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It is impossible for a man to be freed from the habit of sin before he hates it, just as it is impossible to receive forgiveness before confessing his trespasses.
Sep 30, 2025
Recalling and confessing our sin is like taking out the garbage: once is not enough.
Sometimes it helps to begin our prayers by confessing we don't feel like praying-and ask God to help us with our preference to be doing something else.
To accept grace is to admit failure, a step we are hesitant to take. We opt to impress God with how good we are rather than confessing how great he is.
Between lovers a little confession is a dangerous thing.
To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it.
Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at.
The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose.
Do not be afraid of Confession! One who is in line to confess himself feels all these things - even shame - but then, when he finishes confessing, he leaves free, great, beautiful, forgiven, [...] happy. And this is the beauty of Confession... Jesus is there...and He receives you with so much love.
A confession has to be part of your new life.
Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.
The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
Deep in my heart I'm concealing things that I'm longing to say. Scared to confess what I'm feeling - frightened you'll slip away.
they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.
I write about situations that are common, universal might be more correct, in which my characters are involved and from which only faith can redeem them, though often the actual manner of the redemption is not immediately clear. They sin, but there is no limit to God's mercy and because this is important, there is a difference between not confessing in fact, and the complacent and the pious may not realize it.
The feeling of patriotism - It is an immoral feeling because, instead of confessing himself a son of God . . . or even a free man guided by his own reason, each man under the influence of patriotism confesses himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his government, and commits actions contrary to his reason and conscience.
Some years ago John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in an essay on his efforts at writing a history of economics: 'As one approaches the present, one is filled with a sense of hopelessness; in a year and possibly even a month, there is now more economic comment in the supposedly serious literature than survives from the whole of the thousand years commonly denominated as the Middle Ages ... anyone who claims to be familiar with it all is a confessing liar.' I believe that all physicists would subscribe to the same sentiments regarding their own professional literature. I do at any rate.
Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.
Just as in one man there is one soul and one body, yet many members; even so the Catholic Church is one body, having many members. The soul that quickens this body is the Holy Spirit; and therefore in the Creed after confessing our belief in the Holy Spirit, we are bid to believe in the Holy Catholic Church.
As for our pupils talk, let his virtue and his sense of right and wrong shine through it and have no guide but reason. Make him understand that confessing an error which he discovers in his own argument even when he alone has noticed it is an act of justice and integrity, which are the main qualities he pursues; stubbornness and rancour are vulgar qualities, visible in common souls whereas to think again, to change one's mind and to give up a bad case on the heat of the argument are rare qualities showing strength and wisdom.
Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.
We can choose to humble ourselves by confessing and forsaking our sins and being born of God.
Do not put off any longer confessing all your sins, for death will soon come. Give and it will be given you; forgive and you will be forgiven. . . Blessed are they who die repentant, for they shall go to the Kingdom of Heaven!
Harboring bitterness against people is actually confessing their sin to myself, over and over again. Anger is akin to confessing their sin to God, dissatisfied that he hasn't done something and placing myself in his position as judge.
It is so important that you don't get distracted by what you are not. You need to start confessing your persona and living in it, and don't be bewildered by your circumstances. Just stay on course with what God is promising you.
When you speak to any, especially of quality, look them full in the face; other gestures betraying want of breeding, confidence, or honesty; dejected eyes confessing, to most judgments, guilt or folly.
People cheat when they are afraid. When there is no cost to being wrong or confessing ignorance, there is no reason to cheat or fake comprehension.
So what do you have to confess now?" I don't know why I'm saying any of this, except that is the truth. "I'm confessing that I don't know if I'm ready for this." "What is 'this'?" "Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.
The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion.
A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.
All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.
Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.
For whenever unbaptized persons die confessing Christ, this confession is of the same efficacy for the remission of sins as if they were washed in the sacred font of baptism.
If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man.
If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.
When a Satanist commits a wrong, he realizes that is it natural to make a mistake―and if he is truly sorry about what he has done, he will learn from it and take care not to do the same thing again. If he is not honestly sorry about what he has done, and knows he will do the same thing over and over, he has no business confessing and asking forgiveness in the first place.
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
I feel like that's something the church has done really badly is actually confessing. We are sinners. We are broken, shattered people that do things selfishly, out of arrogance, pride, lust, greed. And all have fallen short. That doesn't mean some we're definitely a part of that inclusive all.
Great. "So not only am I not-human, but Death is my arch foe?" Who, me? Panic? "Anything else you want to tell me, while we're confessing?
When you can discover where the fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to himself.
Christian faith does not involve repressing one's anxiety in order to appear strong. On the contrary, it means recognizing one's weakness, accepting the inward truth about oneself, confessing one's anxiety, and still to believe, that is to say that the Christian puts his trust not in his own strength, but in the grace of God.
I think now more than ever there's so much available honesty that you can find on the Internet. You can go on to YouTube and find really, really vulnerable, really verité stuff. It's not even verité, it's real! It's people confessing very private things. In a world with "It Gets Better" videos where people are trying to keep themselves alive and speak out to other people and are really brave and courageous.
The confessing church of American Ragamuffins needs to join Magdalene and Peter in witnessing that Christianity is not primarily a moral code but a grace-laden mystery; it is not essentially a philosophy of love but a love affair; it is not keeping rules with clenched fists but receiving a gift with open hands.
There's an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There's no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn't work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn't want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship.
At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a 'tendency to progression', 'adaptations from the slow willing of animals', &c! But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his; though the means of change are wholly so. I think I have found out (here's presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends.
Father asks frequently in his letters whether I fancy any Ayorthaian young lady or any in our acquaintance at home. I say no I suppose I'm confessing another fault: pride. I don't want him to know that I love if my affections are not returned
I ... began my career as a wireless amateur. After 43 years in radio, I do not mind confessing that I am still an amateur. Despite many great achievements in the science of radio and electronics, what we know today is far less than what we have still to learn.
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.