"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... while he seemed to have resolved on a compromise, but it was no longer possible to obtain his place in advance of the crowd, where each one waited his turn. He took a post, therefore, directly opposite the front of the confessional, as near as he could get, but with half the width of the nave between, and waited till the priest should be visible. The moment came when the confessor, turning from one penitent to another, was seen from the front. The man leaned eagerly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... 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
... in Dolly's great encouragement. It was agreed that the family oracle was to bring Griffith to his senses by means of some slight sisterly reproof, and that she was to take Mollie in hand discreetly at once and persuade her to enter the confessional. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... subject, between husband and wife, between parent and child, comes the priest, gliding in like water through seamy walls, sapping their foundations. Into the inmost heart of maid, wife, mother, creeps the confessional, tainting, souring, defiling society in its springs,—a leaven of malice and wickedness, a leaven at once of Pharisee and Sadducee, a superstition that believes everything in alliance with a scepticism that believes nothing, and all combined to conceal the salvation of God and enslave the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... advance the interests of the Church, and to strengthen the authority of the Papacy. Its motto was Omnia ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (that is, All for the greater glory of God), and the means to be employed by it to accomplish these ends were the pulpit, the confessional, the mission, and the school. Of these the school was given the place of first importance. Realizing clearly that the real cause of the Reformation had been the ignorance, neglect, and vicious lives of so many monks and priests and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... 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
... name everywhere profaned by men, women and children, and truthfulness of lip almost absolutely unknown; the women and girls degraded and oppressed and left to the tender mercies of a corrupt clergy through the infamies of the confessional; all these practices and many others which space forbids us to mention, combined with the social bondage entailed upon woman by the gross code of Islam, rendered the women of the nominal Christian sects of Syria almost as hopeless subjects of missionary labor as were their ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... took flight. Victurnien went soon afterwards, but not before others had guessed his ecstatic condition; his face wore the expression peculiar to happy men, something between an Inquisitor's calm discretion and the self-contained beatitude of a devotee, fresh from the confessional and absolution. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... time was first turned into a hall of meeting for the electors, who distrusted each other so profoundly that when their first meeting was held, May 3, 1790, the documents relating to the elections were locked up in a confessional, lest they should be stolen, and then deliberately wrecked and looted by the 'friends of Liberty,' or, in other words, by a squad of ruffians from Chauny and the neighbourhood, who, after putting on the sacerdotal ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the Squire prospered. Leila had been a gay comrade, but not as yet so interested as to tempt him to discussion of the confusing politics of the day. "She has not as yet a seeking mind," said the rector, who in the confessional of the evening pipe saw more and more plainly that this was a divided house. The Squire could not talk politics with Ann, his wife. She held a changeless belief in regard to slavery, a conviction of its value to owner and owned too positive to be ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... mug, and while he drank I longed, but did not dare, to say, "Are you afraid of ... that?" I thought if one could say the word it might break down that dumb fright, draw the flesh up again over those bulging eyes, give him a sort of anchor, a confessional, even if it was only me. But I didn't dare. Gayner is one of those men so pent up, so rigid with some inner indignation, one ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... 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 ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... 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 ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... served as an instantaneous pain-killer. So she gave one pale look into the crinkly old looking-glass on the wall above the gas-stove, turned down the flame a little lower from the bubbling beef and potatoes, went over to the couch, and lifted Cecilia's head to its confessional. ...
