do, except to attend mass or the confessional. This robe is extremely elegant, as it is worn, but it requires an adept to adjust it gracefully. It covers the whole person from head to foot; in parts drawn closely to the form, in others falling in free folds. But for its color, I should admire it much: it seems such an incongruity for a young ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... long time she 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
... 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
... 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
... Poem, as 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, from the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... cure, smiling in his turn, "to the confidences of the confessional. But," he added, with a little anxious look, "I can tell you what it will do; it will either sweeten his whole nature more and more, or else make it more and more bitter, from this time forth. And that is no trifle to you or me; for whether for good or bad, in a large way or in a small ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... did not govern the body! They leave us the spiritual—that is, command of the conscience, soul, heart, and judgment—the spiritual—that is, the distribution of heaven's rewards, and punishments, and pardons—without check, without control, in the secrecy of the confessional—and that dolt, the temporal, has nothing but brute matter for his portion, and yet rubs his paunch for joy. Only, from time to time, he perceives, too late, that, if he has the body, we have the soul, and that the soul governs the body, and so ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... eyes from him. The color in her cheeks deepened. It was a vivid, feverish glow. "I was born rich, enormously, hatefully rich," she said in the low, unimpassioned voice of a confessional. "I don't remember father or mother. I lived always with my Grandfather Standish and my Uncle Peter Standish. Until I was thirteen I had my Uncle Peter, who was grandfather's brother, and lived with us. I worshiped Uncle Peter. He was a cripple. From young ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Mothe-Houdancour seemed to her just what it actually was,—a subterfuge; as she surmised, it could only be La Valliere. Having discovered the name of her confessor, the Queen herself went in disguise to the Theatin Church, flung herself into the confessional where this man officiated, and promised him the sum of thirty thousand francs for their new church if he would help her to save ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... knees) is one 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 introduced to him by the Count. It was Saturday evening, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and drove off the possibility of sleep. Samson, too, seemed wakeful, and in the isolation of the dark room the two men fell into conversation, which almost lasted out the night. Samson went into the confessional. This was the first human being he had ever met to whom he ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Abbey, by law, and that he would still pay the entrance fee to go into Westminster Abbey like other liege subjects, resign himself meekly to the guidance of the beadle, and "listen without rebuke when he pointed out to his admiration detestable monuments, or show a hole in the wall for a confessional." "He would still visit the shrine of St. Edward, and meditate on the olden times when the church would fill without a coronation, and multitudes hourly worshipped ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a still graver event took place. Amongst the most assiduous frequenters of the confessional in his church was a young and pretty girl, Julie by name, the daughter of the king's attorney, Trinquant—Trinquant being, as well as Barot, an uncle of Mignon. Now it happened that this young girl fell into such a state of debility that she ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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
... than the mere saying, "I like honey and milk better than meat and wine" or "I like girls who are plump and fair better than those who are slim and dark." That is why so much of modern autobiographical and confessional writing is dull beyond words. Even impertinence will not save our essays upon ourselves from being tedious—nor will shamelessness in the flaunting of our vices. Something else is required than a mere wish to strip ourselves bare; something else ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... of the chapel full of unquiet meditations, when passing by the confessional, a magdalen curiously painted which hung near it attracted his eyes: as he was admiring the piece, something fell from above and hit against his arm; he stooped to take it up, and found it a small ivory tablet: he looked ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... made an attempt to 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 by the parliament, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... earnestly and consistently to purge American Lutheranism of its foreign elements, and to restore the American Lutheran Church to its original purity, in doctrine as well as in practise. In a similar spirit Charles Porterfield Krauth devoted his efforts to revive confessional Lutheranism within the English portion ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... 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