— Options • O. Henry
... but unluckily none with a star in it. Of course, if when on coming to the door he was unable to produce the necessary signs, he would be suspected and examined. He gained the shade of a pillar, which stood at the corner of a confessional, and stood there wondering what he should do. An assistant cried, "Is everyone out, the doors ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... invented the epithet repeated it to Monsignor Saracinesca in confession, and he gently told her that it was wrong to speak disrespectfully of her superior, she rather pertly asked him whether any one who lived under a volcano could fail to 'respect' it; whereat he shook his head gravely inside the confessional, but his spiritual mouth twitched with amusement, in spite of himself. The four novices were inclined to distrust Angela at first, however, as she was not even a postulant, and it was not till she became one of themselves that she ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... Vienna, he cannot escape the cynicism which belongs alike to the man of the world as to the doctor before whom all veils and pretenses are discarded. It is difficult, indeed, to banish the idea that the consultation-room of Arthur Schnitzler, Dr. med., is the confessional which furnishes material to Arthur Schnitzler, author. For the modern physician is not concerned with his patient's body only, but also with his soul. He must be a psychologist as well, and the success of his diagnosis ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... from it. Let us go, then, to Rome, before death overtakes us, and confess there our sin." So they started on their journey to Rome, and when they arrived there they entered the church where the Pope sat in the confessional. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... It was his noble patriotism, of which he made a great 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 Lizabetha Prokofievna ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... destined to suspect he had put his foot in it, this time, from the way in which his suggestion was received. An inexplicable nuance of manner pervaded his two guests, somewhat such as the Confessional might produce in a penitent with a sense of humour, who had committed a funny crime. It was, you see, difficult to assign a plausible reason why Mr. Pellew and Miss Dickenson should have already signed a treaty ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... through their wrong-doing, when they made it good. The only sin we are justified in confessing to our brother man is that we have committed against him. All else must be told in the ear of Jesus, that great High Priest, whose confessional is always open, and whose pure ear can receive our dark and sad ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... said Dick; "you'll regard what I'm going to say as said under seal of the confessional and that sort of thing, ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... only 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 daughters ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 of Rome.] The system came to be attended ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... skirts: they ought to have worn them really, for they had the souls and the conversation of girls. Christophe had his hour as her confessor. At once Colette would become serious and intense. She was like the young Frenchwoman, of whom Bodley speaks, who, at the confessional, "developed a calmly prepared essay, a model of clarity and order, in which everything that was to be said was properly arranged in distinct categories."—And after that she flung herself once more into the business of amusement. As ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... shifting clouds above the tree-tops, and with a tenderness about the lips that must have surprised and gratified the stubby, ill-used brier, inanimate confederate in many a lofty plot. He recalled all she had said to him in that sylvan confessional, and was content. His family? Pooh! He had a soul of his own. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... feeling, but these are of a 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 ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... because Isabel had awoke, that she was unsatisfied with the round of ritual observances which were all in all to her sister. She could confess to man, and be absolved by man; but how could she wrestle against the conviction that she rose from the confessional with a soul none the cleaner, with a heart just as disinclined to go and sin no more? The branches might be lopped; but what mattered that while the root of bitterness remained? It is only when we hear God say, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," that it is possible to go in peace. And Isabel never heard ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the holy water and crossed herself in the correct fashion. And afterwards, with hushed footsteps, she made her way to the chapel of Saint Agnes, where two kneeling women with their faces buried in their hands were waiting, whilst the blue skirts of a third protruded from the confessional. Lisa seemed rather put out by the sight of these women, and, addressing a verger who happened to pass along, wearing a black skullcap and dragging his feet over the slabs, she inquired: "Is this Monsieur l'Abbe Roustan's day for ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... drawn by irresistible attraction into the society of the deaf and dumb. What awful 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 could render nothing in return, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... nest"; and the scene beheld of Eleanor—Lucy pressing the terra-cotta to her lips;—and Italy "having not enough faith to make a heresy"—(true, too, of France, is it not?) and Chapter XXIII—"a base and plundering happiness"; and the scene of the confessional; and that sudden phrase of Eleanor's in her talk with Manisty that makes the whole world—and the whole book—right, "She loves you!" That is art.... But, above all, my dear lady, acknowledgments and praise for the hand that created "Lucy"—that recreated, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... warning, stating with entire moderation the facts he had observed and the necessity of care. But he did not dare publish it under his own name, nor did he even dare publish it in a Catholic town; he gave it to the world anonymously, and, in order to prevent any tracing of the work to him through the confessional, he secretly caused it to be published in the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 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!" for I had advanced to bid ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... museum, and public library; the first, perhaps, being much more popular than the two latter. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die," is the maxim of the light-hearted, we must even say frivolous population. While the men amuse themselves in the cafes, the women go to the confessional, and no matter at what hour you enter a church, you are sure to find them thus occupied. The Jesuits have established a large training-school here, une maison de noviciat, so called; and conventual institutions abound, as at Arbois. Just beyond the pleasant garden of the Presbytere ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... so," said the confessional voice, rather muffled in tone. "But I—I just got led into it. Oh, Jinny, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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 prayer ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... notion grips me hard that the Abbot Aldam could tell some tales about that little incident, and violate no secret of confessional either. There have been strange rumors lately touching his Abbey and the style of servitors ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... deeply moved, kissed 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 ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... 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
... he flee from their presence? Even the frigid realm of abstractions was shaken by the beating of his own passionate heart. Her eyes had the allurements of the confessional; he hovered, fascinated, round the holy precincts, for ever on the brink of revelation. It was ungovernable, this tendency to talk about himself. In another minute—But no, most decidedly that was not what he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... his mandolin-headed sleeper; the name of the book was Notes in a Cathedral and dealt with the confessions of a young girl, which the author claimed to have jotted down, while concealed behind a pillow near the Confessional, every Sunday for the entire period of Lent. Lastly he pulled a sheet a little loose from the bed, until a corner of it lay on the floor; then he lay down on the boards, still keeping his sword in his hand, and by means of the sheet and some silk that hung from ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... told, as he was 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
... 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
... girl of distinguished parentage had suffered her blonde tresses to be shorn, her graceful limbs draped in forlorn russet, her merry meetings with girlish spirits like herself exchanged for the tears of the confessional, the lengthened prayers of the cloister, the frequent fastings and sometimes scourgings of monastic life. The cause of this contemporaneous disappearance was known only to the most intimate friends of two celebrated but no longer wealthy families, who deemed the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... vulgar glass chandeliers with ropes tied with faded pink ribands. Several frightful plaster statues daubed with scarlet and chocolate brown stood under the windows, which were protected with brown woollen curtains. Close to the entrance were a receptacle for holy water in the form of a shell, and a confessional of stone flanked by boxes, one of which bore the words, "Graces obtenues," the other, "Demandes," and a card on which was printed, "Litanies en honneur de Saint ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the downward current. It is said that most of the senators would sooner lose their hopes of the horned bonnet, than lose him. Jacopo! He knows more family secrets than the good Priore of San Marco himself, and he, poor man, is half his time in the confessional." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... now,—now that the matter had been put before him in this way, might it not become him, as a gentleman, to fall in love with so very beautiful a woman, whose name had already been linked with his own? We all know that story of the priest, who, by his question in the confessional, taught the ostler to grease the horses' teeth. "I never did yet," said the ostler, "but I'll have a try at it." In this case, the duke had acted the part of the priest, and Mr Palliser, before the night was over, had almost become as ready ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the monk with a deep sigh, "for the sake of our brotherhood, I must violate the sanctity of the confessional. But you must swear to preserve my secret, otherwise ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... of authentic English versification. Up to the Spring of 1914, I had never allowed a Spring to pass without reading Homer; and I feel that this familiarity had its influence both as to form and spirit; but I shall not take the space now to pursue this line of confessional. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... hand, with carefully worded phrases containing confessions and fervent entreaties; and these were from women who confided to the Queen of Heaven things which they dared not even say to a priest in the shadow of the confessional. Finally, one envelope, selected at random, merely contained a photograph; a young girl had sent her portrait to Our Lady of Lourdes, with this dedication: "To my good Mother." In short, they every day received the correspondence of a most powerful ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... It was 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 was some ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hint from a Huron girl, and the rest from the Intendant's Secretary. Men cannot keep secrets that women are interested in knowing! I could make De Pean talk the Intendant's head off his shoulders, if I had him an hour in my confessional. But all my ingenuity could not extract from him what he did not know—who that mysterious lady is, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of a Convent which I observed in that place, was a confessional within the building, and I soon learnt, to my dismay, that Father Bonin, one of the murderers of Saint Francis, was in the habit of constant attendance as priest and confessor. The recollections which I often indulged in of scenes in the Hotel Dieu, gave me uneasiness and distress: but not knowing ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... Morning shut up in his Confessional, Constantia kneeling by him opened the State of her Soul to him; and after having given him the History of a Life full of Innocence, she burst out in Tears, and entred upon that Part of her Story in which he himself had so great a Share. My Behaviour, says she, has I fear been the Death of a Man ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... body of Father Francois du Peron, who died on the 10th at