... at once to his knock. He pushed open the door, and entered a room, which closely resembled all other similar offices. There were seats all round the room, polished by frequent use. At the end was a sort of compartment shut in by a green baize curtain, jestingly termed "the Confessional" by the frequenters of the office. Between the windows was a tin plate, with the words, "All fees to be paid in advance," in large letters upon it. In one corner a gentleman was seated at a writing table, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... flashed up to the ceiling as the brain behind scurried the sins of the week together. It had been arranged that the six leading misdemeanants were to go first and receive much sound advice, before the old priest had begun to feel the fatigue of the confessional. The door opened, and Dona Concepcion stood on the threshold. Her face was whiter than usual, and her ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... passions might not be whispered, what terror safely spoken, in the charmed circle round yonder silent boat,—a circle whose centre is a human life which has not all the susceptibilities of life, a confessional where even the priest cannot hear! Would it not relieve sorrow to express itself, even if unheeded? What more could one ask than a dumb confidant? and if deaf also, so much the safer. To be sure, he would give you neither absolution nor guidance; he ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... 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 set up of ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... was rather long, and somewhat narrow. At the far end there was a small altar and a prie dieu. A candle was burning and its light defined the ivory crucifix above. In the corner a curtained something that might be a confessional. Indeed, not a few startling confessions had been breathed there. An escritoire with some shelves above, curiously carved, that bespoke its journey across the sea, took a great wall space and seemed almost ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of the wall, Shadowy, silent, apart from all, With its awful portal open wide, And its latticed windows on either side, And its step well worn by the bended knees Of one or two pious centuries, Stands the village confessional! Within it, as an honored guest, I will sit me ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... entirely at peace with her world, and with heaven as well, that was certain. Whatever her sins, the confessional had purged her. Like others, doubtless, she had found a husband and the provinces excellent remedies for a damaged reputation. She lived now in the very odor of sanctity; the cure had a pipe in her kitchen, with something more sustaining, on certain bright afternoons. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... 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
... my sins to myself, and atone for them by the pangs of a wounded conscience. That is too easy a religion which shifts the burden of guilt on to the shoulders of a stipendiary priest, and walks away from the confessional absolved by the payment of a few ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Instead she has connived at oppression. She might have opposed the orgies of militarism. Instead she has voted every increase in the army and navy. She has bartered her dignity and spiritual independence to secure confessional privileges, and to get her share in the spoils ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... spoke, his hands hidden in the folds of his black cassock, wondering meanwhile what was causing the deep lines on the brow of this high-bred, courteous man, and the anxious look in the deep-set eyes. As priest he had looked into many others, framed in the side window of the confessional—the most wonderful of all schools for studying human nature—but few like those of the man before him; eyes so clear and sincere, yet shadowed by what the priest vaguely felt ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... have to confess, only God must know," he said, smiling proudly. "In our corrupt times even the secrets of the confessional are no longer sacred, and if I confessed the truth to you, it would mean the betrayal of my friends. God sees my heart; He knows its secrets and will have mercy on me. I wish to be alone, that is the last favor ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... situation. No man out of a cloister ever wrote about love, for example, so coldly and at the same time so grossly. His descriptions of it are just what we should hear from a recluse who knew the passion only from the details of the confessional. Almost all his heroes make love either like Seraphim or like cattle. He seems to have no notion of any thing between the Platonic passion of the Glendoveer who gazes with rapture on his mistress's leprosy, and the brutal appetite of Arvalan and Roderick. In Roderick, indeed, the two characters are ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a Crucifixion. Their pale blues and lilacs, their sharp pure greens and thin crimsons, made subtle harmony with the general lightness and cleanness of the abandoned chapel. A poor little altar with a few tawdry furnishings at the further end, a confessional box falling to pieces with age, and a few chairs—these were all that it ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... 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 ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... in such a world as this, to 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 state to the ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... that misinformed Moral Sense which finds in the Atonement of our LORD nothing but a stone of stumbling and a snare. It is true of Popish error also;—for what else is this but a setting up of the Human above the Divine,—(Tradition, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the casuistry of the Confessional, and the like,)—and so, once more substituting the creature for the Creator?