Fort St. Louis (Chambly). The body was exposed in the Chapel of the Congregation, and 'on the 16th, after the service at which the Marquis de Tracy assisted, it was interred in the vault of the chapel towards the confessional on the side of the street,' and Father le Mercier, who wrote the foregoing, adds that 'there remains ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... at St. Peter's where folks of every language in the world can confess and be absolved by a priest that understands 'em. Well, I shouldn't wonder, it is big enough, it seems like a world in itself. But I couldn't help thinkin' of our great High Priest whose confessional is broad and high as the needs and sorrows of a world and the "silent liftin' of an eye can bring us there to be," and who understands not only every language under the sun, but every secret and hidden thought and aspiration of the soul, good or evil, and ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... an entire period in the world's history are revealed in a brilliant searchlight. With very few exceptions, one of which will be given in our selections, a dramatic monologue is not a meditation nor a soliloquy; it is a series of remarks, usually confessional, addressed either orally or in an epistolary form to another person or to a group of listeners. These other figures, though they do not speak, are necessary to the understanding of the monologue; we often see ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... 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 as ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Office about the first stages of the war increased our confidence, and at the same time showed to us the inferiority of our own reports. Only victors could publish such revelations, and Britain, with her passion for forgetting mistakes and her hatred of the confessional, could never bring herself to publish them. These reports were confirmed and capped by the remarkable communications of General Joffre to a journalistic friend. The New York Stock Exchange began to gamble about the date of victory. The London Stock Exchange took on a new ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... air of Italy, or bravely struggling against the damper atmosphere of our humid isle, sounds harsh and shrilly in our ears, instead of soothing our "savage breast," which seems to marshal all its powers the more emphatically to give the poet the lie. This—now that we are in the confessional—we are free to own—yea, it is incumbent on us to do ourselves this justice—is only when we are in one of our unamiable moods, luckily about as rare as snow at mid-summer, but correspondingly chilling and shocking to the genial ones around ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... around, the slim, smallish figure sitting in a corner, looking very 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
... 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
... performed his office, but found no devil. He merely hurt Joan's feelings and offended her piety without need, for he had already confessed her before this, and should have known, if he knew anything, that devils cannot abide the confessional, but utter cries of anguish and the most profane and furious cursings whenever they are confronted ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... had tried boarding for a change, and as such it had been a success, but we were altogether ready to take up our stored furniture and find lodgment for it, some place, any place, where the bill of fare was not wholly deductive, where our rooms would not be made a confessional and a scandal bureau, and where we could, in some measure, at least, feel that we had ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... contains a 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 which he seeks to drive from among his countrymen by his earnest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... pity, 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 she meets, and, discovered, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... 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 ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... be, I feel that in the end I shall be justified—fully justified—in allowing the public to look for a little while into the sacred confessional of ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... read by him first, of course; letters hoping that I was well, and obeying my father's commands; letters assuring me of his unaltered devotion; letters that, compared with the ones he used to hide in the confessional of the ruined mission church, were as ice to fire, were as that snow-flower you value so much, Mary, to this mariposa blossom I wear in my hair. And then to think that this man—this John Oakhurst, as I knew him; this man who used to ride twenty miles ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... whose frankness and grace surprised you in the Piazza on the night before—Stagio Stagi, a native of this place, a fine artist whose work continually meets you in Pietrasanta. Indeed, in the choir of the church there are some candelabra by him, and an altar, built, as it is said, out of two confessional boxes. In the Baptistery close by are some bronzes, said to be the work of Donatello, and some excellent sculptures by Stagio; while, as though to bear out the hidden paganism, some dim memory of the old ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... 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 ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... retection^; unveiling &c v.; deterration^, revealment, revelation; exposition, exposure; expose; whole truth; telltale &c (news) 532. acknowledgment, avowal; confession, confessional; shrift. bursting of a bubble; denouement. [person who discloses a secret] tattletale, snitch, fink, stool pigeon, canary. V. disclose, discover, dismask^; draw the veil, draw aside the veil, lift the veil, raise the veil, lift up the veil, remove the veil, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on his own {183} ground, meeting his rapier-like dexterity of neatness with heavy sword-strokes of sincerity and strength. But here, as in the prose, the true Johnsonian excellence is best seen when he is in the confessional. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... out a little more that is useful knowledge to somebody. There's one great weak point in the character of Florence Hallman; maybe you have noticed it. She's just simply GOT to have somebody to tell things to, and she doesn't always show the best judgment in her choice of a confessional—" ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... 