—What again is the fashionable intellectual sin of the day, but the self-same detestable offence, under quite a different disguise? The idea of Law,—(that old idea ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... ecclesiastic, who directs the parish of Chateau-Richer, has assured us that he has procured more than eight hundred general confessions, and I leave you to think what the reverend Fathers must have accomplished who were day and night in the confessional. I do not think that in the whole country there is a single inhabitant who has not made a general confession. There have been inveterate sinners, who, to set their consciences at rest, have repeated their confession more than three times. We have ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... tete des fideles; le chapelet, le celibat ecclesiastique, les retraites spirituelles, le culte des saints, les jeunes, les processions, les litanies, l'eau benite; voila autant de rapports que les Bouddhistes ont avec nous.' He might have added tonsure, relics, and the confessional.] ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... which do not come to a normal expression. It is no chance that in countries of mixed Protestant and Catholic civilization, the number of suicides is larger in Protestant regions than in the Catholic ones where the confessional relieves the suppressed emotions of the masses. This is also the most destructive effect of social and legal injustice; emotions are strangulated and then begin to work mischief. The community should take care early that secret feelings ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... his hand and withdrew, Rodolph retired to an oratory into which his apartments opened. He had been there engaged in prayer for more than an hour, when the Archbishop of Mayence appeared, and, after a brief adoration, entered the confessional. There, in the silent hour of midnight, the king knelt before the priest, in obedience to the voice of that God who bequeathed us a Church to administer the Sacraments which He appointed for our salvation, and through which we can only attain it. When Rodolph sat again in his chamber, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... My parents, who were Rationalists, belonging to no church, gave me full scope to follow out my own inclinations; leaving it to my nature to choose for me a fitting path. This lasted until Elizabeth went for the first time to the confessional; and, when the poor innocent child could find no other sin of which to speak than the friendship which she cherished for a Protestant, the priest forbade her to continue this, until I, too, had become a Catholic; reminding her of the holiness of her future career. ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... 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 ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... the mouth of an earthenware jug. Never had my imagination, when it carried me to the deserts where early Christian anchorites spent their lives, depicted to my mind a form more grandly religious nor more horribly repentant than that of this man. You, who have a life-long experience of the confessional, dear uncle, you may never, perhaps, have seen so awful a remorse,—remorse sunk in the waves of prayer, the ceaseless supplication of a mute despair. This fisherman, this mariner, this hard, coarse Breton, was sublime through some hidden emotion. Had ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... and feather-brush against the altar. She was late, as she had that day began her half-yearly wash. Limping more than ever in her haste and hustling the benches, she went down the church to ring the Angelus. The bare, worn bell-rope dangled from the ceiling near the confessional, and ended in a big knot greasy from handling. Again and again, with regular jumps, she hung herself upon it; and then let her whole bulky figure go with it, whirling in her petticoats, her cap awry, and her blood rushing ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... even love for her, accompanied and followed the revenge. Our natural revolt against the cold-blooded work of hatred is modified, when we see the man's heart and the woman's soul, into pity for their fate. The man tells his story to a monk in the confessional, who has been the lover of his wife. He is a statesman absorbed in his work, yet he feels that his wife makes his home a heaven, and he carries her presence with him all the day. His wife takes the first lover ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... vassals rose and retired. According to her custom, the Lady Imogene yet remained, and knelt before the tomb of her brother. A low whisper, occasionally sounding,-assured her that someone was at the confessional; and soon the palmer, who was now shrived, knelt at her side. 'Lothair!' muttered the lady, apparently at her prayers, 'beloved ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... careless and indifferent in religious matters, rather than hypocritical, his conscience reproached him for going to absolve or condemn a fellow-creature when he inwardly felt how utterly unworthy he was himself of judging others at the tribunal of the confessional. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... a nook within this solemn Pass But were an apt confessional for one Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, That Life is but a tale of morning grass Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Holy Scripture so far profaned as to be quoted in newspapers, and exposed freely to the gaze of the vulgar. But what could they do? Their own literary qualifications did not warrant them to enter the lists with these writers: they had forgot the way to preach, unless at Lent; they could work the confessional, but even it began to be silenced by the powerful artillery of the press. At an earlier stage they might have roused the peasantry, and marched upon the Constitution, whose life they knew was the death of their power; but it was too late in 1851. An attempt of this sort made a year ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... 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 Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... matter for the confessional. I was just remembering a certain person who arrived in this town not much more than three years ago, and how different she was then—and how different ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... 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
... men as the editor of the "Bulwark" are elevated in front; over all, as well as collaterally, there are inscriptions in Latin; designs in gold and azure and vermilion fill up the details; and on each side there is a confessional wherein all members, whether large or diminutive, whether dressed in corduroy or smoothest, blackest broad cloth, in silk or Surat cotton, must unravel the sins they have committed. This confession must be a hard sort of job, we know, for some people; but we are not going to enter ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... which revolts against the inutility of nothingness. These 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
... concluded, holding out his own. "All that we have said will be just between ourselves. It is a sacred, confessional secret. I will arrange it with the Council of War.... You may continue lending your ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... my study 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
... 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, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... At the confessional she told her wrongdoing and received absolution so far as it is in the power of God's mediators to absolve one, but to promise to live, uprightly forevermore did not satisfy her soul. She felt the need of further self-abnegation; she must crucify body and ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... the matter. But the Prince delayed his coming, and the priest had to leave the church at sunset and go forth to visit the sick and needy. Lucifer, who was watching his opportunity, slipped into the church, disguised this time as a priest, and took his seat in the confessional. When the Prince at length appeared and besought the priest to tell him whether he might justly allow the maiden to give her life for his, instead of showing him how wicked such an action would be and that it would ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... conscience?" said Sheffield; "the idea of his swallowing, of his own free-will, the heap of rubbish which every Catholic has to believe! in cold blood tying a collar round his neck, and politely putting the chain into the hands of a priest!... And then the Confessional! 'Tis marvellous!" and he began to break the coals with the poker. "It's very well," he continued, "if a man is born a Catholic; I don't suppose they really believe what they are obliged to profess; but how an Englishman, a gentleman, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... of the most primitive place of worship I ever saw,—or, if she left her post to point out some minuter detail, she returned to it as jealously as a watch-dog to some spot which he is specially appointed to guard. When our curiosity was otherwise satisfied,—when we had even ascended to the rude confessional, which was a mere excavation in the soft stone of the wall,—when we had put our hands in the hollow, not unlike a swallow's nest in a mud-bank, once the receptacle for holy water,—when we had descended the stony pathway, for it was so worn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... motto should not be forgive one another; it should be, understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Mme. 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. This admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... the carillon of the bells was to waken to the most delightful sense of life and happiness; where nuns, actual nuns, walked the streets, and every figure in the Place de Meir, and every devotee at church, kneeling and draped in black, or entering the confessional (actually the confessional!), was a delightful subject for the new sketchbook. Had Clive drawn as much everywhere as at Antwerp, Messrs. Soap and Isaac might have made a little income by supplying ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have not been lit. Enter Francesco, a novice, to light them. A candle flashes on the altar; then another—and the tale unfolds. Francesco, sorrowing over his lost love, Maria, observes the Father Confessor enter the Confessional and, reminded of his too worldly thoughts, kneels and sings an aria, "The Confession," in which the tragedy ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... with her is also of the only religion. Mistress Penwick was greatly frightened of my Lord Cedric; for she would go forth in the heart of the storm, fearing a longer stay would bring uneasiness to the castle; so I gave her protection, a guide and a promise to receive her in a few days for the confessional and some religious direction; and I feel sure she will visit ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Manichaeism of those regions had much in common with Buddhism. A Manichaean treatise discovered at Tun-huang[1137] has the form of a Buddhist Sutra: it speaks of Mani as the Tathagata, it mentions Buddhas of Transformation (Hua-fo) and the Bodhisattva Ti-tsang. Even more important is the confessional formula called Khuastuanift[1138] found in the same locality. It is clearly similar to the Patimokkha and besides using much Buddhist terminology it reckons killing or injuring animals as a serious sin. It is true that many of these resemblances may be due to association ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... 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
... 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 ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... at the age of twenty-eight, in which his self-distrust and his consciousness of the "vision," if not "the faculty, divine," are revealed with the brave nudity of the rhythmic confessional:— ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... His was a more eclectic Christianity; he took what suited him and left the rest. But in England Romanism had never shaken itself free from the Anglican conscience. The convert never acquired the humanities of Rome, and in addition the lover had to contend against the confessional. But in Evelyn's case he could set against the confessional the delirium of success, the joy of art, the passion of emulation, jealousy and ambition, and last, but far from least, the ache of her own passionate body. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... life of its people. But if the priests had no visible seat in the splendid Council Chambers of the Republic, they boasted at Rome that their sway over the consciences of these lordly senators was well established by virtue of the confessional and that, in the event of contest, there would ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... and wore one eyebrow several inches higher than the other, shook her rusty crape-trimmed bonnet discouragingly, as she informed Saxham in a husky voice strongly flavoured with cloves that Father Julius 'ad been in the Confessional all the morning, it being the Eve of the Feast of the Ascension, and was quite wore out. If there was anything she could do, she inferred, with quite a third-hand air of clerical responsibility, she would be happy to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... affects her modesty she is apt to turn her back to her interlocutor. "When the face of woman is covered," it has been said, "her heart is bared," and the Catholic Church has recognized this psychological truth by arranging that in the confessional the penitent's face shall not be visible. The gay and innocent freedom of southern women during Carnival is due not entirely to the permitted license of the season or the concealment of identity, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... nature intended them as warnings, they are imprinted on the most visible and public parts of the body. The skin, the hair, the nose, the voice, the lines on the face, often divulge to the trained observer, more indubitably than the confessional, a lewd and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... because, if I may say so in all humility, I have been gifted with a certain power of spiritual vision, but because I have practised as a solicitor. A solicitor has to advise families. He has to think of the future and know the past. His office is the real modern confessional. Among other things he has to make people's wills for them. He has to shew them how to provide for their daughters after their deaths. Has it occurred to you, Lubin, that if you live three hundred years, your ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... very general character. Preeminently a regulator of conduct, it lays comparatively little stress upon the inner life. It discourages, or at least neglects that minutely introspective habit of thought which the confessional is so much calculated to promote, which appears so prominently in the writings of the Catholic Saints, and which finds its special representation in the mystics and the religious contemplative orders. Improved conduct and improved circumstances are to an English mind the chief and ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... perhaps, she would stay like that. And then it would all come over her again. She never thought of his loving her; that would be—unnatural. Why should he love her? She was very humble about it. Ever since that Sunday, when she avoided the confessional, she had brooded over how to make an end—how to get away from a longing that was too strong for her. And she had hit on this plan—to beg for the mountains, to go back to where her husband had come into her life, and try if this feeling would not die. If it did not, she would ask to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Hump Doane some things that Hump Doane wished very much to know, but he would go to the confessional under such oath of secrecy as could not recoil upon him. Then whoever triumphed, be it Bas, the white-caps, or the forces of law and order, he would have a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... influences. Certain it is that the socialistic opinions, never very deeply rooted, and at most but a reaction, disappeared, and there came a religious sentiment like that of his friends. He was drawn to the little class meeting, which seemed to him so simple a confessional that all his former notions of "liberty, fraternity, and equality" were satisfied by it. I believe he became a "probationer," but his creed was never quite settled enough for him to accept ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston |