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 no ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Beth regarded her work intently, for an echo of the confessional had come back to ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... would result, if she persisted in her wilful and ungrateful course. Inez listened with a meekness which surprised both parent and Padre; and when the latter rose to go, approached, and, in a low tone, requested him to meet her, that day week, in the confessional. ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... for salvation. The truths in which we agree are part of the Catholic faith. In the words of Dr. Dollinger, "we can say each to the other as baptized, we are on either side, brothers and sisters in Christ. In the great garden of the Lord, let us shake hands over these confessional hedges, and let us break them down, so as to be able to embrace one another altogether. These hedges are doctrinal divisions about which either we or you are in error. If you are in the wrong, we do not hold you ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... from 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 ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr. So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a copy of the "Holy Family, presented by ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... church warned her that the morality of such a marriage might be doubtful. She accordingly sounded her conscience in the confessional. The stern priest explained the opinions of the Church, which sees in marriage only the propagation of humanity, and rebukes second marriages and all passions but those with a social purpose. Sylvie's perplexities were great. These internal struggles gave extraordinary force ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... never can be sure that the 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, down, at a long interval, to Thackeray, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... acolytes come and go, and priests move back and forth before the altar; I smelt the grateful incense as it rose when mass was said; I watched the people gather in little clusters at the different shrines, or seek the confessional, or kneel to receive the blessed sacrament. Many who came were familiar—among them Mademoiselle Lucie Lotbiniere. Lucie prayed long before a shrine of the Virgin, and when she rose at last her face ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... without dependence on the church of Rome. But neither Luther nor any of the reformers were men of spiritual originality. Driven to construct a new creed, they simply worked over the old dogmas, divesting them of the keys of priestly power—the Mass, the confessional, absolution, Purgatory, and the like; and giving infallible authority to the Bible only. A war of creeds followed, mingled with a strife of ambitions and a struggle between the powers of the secular state and of the hierarchy. To men of piety and peace ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... their clubs. They love to be alone with themselves, and dread to be benumbed or 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 ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... no biography of him. His public life is summed up in simply saying that he was a preacher. During thirty-four laborious and fruitful years he preached the doctrines of the Church; and this is the sole account to be given of him, except, indeed, that in the confessional he was, all that time, learning those secrets of the human heart which he used to such effect in composing his sermons. He had very suave and winning ways as confessor, though he enjoined great strictness as preacher. This led a witty woman of his ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... just waking to painful life. For nearly four years had Grena Holland soothed her many misgivings by some such reasoning as that of Mr Justice Roberts. She had conformed outwardly: had not merely abstained from contradictory speeches, but had gone to mass, had attended the confessional, had bowed down before images of wood and stone, and all the time had comforted herself by imagining that God saw her heart, and knew that she did not really believe in any of these things, but only acted thus for safety's ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... is—well, their worldliness is repugnant to me—fashionable friends, confidences, meddling in family affairs, dining out, letters from ladies who need consolation.... I don't mean anything wrong; pray don't misunderstand me. I merely mean to say that I hate their meddling in family affairs. Their confessional is a kind of marriage bureau; they have always got some plan on for marrying this person to that, and I must say I hate all that sort of thing.... If I were a priest I would disdain to... but perhaps I am wrong to speak like that. Yes, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... 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
... trotted to confessional, and related his case with all humility to the rector of the parish, who was a good old priest, capable of being up above, the slipper ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 women in France ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he'd just got a murderer to agree to give himself up, gone with him to see him safely jailed, and sent his confession up to the governor—oh, he was a remarkable man, that man! And it's a remarkable institution, the Confessional. We're learning to do more with it now than we did twenty years ago. But they've always known ... ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the doors of 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 he ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... which 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
... herself on some ruined fragments beyond them, full in the sunshine. The place she had chosen had once been the entrance to the church. In centuries long gone by, the stream of human sin and human suffering had flowed, day after day, to the confessional, over the place where she now sat. Of all the miserable women who had trodden those old stones in the bygone time, no more miserable creature had touched them than the woman whose feet rested on ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... sides, Mademoiselle. On the one is the confessional: you must go—you shall not choose. You kneel; you speak out all—every thought in your heart, every secret of your dearest friend. You may not hide one little thought. The priest hears you hesitate? The questions ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... those given me outside the pale of my church's confessional. Young Latisan is like his grandfather—tinder for a stray spark. If I know your fault—if I can tell him, when I see him, what you would have liked to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day |
